The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series

VIII The Teeth of the Oliphaunt

Later, in the deeps of that night, he heard that sound which was the sound … along with the lionel’s roar … preeminently the sound of Africa: the voice of an oliphaunt, baying on the beach. — the beach? surely he had not become entirely disoriented in the darkness? (the lamp had quite expired and not even a glowing coal marked where it had burned, supported on the tripod of three ithyphallic satyrs) … and, surely, the beach — where still lay the ship, its sides now scraped and caulked and painted, still slowly being laded full of dried dates which would grow dryer yet before ever they reached their final market (and who knew where or when that would be); dates and salts, and jars of some strange oils, and more: he knew not what more: surely the beach did not lie in the direction whence came that great sound of baying and that clash of tushes? No. It did not; he was able to orient himself by something as simple as the head of the bed; the sound grew louder. What ailed the beast? for this was no mere adventitious cry of warning or of menace; perhaps the beast was in rut … perhaps it was in pain …

Sound of anguished (he soon decided) baying, cries of alarm from the awakening household, sight of torches and of the smoke of torches and of little flecks of fire floating off the torches: hastily Vergil donned a garment and a pair of sandals, and gat him down to the scene.

Heard, as he went, Huldah’s voice. Also anguished.

Huldah was no cossetted nor dandled woman-child, feeding pulse or poppy-seed out of her palm to the pea-hens; Huldah would smite the wild sow and her sounder, did they come to root in the plantings so carefully planted. “You have your mast in the woods!” would she say as she smote them; “Get hence!” Thee and me, the wild sow and her speckled weans would slay and eat: from Huldah they turned with a snuffle and a squeal or two. And they got them hence.

“Very well,” said she, breaking into the silence which she had maintained throughout his telling of his tale; “I asked, You answered. Now I know of at least one king and occymy … But a thing you forgot to say. In the matter of his, whatever-it-was, buried deep in the steadily fermenting flameless fire and heat of the dung-heaps of his midden …”

“Yes?” he asked.

“Was he fond of cheese?”

He scanned her face for any sign of laughter; none was there: but then he scanned her eyes. “The Court will sentence you to six taps with a wet bullrush if—”

Again she begged mercy from the court: what patience, what relish of strange things and odd, what had those agate eyes seen? not but yesterday she had told him of having sailed round the farthest shores of Lybya (so far away that scarce the name of Africa still clung to it) in the farthest south[7], until one day the sun rose from a quite contrary corner of the sky. When he, after a moment of astonishment, “Then you have made the circumnavigation as Hanno of Carthage, and the Herodotus has been wrong to doubt it!” And she: “Yes.” No more. “Yes.”

Rather, he felt himself like some pedagogue, stuffy lecturer in the furred and hooded academic gown, droning on at great length about the need to refresh that heat-producing dung-heap with new-made dung: as though she had never observed such things for herself, as though there were no dung-heaps in the lands along and behind her coasts: as though, in fact, the milk served them twice and thrice daily had been milked from trees.

He hasted to the conclusion of his discourse — already, he feared, over-long delayed. The occymist was obliged, eventually, by necessity to teach his apprentice to follow his the master’s secret notes … but so very often the master could not bring himself to disclose his greatest secrets: and in such a case (it was the very common case) he taught him to read a special and simpler cypher in which the most simple notes disclosed only the most simple knowledge: boil this, thrice … let this cool … for such and such a space of time … place such and such a substance in the pelican and add such and such an amount of water … or whatever the liquid medium was …

And so on.

In which case, should the apprentice take it into his mind to run off to another occymist, he had not taken with him the knowledge the most valuable.

Very often, of course, the apprentice, made sullen by the fairly useless passing of the years and himself so very insufficiently instructed, did run off. And very often he ran off to yet another occymist (where else?) whose long-time apprentice had also run off … and for the same reason. Ignorance was thus exchanged. Imagine a twain conversations about that time.

“What is this?”

“Master. An Alembic.”

“What do you do with it?”

“Master. Whatever I am told to.”

A sound as of steam. “No….” the word fool unspoken, but hanging in the air; “No … what had he have you do with it?”

The man searching his mind and keeping wise his face. “Well … Master …”

And, at more or less the same time. “Tell me,” a wave of a hand much-stained with the acids of the elaboratory; “tell me what you recognize?”

“Master. — This is an athanor. And this … I had not seen before. It does look like a threble pelican.”

