Cleopatra Dismounts, page 16
Through my mouth will pass your words.
Listen, Cleopatra, and repeat them.
But it was she who repeated them to a hypnotic melody, reinforced by the chords of the blind musicians. They had covered her upper body with a thick layer of clay and grass that by now was practically dry. The mud hid her feminine curves. Her torso was rounded like an egg with her arms inside the covering. She fell silent, and the musicians beat on resonant drums.
They placed me on a rock similar to Hippolyta’s, but less shiny. The gray stone was cold but it was as smooth as a jewel. Hippolyta started her song again, first in a low key and with a stately rhythm. Then, after a few phrases, the tone harshened and its piercing notes nearly deafened me. She sang rapidly like a woman possessed or disturbed, and she made me uneasy. While she was singing, they bathed me in aromatic water and with the palms of their hands beat on the dry clay over her chest, one after another, not violently but as on a drum, each one giving it a couple of beats, then turning aside to make way for the next. Then after touching her, they began to dance with feverish frenzy.
Hippolyta was singing,
I am the mouth of my dead.
I am the mouth of the bodies.
I am the body of the mouth of their bodies.
I am the lips of their dead.
I am the body of their dead.
I am the life of their dead in my body.
I am the vulva that the bull failed to penetrate,
the vulva that gives life to the voices of their dead
through a channel of shining semen from the handsomest youth.
My two legs are the two lips of the mouth of my dead.
My torso is the tongue of the dead.
My two arms are the thousand words the dead speak.
My hair is the laughter of the dead.
Behind her, a chorus of Amazons was speaking words that I could hear because they were repeated over and over.
You have placenta in your center,
You have placenta in your center.
I forbid you fear, hear me, O hear!
You have placenta in your center.
At the same time Hippolyta was going on with her song:
My curl is the loving kiss of the dead.
My nipples are the coughing of the dead.
My knees are the folds in the lips of my dead.
My mouth is the mouth of the living, the mouth of the dead.
In my vulva is an eye . . .
When she said, “In my vulva is an eye,” the mud that covered her broke into two pieces. The mud was dark, but inside it were visible streaks of lighter soils with which it had been mixed. The handsome torso of Hippolyta was perfectly clean. Left naked in this way, the ever-youthful Amazon, stretched on the black stone between the two pieces of her shell of clay, was dazzling, the most lovely of lovely women. Imprinted on the underside of the clay, the dazzle of her beauty was echoed there, as she continued:
In my vulva is the eye that looks into the well of life.
Her long, dark, thick hair slid in a tangle over her shoulders. Her cheeks were burning, her expression was entirely detached from those of us who surrounded her. She responded to nothing going on around her. Her face showed no trace of her knowing where she was. She was speaking into the ear of the gods, she was present among them, we were invisible to her, she had detached herself, gone to the furthest extreme, and was singing from a city of shadows. Her olive skin seemed light in comparison to her dark, enormous nipples which were of the same color as her fleshy lips, her scanty, black pubic hair and her deeply dark vulva which she left visible by keeping her legs apart and bent. Of the same dark color was the hair in her armpits, as dark as the mane of the horse who was her daily companion.
I am the mouth of my dead.
I am the mouth of their bodies.
She had taken up again her disturbing song, this time in a trance from its beginning. Dozens of Amazons were dancing by now, performing graceful but feverish movements. As they danced, they were going off, perhaps, to the same city where their queen was singing. They were the drop of oil that turns the iron to gold, the firewood to gold, the ashes to gold, the water of the sea into coins minted from gold. A dance of gold. Those dance movements were the drop that transforms the flesh into gold. They beat their heels on the floor; they were beatings of the winds. They swirled their arms; they were flashes of brightness, scales of the fish that the fisherman’s knife scrapes off. Their thighs were pealing bells, they were metals clashing, they were water and tide, the gold of the bone, the blood that kindles the color in gold.
