"And now, if nothing has been said beforehand, watch carefully for the sign that you are to remain when the rest retire. It will be nothing much; just a glance—like this—or a small movement of the hand. Don't stand about, but occupy yourself with something; I will show you, when all the right things are here. Then, when you are alone, he will motion you, like this, to undress. Go now to the foot of the bed, take off quickly and neatly, and lay them down there out of sight; he does not expect to see a pile of your clothes. That's right, take off everything. You may now allow yourself to walk up with a smile, but don't make it too familiar. That's perfect, perfect; try to keep that touch of shyness. And now—" He opened the bed, with a smile so gracious and commanding that I had got there before I knew it.
I started away, reproach and anger in my heart. I had liked and trusted him; he had tricked and mocked me. He was no better than the rest.
He reached out and caught my arm; his grasp was firm, but without anger or greed. "Gently, Gazelle-Eyes. Hush now, and listen to me." I had not said a word; but I sat still and ceased to struggle. "I have never, all this time, told you a word of a lie. I am just a teacher; all this is part of what I am here to do. If I like my work, so much the better for both of us. What you wish to forget, I know; soon you can do so forever. There is a pride in you, wounded but still unyielding; it is perhaps what shaped your prettiness into beauty. With such a nature, living as you have lived between your sordid master and his vulgar friends, you must have been holding back all the while. And very right. But those days are gone. There is a new existence before you. Now you must learn to give a little. I am here for that, to teach you the art of pleasure." He reached out his other hand, and gently pulled me down. "Come. I promise you, you will like it much more with me."
I did not resist persuasion. He might indeed possess some magic, by whose power all would be well. So at first it still appeared, for he was as skilled as he was charming, like a creature from another world than that I had been frequenting; it seemed one could linger forever in the outer courts of delight. I took, all that was offered, neglecting my old defenses; and the pain, when it swooped on me with all its claws, was worse than ever before. For the first time I could not keep silent.
"I am sorry," I said as soon as I could. "I hope I did not spoil it for you. I couldn't help it."
"But what is it?" He bent over me as if it really concerned him. "I cannot have hurt you, surely?"
"No, of course." I turned my eyes to the sheet to blot my tears. "It always happens like that, if it does at all. As if they brought back the knives."
"But you should have told me this." He still spoke as if he cared, which to me was wonderful.
"I thought it must be the same with us all—with all people like me."
"No, indeed. How long ago were you cut?"
"Three years," I said, "and a little more."
"I don't understand it. Let me look again. But this is beautiful work; I never saw cleaner scars. It would surprise me, cutting a boy with your looks, if they took more than just enough to keep you beardless. Of course it can go wrong. The cuts can fester so deep that all the roots of feeling are eaten away. Or they can butcher you so that nothing is left for feeling, as they do with the Nubians, I suppose from fear of their strength. But with you, short of giving her fill to a woman— and few of us can do that, though one hears of it now and then—I can't see why you shouldn't enjoy it with the best. Do you tell me you have suffered this since you began?"
"What?" I cried. "Do you think I let myself be moved by those sons of pigs?" Here was one to whom I could speak at last. "There were one or two . . . But I used to think myself away from it, when I could."
"I see. Now I begin to guess the trouble." He lay in thought, as grave as a physician, then said, "Unless it is women. You don't think of women, do you?"
I remembered the three girls hugging me by the pool, and their round soft breasts; then my mother's brains spilled on the orchard pebbles, and my sisters screaming. I answered, "No."
"Never think of them." He looked at me earnestly, his lightness gone. "Don't imagine, if your beauty keeps its promise, that they won't be after you, sighing and whispering, and vowing to be content with anything you have. So they may believe; but they never will. No; in their discontent they will turn spiteful, and betray you. The surest way to end on a spike in the sun."
His face had turned somber. I saw there some dreadful recollection, and, to reassure him, told him again I never thought of them.
