There was another thing that was quite different here. It was that she was never alone at all. While in her own land of course the Fathers, and the women who would be implicated in the child’s upbringing, and who would be considered Mothers, were close and often with her, she remembered long hours of solitude in communion with herself and the child. But now any such wish on her part was considered as an evidence of weakness or faintness of mind. She must be sad, perhaps? Or frightened? For they all behaved as if this was her first child, and she could not bring herself to tell them of how her life had been as the Mother of so many children, her own and the orphans, because they were unable to understand anything but the possession of what belonged to them — as they saw it.
Yet this child was felt to be Ben Ata’s son. Not her son. She was seen as a channel or a vessel. It was most strange and awkward and she was many times in any day thrown off her own precarious balances and made to wonder if perhaps she was quite wrong and they altogether right? But how could they be? This mine, mine, mine about a child paid every kind of reverence to the flesh, but where was the acknowledgement of the high and fine influences that fed every child — each child, that is, who was supplied and fed with them? Anyone could lick a child all over as if it were a puppy or a kitten — but where had that thought come from? What a strange thing to come into her mind! And anyone could clutch at a child and mark its features: ‘This nose is mine, and that his, and that my mother’s, and that his father’s …’ Anybody, even a horse or a dog, could calculate streams of inheritance in that way. And all that was pleasant enough, and of course no one would refuse the delights of watching for the appearance of this or that trait in a child. But that was not even the half of it … one might not, most definitely could not, say of a child, ‘mine, mine,’ or ‘ours, ours’ — meaning, only, parenthood. For what was real and fine and precious in this new being was in relation only with … somewhere else …
Where? Al·Ith’s mind dizzied and swam. ‘Blue …’ she muttered. ‘Yes. Blue … where, though?’ And she would put her head in her hands and shut her eyes and try to remember … she saw an infinity of blueness, an azure field shimmering between tall peaks. But where? And now she felt hands on her shoulders, and she was being gently shaken. ‘Al·Ith, Al·Ith, what is the matter, what is wrong?’ And just as she was surely on the verge of really remembering, she was claimed back, pulled back. All around her were concerned, affectionate women, and Dabeeb was holding her, and they exclaimed and exhorted and would not be still. Chatter, chatter … that is all they would do. And yet she loved them and was grateful for their support. For she was giving birth, after all, in this land of theirs and not her own, and she did not know what to expect.
While Al·Ith spent her days thus, Ben Ata was furiously busy. He set his armies complicated war games, and visited them frequently, inspiring them with rousing speeches and exhortations, which, however, were beginning to shame him, make him feel embarrassed. More than once he found himself muttering that it was a good thing Al·Ith wasn’t in a position to be there. Otherwise he was riding back and across and around and everywhere through his realm. He wanted to see how it struck these new eyes of his — a vision that was the gift of Al·Ith. And besides, there were districts that Al·Ith had not visited on that long journey of theirs: he had been careful that she did not. For they were worse than anything she had seen. He saw the deprivation of his people clearly, and with pain, and wondered often how things might be up there, in her Zone, to make her so silent and anguished about his. He could not imagine a country without armies. Even the thought of one caused him to feel contempt — which at first he did not recognize as such. Then, realizing that when the thought of Zone Three came into his mind he was feeling a cold dislike, as he did when his armies had won a victory — even of one party in a war game contrived by him — over an enemy, he was forced to acknowledge that this was contempt. And so he became confused, and diminished inwardly — because this emotion of doing-down, of superiority, was the fuel for his energy. Which was formidable. From one end of his Zone to another, the king was known as a man who could stay in a saddle all day and a night, or work at matters of organization, practically sleepless, almost indefinitely. And why was this? He had not known it, but he did now: because at such times it was as if he ground some enemy into dirt with his heel. Was he really willing to feel such a thing for Al·Ith and her people?
When this idea first came to him, was rejected completely, came back, was tentatively admitted, and thrown out again, returned inexorably, presenting itself four-square and face-on — he felt ill. He was dizzy, and sick. As it happened he was riding through woods that not so long ago he had traversed with Al·Ith, his other self. Riding there alone, it was as if he saw before him in a deep green glade all singing birds and loamy richness, himself, Ben Ata, with Al·Ith, radiant in her golden robe, her black hair flowing down her back, her small supple hand talking to her beloved horse.
And suddenly Ben Ata found himself weeping. This was just silliness! It was even shocking. Yet he flung himself off his horse and stumbled choking with sobs to a slender birch that stood at the edge of the glade. He embraced this tree and wept. ‘Al·Ith, Al·Ith,’ he was saying, over and over again, kissing the white skin of the birch, as if Al·Ith were dead, or already vanished from his realm.
But how could he sustain this welter of emotion without her! How live! He was no longer himself, not a warrior, a great soldier. He had become one who disliked his own deep motives, watched feelings spring up inside himself as if they were bound to be enemies, a man whose purposes had gone.
‘Al·Ith!’ he moaned, mourning her — and it occurred to him that she was a day’s ride away. All he had to do was to turn his horse around and tear across the fields and ditches till he could ride up the hill, and stride into their love-pavilion where the soft drum beat, and beat, and beat—and take her in his arms.