Hippolyta’s expression changed, as if she were suddenly back with us. Her voice lowered its volume and the musicians responded by falling silent. A gesture from her let us know that she had heard something; it had broken in on her flight, forcing its way into her delirium. Then the galloping of horses resounded in the cave. The sound came from all corners, even from the roof. Hooves were racing, getting closer to us. Nearer and nearer every moment. Shouts in the ears, drops of orange splashed on their eyes, darts hurled into their chests.
The delirious dance of the Amazons ended, stopped by the beating hooves.
They lit more torches, bathing the roof of the cave in light. It was solid rock, without cracks, a huge, unbroken block of stone, on which sounded the rapid passage of numerous horses. The sound became deafening. They were now right above us. Then it stopped. Silence. A moment of total silence, followed by pawing of hooves, loud and close.
By this time my body was free of all the oils. The Amazons were paying me no attention whatsoever. We were all listening intently to the sound of the hooves on the earth above. Underneath them, there in the echoing cave, we were vibrating like a drumskin, an echo of the echo.
Then came a storm with a different sound, a beating of gigantic wings. The sound thundered above our heads. We had all been frozen in place from the moment we heard the hooves. Now menaced by the new sound, we dashed about, terrified. But nothing happened close to us. The wings kept beating, heavily, slowly, frighteningly. But they were not present among us. We turned aside our bodies to avoid being hit, crouching or darting from side to side, dodging a blow that never came.
We were grotesquely disconcerted, like clappers without bells. Then we heard a voice. Of what? A bird? A man? A croaking speech, an eagle’s word or a leopard’s? What did it say? I couldn’t understand. Yet it bordered on the comprehensible. It came from the mouth of the cave. The beautiful face of a bird, with a blunt, rounded beak edged with blood-red band, its round, lidless eyes gleaming intensely, was lit up by the lamp it was carrying. The hand had a human shape, but it still remained an eagle’s claw. The face was both a bird’s and a man’s, though it had no skin on it. It came into the cave. Surrounding its face were masses of dark plumes that were mingled with the thick, well-combed hair of a man, falling to his shoulders. Across its chest hung ten strings of pearly and golden beads. The hips were clad in a linen skirt. It bent its body to move into the low gallery. The cave seemed too small to accommodate the enormous god. It sat down on the second stair and once again pronounced the disturbing words. I wanted to understand them. It was saying something I ought to understand. What was it reciting? Out from the beak came polished words, carefully enunciated by the tongue. Were they words? They were the articulations of a man-eagle, a woman-lion. They sounded like Ethiopian, then Hebrew. Now they were Syrian, now every language I knew in one. It was a troglodyte language, both none and every one simultaneously, the roar of a beast, the song of a nightingale, the voice of the wind and sea. The language of the gods! Is this what poets strive to express?
The words had a strange effect on me. They drove me to shift position; up became down, right became left. I danced, whirling my soul and mind around.
It finished speaking and put the lamp on the ground, lighting up bare feet, enormous handsome legs, and the skirt embroidered with a series of figures carrying the solar disc on the head, supported on the horn of the moon, and then it got up. There was no room for it to stand fully upright. It raised its arms and lifted up the roof of the cave, detaching it from the hilltop with an overpowering sound! The god of the rising sun raised his arms even higher, stretching his body to the full. The stars became visible beside us. The god seemed to grow even more. The roof of the cave moved upwards again, supported by the hands of this terrifying giant, and started to glow red. The stars disappeared from sight, and the centaurs—it was they whose hooves we had heard—started to tumble from the cavetop, all at the same time, down onto the edge of the hill, crowding together as they fought for a foothold. Magnificent, mounts without equal, torsos unparalleled, faces of unrivaled character! Gathered there, they formed a living frieze, so perfect in shape that only their movements proved they were not the finest of stone sculptures! Seeing the Amazons, whose beauty was enhanced by the light of the torches, they hurled themselves upon them, their penises erect, in a rush mad enough to shame Chiron, lascivious, drunken, the long hair of their armpits soaked with sweat, their eyes glittering, panting to gorge on this banquet of women! The Amazons had left their bows and quivers, lances and maces, axes and shields down by the sea, to attend my welcoming ceremony without the least sign of bellicosity, and now they clung to each other, racing around, as their only form of defense. The enormous god, infuriated by the behavior of the lubricious centaurs who were grabbing at any woman who came within reach, blew on them in his rage. His freezing breath put out the torches on the walls and made the centaurs recoil. The Amazons, the musicians, and I, though we were hugging one another, shivered with cold. The god stamped his heel on the ground, making it quiver like a drumskin. He stamped a second time, driving us away from him with the force of the blow. The earth shook and we were sent in the direction of the lusting centaurs, who defied the earth tremors in their desperate desire. From the point where his heel had hit, there burst out a stream of fire, a fountain of steepling flames, and from the depths of the earth we heard the voice of Vulcan complaining: “Who is stealing fire from my forge?”
