How are the Mighty fallen

CHAPTER NINE

It was a hardship; indeed, it was a deprivation to be a Siren and not to live by the sea; to live in a streamless village whose single well erupted from sulfurous Sheol. It had been worse than a deprivation to leave the coves of Crete with their sea caves and rainbow fish, the sun-drenched forests where woodpeckers chattered to Dryads, and come to the squalid town of Endor, which lay directly between Philistia and Israel and changed masters as often as the moon changed phases. But here she was safe from the pirates who scourged the coast; here she was comfortable, even if not wealthy, from her alternating practice of prostitution and soothsaying. When the Philistines controlled the town, she practiced either art; when the hardbitten, guilt-ridden Israelites ousted the permissive Philistines, she concealed her powdered newt and eye of toad in her cellar and gave herself totally, if discreetly, to love.

Often she wondered about that other Siren who had come from Crete to Israel, her friend Abinoam. Alecto pitied her, since the king she had married was frequently mad and, even when sane, preferred the frumpish concubine Rizpah, and Ahinoam must endure the agonies of the chaste or risk being stoned by envious wives. At least the Goddess had befriended both of them by disposing of their mutual enemy, the Cyclops Goliath.

She was filling a pitcher at the well when she saw the strangers. Since the good wives of Endor avoided her company, she was careful to visit the well in the late afternoon, when no one dipped water except the thirsty travelers who paused to break their journey and seek a lodging for the night, and the dying sun laid a many-colored mantle over the colorless town. The bucket tinkled melodiously as it rose on its chain with its precious freight. Quietly she hummed the ancient song with which her unprincipled ancestors had tried to ensnare Odysseus, and a voice in her whispered: “Something remarkable is going to happen to me tonight.”

The men had muffled their faces with their robes, but they stared at her curiously and, she was pleased to note, admiringly, although one seemed shy and looked at the well whenever she met his gaze. Their eyes bespoke youth. With a Siren’s keen vision she could even detect their color in the diminishing light of dusk. The shorter, stockier youth had eyes of penetrating blue; his friend had eyes of green which made her think of lost islands and limitless oceans (/ have known such eyes…).

“The water is a trifle brackish, I fear.‘ She smiled. ”But this is Endor, forgotten and decaying, like a backwater of the sea.“

Blue Eyes was quick to answer. “But not its women. Is this Rebecca I see before me, as Jacob saw her at the well?”

“Please,” whispered Green Eyes to his friend. “She doesn’t look like a whore. She may be somebody’s wife. You’ll have her husband on our necks.”

“She’s a whore,” said Blue Eyes. “Can’t you tell by her boldness? And she comes alone to a well at dusk and without a veil”

Of course she had heard them; not even a whisper escaped a Siren’s ears. “It pleases you to call me a whore,” she said without anger. “And you are right. Long ago I learned that I have one gift. I am neither quick nor clever. I can weave a basket of rushes and grow a passable garden, but I keep house more to the satisfaction of mice than men. All in all, I would make a barely tolerable wife and a forgetful mother. But Ashtoreth has seen fit to give me an ample body and, I hope, a not unpleasing face. Since they are my best possessions, I use them to best advantage. If I were proud, I might call myself by the high-sounding name of courtesan and make you think that I had lain with kings, or better yet, I could pretend to be a widow who was waiting to marry the brother of her deceased husband. But pride goeth before a fall, and I have fallen far too many times already to risk another bruise. I am, as you say, a whore. The question that remains is this. Do I please you-either or both-and have you the wherewithal to engage my lodging and my person for the night? That is to say, if either of you pleases me. I have yet to decide.”

Blue Eyes opened a pouch at his belt and withdrew a handful of the flat copper shekels.

“I have decided,” she said.

“My friend wishes to engage you for the night,” said Blue Eyes.

“Can’t he speak for himself?”

“I wish to engage you for the night,” said Green Eyes, though she quickly surmised that he would prefer his friend. It was not mat he was foppish or fey. His voice was deep and manly in spite of his shyness, his figure straight as the mast on a galley. He was probably a stalwart warrior. Nor was he brash and assertively male, the lover who tries to conceal his inclinations with boasts and extravagant compliments. It was the way he looked at her which revealed his secret: as if she were his sister. She felt that he liked her but loved his friend; certainly he loved his friend. They stood so inseparably close that their arms must be touching beneath their robes.