But if he did, he would find her in her apartments, leaning back in a low chair, her great stomach seeming to confront him with its strangeness, surrounded-by — it seemed—half the women of the camps. Dabeeb would be sitting close to her, perhaps fanning her, or stroking her arms, or rubbing her ankles. Al·Ith would be distressed, flushed, and moving her head irritably from side to side as one of the women — perhaps Dabeeb again! — brushed out those gorgeous black tresses he loved so much. So he had seen them yesterday. He had stridden into the room, and found them there. Al·Ith had lifted her head and smiled — exactly as a prisoner might who did not hope for release. Yet who had imprisoned her? Not he!
He had backed out of the rooms with a hasty apology. Dabeeb’s smile at him had been rich and reassuring, like a comrade’s.
Al·Ith’s beauty, the challenge of her vigorous good sense, being denied to him, he thought of Dabeeb, almost as if she were Al·Ith. He imagined himself walking from his mess tent, perhaps, or to his own tent, and finding Dabeeb in his path, smiling. And he felt sustained and soothed. He was smiling as he left the birch tree, and swung himself back on his horse.
He would not be in any hurry to return to the women. He would ride on through his country, seeing everything he could, not hiding anything, and keeping Al·Ith’s face in his mind’s eye as a gauge and a reminder — the face of Al·Ith as it had been during their journeying together, alone, through the woods and fields and forests, sitting together all night in each other’s arms, or hand in hand. Had such a happiness really been his — theirs? For now he could only see — if he thought of Al·Ith as she was now — a hot, rather swollen face with eyes that asked — and asked. What for? Did she not have everything? And in any case, how could he get anywhere near her, with those blasted women crowding around her?
He found a town large enough for a garrison, and instructed the officer in charge to send messages by drum back across the land to the camp down the hill, that he would not be back that night. Or even, perhaps, the next — or the next — or the next. Smiling, he rode on, thinking that Al·Ith had said in Zone Thr
ee messages were sent by tree. Yes, by tree. There were trees everywhere in her realm that were known as transmitters of any message that needed sending. A late traveller, or someone not able to be home at a promised time, would seek out such a tree, which Al·Ith described as always being tall and well-grown, with a certain configuration in its branches, and whisper what had to be said to the trunk of this being — for in this way did Al·Ith talk of the transmitting trees, as if they were sentient and knowing. The tree’s thoughts, or feelings, accepted the thoughts, or feelings, of the sender and wafted these across as many distances as were necessary to reach a husband, a child, a waiting family. Often had Al·Ith, she said, a long way from her palace, her children, her sister, and, of course, her men, muttered Ben Ata, hotly, feeling himself suddenly red and sweaty with jealousy, found a tree and whispered her news to it.
And now a quite unforeseen anger and discomfort swallowed all his gentle thoughts of Al·Ith, and he found himself raging against her.
Oh, yes, it was all love and love and kindness, all smiles and kisses, but he was just one of — he did not even know how many! Al·Ith, when he had asked — but only in their early days — how many, who, how often, and that kind of thing, had laughed and called him a savage, a barbarian, a dolt — there had been no end to the names she had had for him. But not now. Now she was only too ready to curl up inside his arms and he there, resting. But what would happen next — or later? Anything at all, with such a creature, who could become anything as the occasion was!
And so Ben Ata raged and sorrowed his way across his realm, from village to threadbare village, from town to town, always secretly comparing them in his mind with villages and towns of Zone Three that he could not even imagine. What could it be like, a town where there was no garrison, no soldiers in the bars and taverns, no bugles to mark the coming and the going of the light? What could a village be where the men were all there, doing women’s work — and here he heard Al·Ith’s laugh. Al·Ith was laughing at him! Oh, yes, probably she always had, inwardly, she very likely laughed but concealed it from him. Oh, she was sly, the great Al·Ith, of that there could be no doubt at all.
Reaching a town as the light drained from the sky, he paused on its edge and looked up at the mountains. The mountains of Al·Ith, he was murmuring, suffused with longing for her. It was those mountains that had made her, the lovely Al·Ith — and he imagined her coming to him with her arms out, smiling — and, cursing, he flung himself off his horse, ordered a passing soldier to stable it, and went into the nearest inn. There he found a woman whose soldier husband was off at the exercises, in whose face he could see something of Al·Ith as she had been when she had first come to him, lithe and light and supple, not as she was now, hostile to him, behind her enormousness, and he went to this woman’s bed. But he could not take this woman as he had always in the past, without thought for her, not considering her as an individual creature. He was asking about her, her children, who were asleep in the next room, about her husband, and what he thought of the new exercises — dissatisfied, Ben Ata gathered, because they were only exercises and not war, with chances of loot — and when he made love to her, he had to watch himself so as not to call out Al·Ith, Al·Ith.