The flames shot up vertically and the heat warmed the circle we had formed around them. The god blew again toward the centaurs, four times, once into each of the four points of the compass. The centaurs fled, but the four slowest he froze into stone where they stood. The god was ice and fire. Ice his breath. Fire in his extended hands, turning the rock to glowing red. There was fire in his staff, fire in the stamping of his heel, fire in his angry breast, but his breath was freezing. The four petrified centaurs were fixed at the cardinal points and their heads supported the rock. The god lowered his arms and with a gesture invited an Amazon to bring him his extinguished lamp. He lit it in the fountain of fire. Following his example, the Amazons lit their torches in it. Once again, from under the earth, Vulcan protested, “Give back the fire of my forge!”
The bird-headed god with his extraordinary hair stamped again on the ground. The fountain vanished, swallowed by the ground. The four centaurs remained there, turned to illuminated pillars, their stony penises still erect. The rock turned a whitish hue. The Amazons clustered around me.
We left the cave in a hurry. It was now open on all sides, ripped open by the god. I thought to myself, “If the god could violate a vaginal gallery like this, which seemed to defy all attack and whose location was known only to the initiated, how could he fail to inspire in the centaurs a desire to mount the Amazons?” But immediately I rejected my idea. It was an unworthy notion, conceived in darkness, stupid. Though the centaurs were divinely handsome in body, and under other circumstances the Amazons would have been impressed by their beauty, their violent onset had been idiotic. Their misunderstanding of women transformed carnal intercourse into a slapstick farce. They had discerned in the women what was truly alive in them, the alivest part of their living, their desire. And they wanted to steal it, cut it out, snatch it away in order to satisfy their thirst for violence and cruelty. To violate! How repulsive! Through my head there passed the beauty of the centaurs, now tainted with a need to vomit. They were flesh at its most rotten. They were rotten with decay even though they had not yet died. And to think that the poets had described the warring of the Amazons as something ignoble and unworthy. The Amazons commit no rape when the battle is over. They do not inflict violation on women.
By now there was not the slightest trace of the other centaurs. Apart from the four frozen into rock, they had vanished into the night.
The hill trembled again as a good number of Amazons trod on it. The air was thick with dust. I and the Amazons around me walked back over the level ground to where they lived. We turned and saw the hill in convulsions. The god was lifting the ripped-apart rock up into the sky. He was standing upright on Hippolyta’s stone. His arms were high and in them was the single piece of rock that formed the blunted top of the hill. We kept moving toward the sea, turning to look at him now and then, illuminated by his lamp and the torches which were still burning.
Even at this distance, my heart leapt when I looked at him. It is one thing to see a painting of a god, a very different thing to see the hair on his birdlike head. And to hear the words coming from his hard beak! The Amazon who had stayed with him climbed up on a petrified centaur beside the god. She touched his head, caressing it and passing a comb through the feathery locks. She was singing,
O handsome god, whose breath is cold as frost,
Your skin burns up my touch, and I am lost.
To you as god I offer sweet adorings,
But as a man I bring you fierce implorings.
Return, my god, up from the watery deep
And in your arms my quivering body keep,
Till love returned for love transforms me twice,
To freezing vapor and to scalding ice!
Could this Amazon be in love with the god? How ridiculous! His skin was fire and his breath freezing snow. How could he satisfy a woman, constituted so?
The scene was grotesque. It made me sullenly angry.
“Why the hell are all the gods giants?” I mused.