Master purses his lips, neither very favorably nor very unfavorably impressed. “At least you can adduce from minor to major. Well. And this?”

Time for a quick change of subject. While the new applicant searched his memory. “Master. I did see the Peacock in the Vase of Hermes —”

A look of pleasure, at once quelled. “Did, eh? Tell me about it.”

Time for frankness. “ ‘Tell’? I can tell nought. But, if I am allowed colors and a surface to limn upon, I could show you, my ser.”

“The colors are over here. And here is clean papyrus and a brush. So —”

Time for further frankness. “What terms does the master propose?”

See anger play with caution on the master’s face.

Time enough to divulge … later … that the new candidate had seen it … once … the day that he arrived.

Ignorance not merely exchanged, but compounded.

And did not many and many an adept die leaving many and many a privy greatbook behind, which no one was ever able to decipher? Many. And many.

“Here is a half a gold paleologue for thee. I made it —,” he said, with a look of sudden cunning upon his face which would not have long deceived the idiot boy who sloped about the streets and with a scoop dog-pure for the tanners; “myself. But have chosen to cast it in a mold, so. It does not pay to leave unminted gold around. Did he ever … project?”

“Oh, thank you, master! Well … master …”

Ah, the elaborations of Naples! There were those so dim and mirk that the invention of a new lamp would perhaps have been of more service than that of a new metal, cellars like crypts, not cleaned since the lustrations of the year that Junius Plato was emperor, lit chiefly by the glow of the small furnace; large and bright and airy rooms with fresh plaister fresh painted a creamy yellow, so different from the others where the gypsum fell off in flakes all grimed from the dirt of all the long dirty years … elaboratories whose masters were indeed haggard and gant with feverish eyes sunken from sickening hopes, still intent every minute with expectation that this time the pot would indeed be pregnant with a glory like a new-coined sun … elaboratories where the master briskly worked on stinking caustics designed to wash wool clean so as to weave well: — actually places where pentangles were enscribed on floors rough-swept for the purpose … and little enough that did to the purpose … the purpose being to project, an intention much the same as to transmute, the step just before the step transmuted … masters of an age to be still hearty and hail and in good thrift, but swaying and sick from the inhalations of the sophic sulphur and the sophic mercury intended to liberate gold from (as they thought) the frowsy atoms which concealed it …

“And you, madam,” he said, without preamble, “how did you know that I would be coming, that you called me by name? Names?”

“Oh,” she said, “Huldah told me.”

He thought she had not understood, and disdained to press the matter. But it was not she who had misunderstood. Therefore changed he the subject; “Keep you always the estuary of your river veiled, and indeed all your coast?”

“By no means. Only against those undesired. Sometimes even from Babylone people come,” what a great ellision! were none desired from less far away than Babylone? “— come, have come, and some came lately. And we trade. The speech of Babylone is near to the Punic speech in substance and in essence; have you seen how they keep records?” She took down a few small wooden boxes from a shelf and opened them, one by one. In each was something wrapped in scarlet tow, a slab of sun-baked mud with very odd markings incised upon them. He had seen such things before, but he did not tell her so. At least not directly. “This one is from Charyx Spasini,” she said, scanning the tag.

“… ‘of the long water walls?”

“That very same. And this is from Dura-Europos … or is it Duros-Europa?”

“Let us look and see.”

“Oh no. They don’t use the Latin or Greek names, though they must all know them; for that matter, really, they all know Latin or Greek. Latin and Greek. But there you are — clerks! clerks! — always maintaining their mysteries; o pópoi — phu upon them — and this one is from Babylone itself. Think of that.”

And he, pretending ignorance there on the sort of collonade, a roof set up on posts outside her house (for she did not seem to feel the need of any house-as-fortress … in fact there were no walls around the settlement), pretending ignorance he said, “But I thought Babylone had been destroyed.”

She gave him a swift and quizzical look. “Babylone Destroyed is like Thrice-Vanquished Carthage, it is always being vanquished and destroyed. But they are on the main routes, just where one needs a city to be, so a while afterwards they are builded up again, a mile from where they were before. And some Imperial Decree says the new city is to be called Philadelphia Paradoxica or Theopompa Abbadabba. Scythia Pelloponesia. But inside of a week everybody is calling them ‘Babylone’ or ‘Carthage’ all over again. And then the parchments have it, oh Hippodupos Hippodupolis, also called Smerg, something like that, I’m sure you’ve seen it a hundred times,” and gave him the same look.