Well, no matter. She was used to pleasing men, from virgins to masochists. Fathers had brought her their sons and asked her to teach them the art of love, and old graybeards had visited her for reassurance that they could still serve Ashtoreth as well as Yahweh. It was a point of pride that she could satisfy any man of any race, even if he was impotent or a lover of other men. After all, she was a Siren, and Sirens-their persons as well as their possessions and their arts-were the ultimate aphrodisiacs.

To Blue Eyes she said, “There’s an inn down the road. It'll do for the night, if you don’t mind fleas and thieves. That is, unless you want to come with us and watch.”

Blue Eyes laughed and a red tendril of hair escaped from his hood. “I’m a doer, not a watcher.” Then to his friend, “I’ll see you in the morning. If the evening doesn’t go well, come any time you like.”

The two engaged in whispered conversation.

“But what do I do? I mean, to get started. She’ll expect compliments and gewgaws and who knows what amorous tricks.”

“Ask her price. Give her the shekels in advance and make clear they’re all you have, so you won’t be robbed in your ‘Then-?”

“Compliment her. Treat her like a bride. Don’t make her feel you’re buying her but wooing her ”

“I get tonguetied when I have to compliment a strange.

“You can be as eloquent as Samuel when you want to Now get on with it before you change your mind.”

“Alecto’s hut had earned her the local name ‘the Witch of Endor.’”

She looked intently into Green Eyes’ face and took his hand. “You will do nicely, my dear,” she said and led him, shivering, into what, on the outside, was indistinguishable from the other rounded huts of wattle and brick, which resembled a crooked row of horseshoe crabs. The inside of Alecto’s hut, however, had earned her the local name “the Witch of Endor.”

The boy gasped. “It’s like a seacave.” A fisherman’s net hung like a tapestry on the far wall, and she had strung it with murexes, conch shells, and starfish. The masthead of a Philistine galley, a great wooden goose, presided over the room like a guardian god, but the true god was the Goddess, whose image in terra-cotta, life-sized, stood beside the goose as if to say: “I am the one who really sails the ships-or sinks them.” She was exquisitely carved and expertly painted with red ocher and powdered lapis lazuli, and Alecto was very proud that a priest who was also a sculptor, Philistine needless to say, since there were no Israelite sculptors, had called her image “lovelier than any in Gaza or Gath, and almost as lovely as you.” She had not charged him a shekel for the night.

The other walls hung with the shields which Philistine sailors fastened to the hulls of their ships, the shields which, staring like dragon eyes, had struck demonic terror into the hearts of the Egyptians when the Philistine war galleys had first invaded their waters. The couch rested on a framework of oars carved with tiny figures of sailors and fishermen. The pillows danced with embroidered tarpons. The drinking cups leaped with flying fish. A fresh salty scent pervaded the room, and Alecto noticed with pleasure that a look of wonderment had come into the boy’s eyes, as if he were remembering sea-girt islands and malachite seas.

The better to admire the room, he thrust the robe away from his face and revealed a luxuriance of hair so yellow that it seemed to have been woven on looms within the sun. How could she fail to recognize the prince of Israel? His beauty and bravery were as famous as his friendship with David, who, she realized, had been his blue-eyed friend.

She could not restrain the cry, “Bumblebee!”

He looked at her in astonishment. “You know me?”

“Yes, my dear. I knew you as a little child. And I know why you must come to me, a whore, though the women of Israel clamor for your attention. Has your mother told you about our race, the Sirens?“

“A little.”

“Then she has told you that there is only one mature female, the queen, and many drones-the workers don’t count — in each of our hives, and the males must console each other, except in the nuptial flight.”

“The Tragic Exaltation, Mama called it But it holds no attraction for me. And that’s why I still cleave to men instead of women.”

“And the present man being David, I may not be able to help you. He looks like a harvest god. That glory of flaming hair! It positively aureoles him.”

He smiled with pleasure at her praise of his friend, and she warmed with the sweetness of him.

“I’m glad I found you. Mama would have sought you a long time ago except for my father-that is, stepfather. She was afraid she would endanger you-reveal you as a sorceress, a Cretan, a Siren. He never lets her talk about her old life. She didn’t even tell me about my past until a few weeks ago, when I met David and-”

“Loved him? And thought you had committed a terrible sin, the Sin of Sodom?”