Never had he been so afflicted. Never had he thought of one woman while he lay with another. And he did not sleep at all during that night, lying with this companionable woman in his arms, she absolutely asleep, because she was worn out, she said, her youngest child being difficult at the moment, with new teeth coming in. Ben Ata did not know about children’s teeth. He did not know how old this brat was likely to be, and feared to betray ignorance by asking. But he felt his palms wet in the night, and understood that there was milk in these comfortable breasts, and felt only revulsion and annoyance. Why had she not told him? Warned him. How could she be so importunate and needy as to agree to sleep with him, her king, and not first confess she had milk in those great breasts of hers … it occurred to him to think she might not see it as a fact that needed confessing. He thought that Al·Ith’s breasts would soon be milky and wet under his hands. He was disgusted anew, and at the same time longed for Al·Ith … and so the night went on, with Ben Ata tormented every minute of it by new emotions and thoughts that he was convinced were probably effeminate. Even demented.
Meanwhile, Al·Ith was giving birth to their son, the new heir, Arusi.
She found it all very tiresome. Not difficult or even particularly painful, for after all, she was an old hand at the business. But certainly she did not recognize any of this bustle with the wise women, and admonitions not to do this and that, but to do that and this, and the baby being dandled by everyone but her, as if she were an invalid, or in some amazing way weakened by a process that it had never occurred to her in the past to think of as anything but satisfying.
She could remember clearly that with her other children, she had gone with her sister to her own rooms, leaving the Fathers together — they having been summoned to support her with their presence and their thoughts — and there she had crouched down, squatting, over spread pads of soft material. Almost at once the baby had sprung forth into the hands of Murti·, or into her own hands. The two women held the child, welcomed it, wrapped it, and when the afterbirth appeared, the cord was cut. Murti· helped to wash and cleanse Al·Ith, and then the two women had sat together in the window enclosure, with the child, introducing her, or him, to the sky, the mountains, the sun, or the stars. This was always a time of gaiety and friendliness, while the child looked at them with its new eyes and they reassured and held and stroked. Happiness! That was what Al·Ith remembered. A blessed, quiet happiness, and she could not remember any like it. And then, when both were rested, and the baby accustomed to their touch and their faces, all three went out to where the Fathers were waiting, and there was happiness again. The other women came in, too, those who would assist with the child. Women and men, and then Al·Ith’s other children, all together, welcoming this new creature … that was how it was in her own realm.
Nothing like this.
Al·Ith was quite possessed with exasperation, at all the fuss, and the concern for her.
And there was not a man in sight, nor, obviously, was there likely to be. How could it be right or sane for a child to be born into this clutch of women. Where was Ben Ata? And there came a message from the camps that he was travelling far from here, and would not be back immediately — the drums had said so. Not their own drum that beat softly outside among the fountains. The army drums … none of the women could see anything untoward in this, but on the contrary, one or two, Dabeeb among them, said that: It was just as well, this was no place or time for a man.
Al·Ith gave up trying to understand the ways of this barbaric place — for it was again seeming to her as backward and crude, and insisted that it was she who was the right person to hold this child — for so far the women had seemed to believe that the right to dandle and exclaim was theirs. The baby was fretful and cried. Al·Ith could not remember any one of her babies ever crying when it was born. Why should they? But these women seemed to delight in Arusi’s discomfort and found it a proof of strength.
Al·Ith got out of her bed — they had brought one in from outside, since she refused to use her marriage couch for this purpose — and took the baby, and sat with it in a chair, and asked them, rather peevishly, to leave her. Even her ill-temper seemed to them proof of something to be approved of and expected. They exchanged looks and nods that quite astounded Al·Ith, who was ready to be ashamed of herself. They went off, with, smiling yearning looks at her sitting there holding the baby, who was not now crying, but looking intelligently about, being a fine strong boy with everything right about him. Dabeeb stayed, but seemed to feel Al·Ith’s need for quietness, and busied herself with what seemed to Al·Ith myriad quite unnecessary occupations to do with clothing and washing the child.
Who she wanted was in fact Ben Ata. She longed for him. It was time the child saw his father. Time he was held by his father
. Fed by the thoughts of his father. This was why, probably, he was looking around, continually — he wanted his father. Al·Ith had not longed before for the presence of a child’s father — there had not been a need to.
Al·Ith was being rocked by all kinds of emotions that she most heartily disliked and found out of place. While Dabeeb urged her, delightedly, to have a good cry, if she felt like it, Al·Ith was flaming with irritation, and controlling it. While Dabeeb told her to put the child to the breast, poor lamb, Al·Ith shook her head — for to feed the baby now would be to feed it annoyance and need.
But she did not want to anger or disappoint Dabeeb, who had been kind and patient, nothing like her own sister, Murti·, but as good a substitute as was possible in this benighted place.
Dabeeb took the baby later, while Al·Ith bathed and dressed herself newly, and arranged her hair in the mode of this place, braided and confined. Then she told Dabeeb that she would like to be alone now until morning. Dabeeb had absolutely no intention of going off and leaving her mistress alone — this was obviously the whim of a poor woman under stress — but she pretended to agree, and took herself out of the pavilion onto the verandah that overlooked the camps and settled herself there with her back to a pillar. It was a mild night, if damp. She would be able tohear Al·Ith call, if she did call, but she meant to creep in frequently so as to make sure that all was well.