“You are very cynical,” he said. She made a small defiant mock pout. He kissed her. She embraced him, pressing close. “Ah, that’s what I like,” he said, by and by: “none of those false embraces which a woman initiates with her arms spread wide and then she switches her head the other way until almost you fear it will fall off: and thus she gives you the air behind her ear to kiss; why do they bother?”

“Pretense,” she said. “The silly game. And you are supposed not to notice and kiss the air behind her ear with a great big smack —”

He nodded. “And one wonders if one smells that rank, and later learns that she has been equitating her mule-groom, who could not in any way smell less rank —”

“— but there’s no pretense here.”

“No.” He could not help but see the dust-motes dancing slowly in a shaft of that marvelous sparkling sunshine; “No … Not here … And won’t you come with me, then, Huldah, and we two can show the world — and even more: ourselves — how to live without pretense, and the silly game?”

She looked at him, he felt the quickening sorrow that she did not at all look like saying yes: but there was no pretense there, there in those agate eyes. “You wouldn’t be content to live long here,” she said, “and I wouldn’t be content to live away from here, and from Five-Limbed Uluvendas. Do you know why I am named Huldah? Oh, not just that matter of the genet and the weasel and the cat — it’s because that is the name of here. This place is called Huldah and I am this place and it’s not possible for me to forsake it.”

“But, you see …”

“I don’t see …”

“… you know …”

“I don’t know …”

He held her in his arms. “I am half-mad to stay here with you and I am half-mad to turn, and return to Naples and all my work, my works, damn all kings, back there … always centered there. Half, I cannot leave, and half, I cannot stay. What am I to do, Huldah?”

She retreated just a bit from him, perhaps a slightly deeper flush or blush, a slightly higher color in her cheeks; so well-looking, that touch of deep rose in that face, darker than sallow. “Why … you must leave in a short while, while you still have a ship going the way which you must go. And then you must see to your work … your works … And then, if you will, you will return. And then,” she paused, “and then we shall have our own Mute Trade … our own Silent Commerce and exchange.” She referred, he knew, to that most ancient way of business, sometimes called the Dumb or Mute Trade, or the Silent Commerce, a form devised long and long ago as a compromise between the desire for trade and the mutual trepidations of those trading: in this system, the merchants from over the sea would come to a place suitable for landing and in a place where they knew there were peoples who had something to sell and wanted to buy but who desired not the proximity usually attendant on buying or selling. One man of the ship would row ashore in a skiff and set forth an old piece of sail on the sand and on it place articles such as scarlet-weave, glass vessels, iron knives and arrow-heads: whatever. And then row back out to the ship and wait. Presently to the beach would come the people of the land, survey the merchandise, and leave raw gold or elephant or gemstones — what they had to offer to the amount they thought right — and retreat into the forest. Presently the shipman would land again, take up the goods if satisfied, and depart. Sometimes several trips were needed before the satisfaction of both parties was achieved. Of course there was the possibility of theft, cheats, murders: but in such cases no further trade was conducted on such beaches. (Interlopers unaware of this tended to lose their goods and their lives fairly swiftly).

“Each of us shall set down what each has to offer,” said Huldah. “And then we shall part again. And we shall consider, you and I, if each accounts the other’s offer worth the full value of what the other wants.

“And then … we shall see. Shan’t we. You will have supposed,” she said “that other men have been here and have asked, ‘Let me stay here, Huldah,’ and I have sent them all away, some with a pleasant word and a present; and some with such sayings as, ‘First fetch me what lies upon the Golden Table of Apollo in the South — would you wish to know what lies there? then you must go forth, venture, and seek; I don’t urge it’ — or some like words, largely worthless: why rob Apollo, never has Apollo robbed me, and perhaps risk a dragonvisit, or a plague or mice? And to some, some very, very few, who have said, ‘Come with me away, thou Huldah,’ to them I have said what I have said to you, just now.” Only a breath she tarried, then asked the question which troubled and trembled in his heart: “How many have returned, of either sort? Oh, none have returned. Not one. Not even a single, single one.”

He parted from her, then walked across the scented floor of scented wood, to the end of the room, that long room; then he walked back. He stood before her again, but they did not then embrace again. “I see it must be so,” he said. “You are not a woman who says no merely in order that I should try persuade her to say yes. And so, surely not as a consideration of commerce, but just as a gift from me to thee,” from his pouch he took the patch of golden fleece and from it he took the two rings of orichalcum in their incredible juxtaposition; saying further, “This is neither the Riddle of the Sphynx nor yet the Gordian knot.”