“Yes. Before I had even touched him, I felt like a leper. But now we are lovers.”

“Then why do you need me?‘

“David is going to marry my sister.” He might have said: “David is going to die.”

“And you are hurt and angry and want to show him you can possess a woman too?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve come for practice. One day I will probably have to marry too-to produce an heir, don't you see. And I have to know what to do. My bride will undoubtedly be a virgin, and if I’m as ignorant as she is, well probably spend our wedding night playing draughts. I’ve never been with a woman. I think you are very beautiful, but even so I don’t want to-I don’t know how to-”

“Lie with me, Jonathan? The first thing is to feel that you don’t have to. If we spend the whole night in conversation, why, nothing is lost, and no one will ever know that you were not the most exhilarating lover of my life. First, though,

I shall, cook you a supper. Love languishes on an empty stomach.“

In spite of her disavowal of domesticity, she prepared a succulent dinner of quail cooked in figs, wheaten bread in which raisins swam like minnows, and a pudding whose ingredients she carefully withheld from him because they included a generous amount of powdered mandrake roots, the strongest aphrodisiac in Israel. “Now for some beer,” she said. “I expect you don’t often get that, do you?”

“Usually I drink milk or wine.” Beer, an import from Philistia, was looked upon with suspicion by the elders of Israel. “However-”

“There now, you’ve had enough.”

Jonathan, finishing the beer in his cup with one big gulp, blurted. “About this lovemaking. Won’t you, uh, disembowel me? After all, I’m a drone.”

Alecto said with professional pride. “You forget that I am a courtesan as well as a Siren. The usual queen-your mother, for example, if she still ruled a hive-disembowels her lovers by the frenzy of her passion. After all, she must wait a year for that one little moment of satisfaction and make do with an inexperienced drone who probably has a friend. Furthermore, she feels that she is honoring him by sending him directly to the Celestial Vineyard.”

“It’s an honor I can do without.”

“Exactly. You don’t want to go without David. Besides, in Israel, who knows if you would wind up in the Vineyard or in Sheol? My point is that I will pleasure you so soothingly that you needn’t fear the loss of any vital organs, genitals, abdomen, what have you. I am a Siren. I am also a courtesan who has raised lust to art, and love to genius. Forgive my boasting. I only want you to trust me.”

“May I have another cup of beer?”

“Certainly not.”

“But I’m feeling so relaxed. So warm and light. As if I could float through the ceiling.”

“That’s the danger. To quote a Siren philosopher who has often been plagiarized, Too much drink excites desire but limits performance.‘”

“Oh,” he said with disappointment. “Some more raisin cake then.”

“Why don’t you remove your robe? You look as if you were dressed against a winter night in the hinterlands of Assyria. Allow me to be your blanket,”

He visibly winced at the offer.

“Jonathan, my sweet, is my body so repellent to you?”

“Oh, no,” he cried. “You’re a real Eve! It was what you said about being a blanket.”

“David said the same thing?”

“Yes,” he sighed.

“And said it better. Then I shall be a light linen coverlet Different, you see. Not his competitor but his ally.” She left the room and returned in a gossamer robe beneath which the splendors of her body showed with misty allurement, the painted nipples, the navel inset with a malachite, the long, powerful, yet feminine legs which had once propelled her through the sea with the speed of a flying fish. Total nudity could only alarm Jonathan; an intimation, she hoped, would excite him.

He sat uneasily in his loincloth beside a brazier. The firelight flickered over his honey-colored skin. How young and unblemished he looked to her! Did he understand, had his mother told him, that the life of a Siren, a drone no less than a queen, might outlast a civilization? That splendid David might wrinkle into winter while Jonathan walked in the summer of youth? And yet there was something about him which suggested a short life, a look not so much of fragility as of mortality. Perhaps, after all, mortal David would outlive him to rule a kingdom.

Enough of her morbid thoughts, enough of his apprehensive looks. She must break the mood.

“You look like a frightened fennec,‘ she teased. ”Your ears are quivering under that mass of golden hair.“

“One of those little foxlike creatures with the solemn faces and the big ears.” He smiled. “Yes, I expect I do. It’s so complicated, you see, this getting seduced. I must be a very difficult customer. Most men would have dragged you onto your couch and taken their pleasure at once.”

