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 w
hat 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!”
Awnings of every conceivable color and stripe and fabric lunged and flapped and fluttered and blew with the constant searing wind from the deserts. The mountains beyond were like hot lapis lazuli and brass against a sky the color of burnished bronze, and the sun within it was a hole and holocaust of flame. The crowds and throngs of customers and merchants, of men and squealing women, were jostled by hordes of children who raced between ranks of humanity and animals, brown, barefooted, naked children with ragged black hair and oily sly faces, holding hot breads and cakes and remnants of steaming meats in their hands, all of which they had stolen from brazier or table. Donkeys with laden baskets on their patient backs were beaten and pulled into the very midst of clotted bodies, and whips snarled and wheels grunted and hoarse oaths were yelled and heads were broken. All, with the exception of the children, were clothed in dusty black, crimson, yellow or blue, the men wearing headcloths bound with rope, and knotted, the women dirtily veiled with only their lustrous eyes darting everywhere.
Aspasia was not permitted to alight alone, but only in the company of Al Taliph and his band of eunuchs, headed by Kurda, and all carrying bared swords. Merchants would bring Aspasia ground lamb and mushrooms and barley roasted together and wrapped in green grape leaves, and acrid wine in metal goblets. Al Taliph, surrounded by his guard of eunuchs, would laugh when Aspasia declared that the meat was too spiced and hot for her taste and the wine too acid. He would laugh when she would eat or drink, however, and apparently enjoyed the strangeness and novelty. She once refused the soured milk, thick and bland in its earthen cups, but when persuaded she ate it and found it refreshing. At all times she sought to please Al Taliph, not only because she had been taught this but because she treasured his approval. He brought her unknown fruit which had a richness and emphasis beyond anything she had ever known. The hot cakes, filled with honeyed seeds and spices, or meats seasoned with coriander and cloves, excited her.
“I do not see pork,” she said once.
His face changed. “We rarely eat pork,” he said, and would not explain. She received raw fish in vinegar and onions with some trepidation but, urged, she would eat it from rough earthen platters, and found it delectable. There was also fried fish with capers and a pungent olive sauce which stung her tongue, and wine refreshed with the juice of lemons. Al Taliph was endlessly delighted during these experimentations and would laugh like a youth. He would always buy her some exquisite gold or silver trinket, necklaces or rings or earrings and bracelets, or some brazen vase or figure which she fancied. These she would hold in her hands, examining them, attempting to understand the east. Once he bought her a water lily of white jade, incredibly beautiful on its leaves of green jade, and this never left her possession. She believed it exhaled scent.
On another occasion he bought her a marble figurine taken from the tomb of some Egyptian noble, and there were many such in the booth of Egyptian rascals with black faces and black hidden eyes. She was repulsed by it. Turn it in her hands as she did it remained of one dimension, as if repudiating humanity and its warm aspects and contours. “Osiris,” he explained to her. “The son of Isis, and also her husband. It is said that he, a most virtuous and sacred savior of his people, was murdered by his people, and then rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, from which he rules and loves humanity.”
“The gods of Greece are handsomer and more sensible,” she replied.
Again that inexplicable look came over his face, a look of gravity and withdrawal, which she could not interpret. Later he told her of the Egyptian religion, of Ptah, the God Almighty, who ruled all the endless universes, and was concerned with all creation. “The Greeks,” she said, “are happiest when the gods forget them, for their attentions are frequently disastrous. We prefer to adore them—from a distance—and ask only their assistance when we need it.”
Once again he looked grave and absent, and she was both intimidated and dismayed and wondered how she had offended him. She tried never to offend him, not out of fear but out of respect. And something which came perilously close to love, which she never suspected. A woman did not permit herself to love a man, she had been taught. That led to calamity and grief and despair, and the disintegration of a woman’s dignity. She became a slave.
On still another occasion he gave her a large intricately carved ivory ball from Cathay. It had interstices and she discerned another smaller ball within it, and then turning it in her hands she discovered yet another ball within the second, and succeeding balls each smaller than the one which enclosed it. There was no joining, no indication of how each carved ball had entered the other, and she was puzzled. Al Taliph explained that the ball had originally been of one piece, the outer covering. “How, then, were the others carved?” she asked. He only shook his head. She marvelled, thrusting the tip of her finger, dyed red in the eastern fashion, within the crevices. The inner balls rotated; they were not fixed.
Then, unaccountably, she was vexed. “You prefer solutions?” asked Al Taliph, watching her. He had made her seem absurd in her own opinion and she looked sharply at him, standing at his side. The hot sunlight struck her eyes and they smarted, but she continued to look at him, seeing how the light shifted on the dark bronzed planes of his lean face as on metal, lighted his large hooped earrings, but could not lighten his secret eyes. He had a brooding expression now, and she had seen it before and it had always perturbed her.
The jostling throngs were all about them, though kept at bay by the ring of lavishly attired eunuchs with their drawn swords. The men cursed them but sidled off at a respectful distance, for one knew that within that circle stood a man of consequence. So many milled nearby, clad in dirty and dusty robes of black and red and yellow, with striped head-coverings, clasped with knotted ropes, protecting their heads, their avid and blackish faces ravenous as jackals, their eyes glittering both with fawning abjectness and curiosity. They did not recognize this richly but quietly dressed man as their governor, for his own face was half-hidden within a hood and his mantle was of dark silk embroidered discreetly with gold. He never took these excursions with his own soldiers; he preferred to be without name in the market places, and without overt honor.
Then the burning wind from the desert partially lifted Aspasia’s own hood and her veil, and a lock of her gilded hair streamed forth and the watching men came closer and raised a hoarse shout of wonder, seeing not only her hair but the whiteness and scarlet of her face, and her beauty. They pressed forward, the better to observe this unbelievable vision, and even crowded the eunuchs whose curved swords scintillated in the blinding light. Al Taliph gave no indication that he even saw the market rabble, but thrust Aspasia behind him—the usual position of a woman in the company of a man—and walked to the litter.
Kurda’s eyes jumped with hatred for this woman who had jeopardized his master. He followed Aspasia; the eunuchs, thrusting the air with their swords, guarded their retreat. Aspasia, glancing only once behind her, first saw Kurda with his face lustful for her death and beyond him the seething stalls of the market and the glaring faces of the market rabble, momentarily quiet, overcome with astonishment.
She was not frightened. It was only when she was in the litter with her lord that she felt some fear. He closed the thick silken curtains and they were in a hot gloom. The litter was lifted and they were borne away. Since then two weeks had passed and Al Taliph had not as yet taken her again to the markets. She never asked for a reason, for she learned that this irritated Al Taliph who did not believe that women were worthy of being given reasons for men’s behavior.
But yesterday he had taken her to the site where Cyrus had defeated Astyages, last King of the Medes, from which battle he had entered on a career of conquest and power which ended only when he had succeeded in establishing himself as the mightiest emperor in all recorded history. He proclaimed himself the King of all the Persians and the Medes, thus uniting them in one empire, one ruthless power, extending his rule to all the lands between the Great Sea and Persia, and even to Egypt and Greece.
He had caused to be built on that site a great terraced palace, at the entrance to Fars, and a city had risen there to establish his glory. An enormous pillar had been raised beside the four-sided palace and on it, in three languages, Susian, Assyrian and Persian, had been inscribed: “I am Cyrus, the King, the Achaemenian!” The thick circular column, soaring to the incandescent blue sky, was embellished by a winged figure and an engraving of his tomb.