“Yet a rare thing, of great value,” she said. “I felt … something … not describable … when you placed it in my hand. I am not necessarily expected to solve this matter. But it abides with me as a thing of memory of you, not that I should forget, but this is a memory which I can touch. Well. You will go. And now I tell you what I have told no other. I shall, after a reasonable while plus a, shall we say, even an unreasonable while, expect your coming. Your return. I shall arrange for the Veil of Isis to lift, upon your approach. Make a plan, a sketch, a map and notes, of this place — a periplus, call it. Or a chart. Not forgetting the headland. And on that headland, when the moon is dark, if I sense your approach, I shall light a fire for you to see—”

“Ah, I wish it were the Pharos of Alexandria!”

“— it is not. — a fire for you to see, and by which to guide you.” She fell silent, contemplating, brow pressed down, lips uttering soft thought he could not hear; then her face opened and she smiled on him. “And in case, by reason of cloud or rain, over which my skill is limited — it is easier, if not easy, to make rain than to make rain cease — you might not see the fire, or should the winds bring you too far out of sight as you pass by this fire, I shall kindle it and fuel it with scented wood alone: calamus and quinnamon and citron-wood and of the roots of nard and of the twigs of thyme, of juniper, cedar, and of such sundry others as, of yet, I do not know.

“So even though you might not see the guiding fire, yet you shall know that it be there, I shall send a wind of far fetch so that the air and breeze shall bring you scented notice of me, for I am Huldah, and I am the headland and the winding river and the sheltering port as well.” (And all the while as, later, he was bound away, he saw her in the sheltering port’s placid wavelets and in the undulations of the winding river and in the cliffs and crannies of the headlands: and even, her face burned upon the waters of the open sea for many leagues and many.) Yet another moment she hesitated, and then she said, without change of countenance or voice, “And don’t fear, thou Messer Vergil, that however long thou tarriest, if even past time that I have ceased to wait daily for thy coming, that ever I shall make that fire a funeral fire —”

“Absit omen!” and thrice he spet upon that perfumed floor and thrice he rapped his knuckle-bones upon the wooden pillar he stood next to, so that the dryad which had dwelt within the tree, and might dwell there still, should hearken and prevent any possibility of coming true the words which the woman had said should not come true: she had had the thought: therein a danger. And Absit omen, he said, yet once again.

He met her eyes, those agate-colored eyes, in which he had seen the gleamings and the glisterings of far-off fires in nights by far-distant shores and in distant lands of interior. “I, more worth than that,” she said.

“Ah, Huldah—”

“For I am, after all, Huldah of Huldah. And I am far more worth than that.” She stopped and stooped and picked up her little cat-creature, which he had not seen nor heard enter the room. It made a sound to her, and she held it close her face, and the two faces looked upon him. A slight and aimless question he now asked of her, as one will do, to break silence. “What is biss’s name?” he asked.

And, in an odd, and yet it appeared and seemed an appropriate, tone, the question was answered him. “My name is Huldah,” said the creature.

Long he stayed there, and now and then he rose and paced, up and down, up and down that fragrant perfumed floor made of a wood whose name he had somehow never yet asked; fragrance he had never known before but which he knew he would never forget and would recognize were he ever to scent it again, even on the phoenix pyre, did the Fates yield him even that; and then he stood there long again, till the very fire upon the hearth burned down and he saw the embers dying, dying, and it seemed to him that he saw the dying embers of Carthage, Troy and Babylone, and it seemed to him that he saw them reflected in two pairs of eyes, and long he stayed there, then, again.

When he heard sounds of footfalls upon the path he did not, really, rouse himself. But out of his reverie he asked. “What thing, and who?”

It seemed the man’s voice was full of much relief. “The boat, Ser Vergil. She’s full, and fit, and ready now to sail upon the morning’s tide;” the early mornings tide that meant. He had known, been knowing, that this must very soon come, but had put the knowing away from him: could do so no more. Huldah had gone, and the knowledge of his own going had now come.

“Go, then,” said Vergil. “I follow.” Follow, then, he did, when he had quickly dressed. He did not attempt to seek out Huldah again. But all the walk to the harbor and the small ship, all along as he walked, he felt himself accompanied by someone, a someone who kept out of sight. A light-limbed and a body light of weight.