“All of them?” asked Hippolyta.
“Why does it have to be that; way?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hippolyta, in the sea Neptune presented himself to me. He was enormous. A giant. Now this Egyptian deity . . .”
“Nonsense! It isn’t always so. They’re not always giants, Cleopatra. Today this god—the one Orthea loves—appeared this way because he wanted to destroy our cave. Sometimes he shows up the size of a hare. Orthea crouches down and sings to him in a very soft voice and chats to him.”
“That’s grotesque!”
“What’s grotesque about it? You must be over-tired! It’s not at all grotesque. Yes, he’s a god, and yes, his breath is ice, and yes, he can steal Vulcan’s fire when he wants to, but so what? What is really grotesque is men’s idea that you can make one being out of two bodies. Love, Cleopatra, is the consciousness of the exciting differences between two people. Or do you think that love is the union of two souls, a melding of two into one, the unity that obliterates the pain of being alive? Or worse—do you think the institution of marriage consolidates the dream of love?”
At that point, I wasn’t thinking at all. But her words calmed me. I was only aware of my exhaustion, if I may call it that. Hippolyta was quite right. I was worn out. I could hardly stand. I wanted to lie down and sleep.
“We’ll go to bed shortly,” said Hippolyta. “We’ll give you some wine to make sure you sleep well. But you’ll hear our stories first, so that your curiosity doesn’t wake you before sunrise.”
The Amazons had dispersed. I wondered if they had gone night-hunting, for I heard dogs barking. Just a small group remained huddled round a blazing fire. The queen signaled me to sit down. Not on a stately throne, but on the ground. I obeyed. But before my rear touched the ground, one of the Amazons slipped a comfy but firm cushion under me. Another did the same for Hippolyta.
Still, with total clarity, the song or lament of the lovesick Orthea could be heard. The blind musicians hadn’t come back with us. Doubtless, they would sleep with the poets.
The women gave me a flavorful wine to drink and spread in front of me an impressive array of desserts.
“I’m Melanippe,” said the Amazon to my left. She was white-skinned, as if the sun had never touched her. In her smooth movements was a gentleness that denied any acquaintance with galloping horses. She seemed created to snuggle down on soft cushions. Around her waist were three rolls of fat that gave a sort of kindly smile to her waist. She continued, “I’m not going to tell you the story about men declaring war on all the Amazons from Themiskira to Tripoli, from darkest Lybia to Thermidon, because they were convinced—probably by Athena—that if they made war on us, they would overcome the curse that afflicts the human race for its being born of women. None of that.”
Beside Melanippe, so gentle, soft and satiny, so domestic and bright, sat another Amazon, sun-burned, rough and muscular, as hard as a statue. She was munching noisily on fresh, green, fibrous peapods, extracting with her teeth some flavor or nourishment.
From the other side of the fire spoke another Amazon that I could not see clearly because of the brightness of the blaze. She was saying, “My name is Atalanta. I was born when my father sold in distant lands the cords my countrywomen produced, in exchange for jewels and coins that had no effigies stamped on them. My mother concealed my birth from him. Every time he asked for his son, she’d reply, ’You’ll see him when you get back. He’ll be here then. You’ll see your boy with your own eyes when you return.’ Throughout his long trip he would fondle the idea of his baby boy, probably sick of the numerous women in his town, without stopping to think that it was the work of the women on those cords that was making him a rich man. By the time he returned I was two years old. He came home with a sumptuous retinue of elephants, a load of gold, and dozens of new slaves. He exploded with rage when he saw I was female. Without recovering from his long trip, without changing his soiled clothes, he just grabbed another horse, picked me up, and took me into the dark forest, where he dropped me among brambles and said, ’I never saw you. I never saw you and I never knew your mother had you. I want a son, a boy.’ And there he left blonde little Atalanta, and her only companions were fear, hunger, and cold. A wild boar looked after me, the biggest one in the vicinity. One afternoon a cunning hunter tracked it right to its lair. The boar bellowed at seeing itself in a death trap, not concerned about its life—for animals have no fear of death—but grieved at the idea of leaving me, its child, to grow up alone.