“Your heritage is against you,” she reminded him. “Too many drones, too few queens. For a thousand years the drones have made do with each other.”

“David had trouble with me too at first. I got sick. But later it was like entering the Celestial Vineyard.”

“You’ve been brought up on Israelite notions of sin.

They’re hard to forget. Every time the good wives of the town glare at me, I know I am thought a sinner. Yet they come to me for potions and philters and ask my advice about love. Are you feeling sick now?“

“No, David got me over that. It’s rather humorous when you stop to think about it-what men and women do together for pleasure. When I was a boy I watched a friend of my sister’s coupling with one of Saul’s soldiers. All those wiggling parts, the sighs, and the squeals! They were inexperienced and didn’t seem to know what went where. For both of them, it must have been like putting on a suit of armor for the first time. The Goddess, I think, has a sense of humor.”

“There ought to be laughter in love,” she agreed. “But there ought also to be wonder. How ever often I’ve lain with a man-and I choose my men, even as they choose me-I’ve never failed to give and to gain pleasure, and that, in this dusty, Goddess-forsaken country is something for which to be thankful.”

“I can’t get the two together. The wonder and the laughter. Except with David. With him, it’s hardly physical at all. I don’t even tell my body what to do. I transcend myself.”

“Have I plied you with sufficient beer to make you feel a trifle transcendent?” “I might have one more cup.”

“Something to lessen the ordeal, eh?” She began to exhale a subtle musk from her lungs.

His eyes grew kind and grave. “You think I don’t appreciate your beauty or that I find you too old for me. Neither is true. I never thought another woman could approach my mother in beauty, but you could pass for her sister, if your hair were blond. But the trouble is, I want to put you in a temple instead of onto a couch. As for age-well, I just don’t think about that. You may be two hundred-” “One hundred and sixty,” she said with affronted dignity. “-for all I care. The point is, you look about twenty-five. No, age isn’t the trouble. It’s the other. You remind me of my mother and the Goddess.”

“Come and lay your head in my lap and I will sing you a song.”

Jonathan dutifully obeyed and, scenting the musk, remarked that she smelled like the sea. “Flying foam and salty winds-like your house, but better.” She bent and kissed him on the cheek. He looked at her with unmitigated trust, confident that she would somehow sail him to the Scylla-guarded islands of love.

She began to sing. Perhaps the song was about herself and Jonathan.

The windflower and the wind

“The windflower loves the wind As an albatross the sea, A marigold the morning sun, And bergamot the bee.

The wind who spreads her bud With a roving, boyish gust And whispers her to sleep at night In a bed of pollen dust.

The windflower loves the wind, But does that wanderer care? However he may whisper love, His heart is made of air.“

Hardly had she ended the song than one of her presentiments came to her as vividly and suddenly as a flight of Harpies. Sometimes men visited her to seek the future and she had to tell them: “I see nothing. Trust to the Goddess.” At other times, the future would intrude upon the present, like a blood-red rain or a river overrunning its banks. She saw Jonathan in battle. The Israelites had been routed by Philistine chariots. Even now a Cyclops and his driver were bearing down on him in a huge chariot with armored sides and great iron wheels, which thundered and crackled over the pitted earth. The Cyclops was drawing his bow and glaring maliciously through his single eye. Was it true what they said in the market place: “Saul has forfeited Yahweh’s favor. He and his sons will meet in Sheol?”

“What is it?” he asked. “There are tears in your eyes. Have I hurt your feelings?”

“Not you, my dear. A vision I had, that’s all. These fancies come to me at times. Memories of the happy days on Crete.”

She had found the one way to win him as a lover. She had made him pity her. He kissed her on the mouth, and then he took her with a tenderness like the descent of a god.

The next morning she returned the shekels with which he had paid for the night “You didn’t buy my love,” she said. “I gave it to you.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “if it were not for David-”

“Ah, but there is David.”

“Yes, there is.” He smiled radiantly as if it were he who was contemplating a god. The loss of him was like a fisherman’s hook in her heart.

“Still, for a little while, you loved me too. It wasn’t that you subtracted from the love you bore David. Rather you added to it. Remember me, Jonathan.”

“As long as I live,” he promised and held her in a chaste goodbye.

She drew away from him before she had to say: “You may forget me very quickly then. But I will bear your son.”