Whence, then, Huldah? How came she here? Was she named for the place, or the place for her? Was there a woman named Roma in the village midst the marsh of Tiber ere Romulus butted his downy, unclosed head to force yet further milk from the she-vulp’s yielding paps? or not? Useless to ask; the Sybil at Cumae may have noted it in her books of leaves, but … the Sybil, where was she? and your mothers, do they live forever? Who Huldah’s parents were and where they had come from, these things he knew: but as to why they had left the tideless Inland Sea to settle here upon the Coasts of Ocean, this she had not told him. How did she live? She had of course her farms and fruit trees, her hares and poultry, including those harsh-voiced speckled fowl which seemed to live as much in the trees as on the ground, and of course her doves and dovecots, whence the so small eggs on which she sometimes breakfasted. Her milch-goats … And she traded. Others along that shore were obliged to use the “mute” or “dumb” or “silent” trade, but she, being trusted, not; Sometimes ships came from as far-off as Babylone: none, though, whilst he had tarried there. “Gold and grain, I buy. Local grain I sometimes buy, if there be abundance and surfeit of it,” she had said. “If there is surplus, there, away, and the grainbins cannot hold it all, they bring it hither, and I buy. Though, when I foresee drought or a bad crop coming, or when I reck a year of the locusts coming, then I send my word abroad, and grain I buy from over-the-seas; and I provide it to my people here and I sell it to those who come from the Interiors, and from far along the coasts…. far away far … as far as from the borders of those eat no grain, but only the wild fruit flesh of the forests do they eat.”

And, “Gems? Gold? Gem comes not in abundantly, but it comes and I take of it. Perfect stones, only: nothing flawed. Gold? The people of this land and of the lands behind and past the lands behind, though fairly steadily they come to sell me gold, they never come to buy it. They have their own sources, far away far, I see … others may see it too, I suppose … but so far ….” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“And elephant?” he had asked. Such a look fled swiftly along her face. “Five-limbed Uluvendas, though long he lives, though long he lives, does not live forever.” Why not buy and sell the obviously very old elephant? — “Uluvendas?” he asked. — “Five-limbed Uluvendas,” she answered.

For a moment he paused; then, “The oliphaunt!” he exclaimed. She did not at once reply, but he saw that he was correct. (Later, when he had the time to consult the Olden Books, he realized that according to the Law of Letters, as laid down by the Punes, who had invented letters, from uluvend to oliphaunt was no great change: and that the original word had passed from the Hethits of northern Asia Minore to the Greeks of western Asia Minore: the very thought of there having been oliphaunts in that continent struck him with great force as a most antic notion: yet there it was: and was it any more antic than the fact that there had not alone been lionels in Asia Minore but lionels in Greece as well? and yet now behold: in Africa, whence always something new, today: oliphaunts and lionels alike … and cockodrills as well: and in India: lionels, oliphaunts and cockodrills. It beseemed him, then, that there was even more of a unitas in the universe than ever he had thought before.)

She went on, “So some have asked, Why not sell the obviously very old elephant? surely you must know the dying place, that race thereof, and might have it gathered and sell it, no fear that your precious ones have been slaughtered for their teeth? — but he may have been so slain,” she said, “by those who thought to sell the teeth long time later … But I do not allow Five-limbed Uluvendas to be slain on my shores and slopes, nor into the Interior … as far as my word may reach … and it reaches far … far away far. But — always — always — there are those who wish to slay Uluvendas; for his flesh, yes, but they don’t come from far away far to murder him for his flesh alone: for his teeth, his teeth of elephant, they come to murder him from far away far.” The certain look, such as came into her face when she spoke of Five-limbed Uluvendas, lingered long, but even long must leave after even length of time.

And a voice, as though echoing, if not from a thousand caverns forth, yet echoing, echoing, he could not remember whence, nor from whom, nor whose the voice; She does not allow the teeth … teeth … teeth …

And was if for this reason that she, Huldah, desired to remain there, there, in the Region called Huldah? whence, though by many parted ways, one reached, eventually, the long road to the Pass of Gold?

Likely he would never know.

Towards the port, all along he walked, in the entering of the day, he felt himself accompanied by someone, a someone who kept out of sight A light-limbed, and a body light of weight.

It was Huldah for sure.

But which Huldah he did not know.