He caressed me consolingly, though the pain had left me. "No, I don't know why I considered women. It is clear enough what it is. You have fine senses; for pleasure certainly, for pain therefore as much. Though gelding is bad enough for anyone, there are degrees of feeling. It has haunted you ever since, as if it could happen again. That's not so rare; you'd have got over it long ago, with me. But you have been going with men you despised. Outwardly you had to obey; within, your pride has conceded nothing. You have preferred pain to a pleasure by which you felt degraded. It comes of anger, and the soul's resistance."
"I didn't resist you," I said.
"I know. But it has bitten deep; it won't be cured in a day. Later we'll try again, it's too soon now. With any luck in your life, you will outgrow it. And I can tell you one thing more; where you're going now, I don't think it will much trouble you. I have been told to say no more, which is taking discretion to absurdity; but no matter, to hear is to obey."
"I wish," I said, "I might belong to you."
"I too, Gazelle-Eyes. But you are for my betters. So don't fall in love with me; we shall be parting all too soon. Put your clothes on; the getting-up ceremonial we'll do tomorrow. The lesson has been long enough for today."
My training took some time longer. He came earlier, dispensed with the haughty eunuch, and taught me himself the service of the table, the fountain court, the inner chamber, the bath; he even brought a fine horse, and in the weed-grown courtyard showed me how to mount and ride with grace; all I'd learned at home was how to stick on my mountain pony. Then we went back to the room with its green glimmering windows and great bed.
He still hoped to exorcise my demon, giving much patience to it; but the pain always returned, its strength increased by the pleasure it had fed on. "No more," he said. "It will be too much for you, and not enough for me. I am here to teach, and am in danger of forgetting it. We must accept that this is your lot just now."
I said in grief, "I’d be better off like those others, feeling nothing."
"Oh, no. Never suppose so. They put it all into eating; you can see what becomes of them. I’d have liked to cure you, just for your sake and mine; but as to your calling, that's to please, not be pleased. And it seems to me that in spite of this trouble—or maybe because of it, who can tell what makes the artist?—you have a gift. Your responses are very delicate; it is this which made your late employment so disgusting to you. You were a musician forced to hear howling street-singers. All you need is to know your instrument. That I will teach you, though I think you will excel me. This time, you need not fear being sent where your art will shame you; I can promise that."
"Can't you tell me yet who it is?"
"Haven't you guessed even yet? But no, how should you? One thing, though, I can say, and don't forget it. He loves perfection; in jewels and vessels, in hangings, carpets and swords; in horses, women and boys. No, don't look so scared; nothing dreadful will be done to you for falling short; but he might lose interest, which would be a pity. I wish to present you flawless; he will expect no less of me. But I doubt if your secret will come to light there. Let us think no more of it, and apply ourselves to useful knowledge."
Till now, as I found, he had been like the musician who takes up an unknown harp or lyre, testing its resonance. Now lessons began in earnest.
Already I hear the voice of one who has known no more of slavery than to clap his hands and give orders, crying out, "The shameless dog, to boast of how he was debauched in youth by one corrupted before him." To such I reply that I had been debauched for a year already, rolled in mire without help or hope; and now to be tended like something exquisite seemed not corruption but the glimpse of some blissful heaven. So too, after being the sport of rutting swine, seemed the subtle music of the senses. It came to me easily, as if by nature or remembrance. At home, I had sometimes had sensual dreams; if let alone, no doubt I should have been precocious. All this had been altered in me, yet not killed.
Like a poet who can sing of battles though not a warrior, I could conjure the images of desire, without suffering the sharpness of its wounds which I knew too well. I could make the music, its pauses and its cadenzas; Oromedon said I was like one who can play for the dancers, yet not dance. It was his own nature to take delight in the measure he gave it; yet I triumphed with him. Then he said, "I don't think, Gazelle-Eyes, you have very much more to learn."
His words dismayed me like news unknown before. I clung to him, saying, "Do you love me? You don't only want to teach me? Will you be sorry when I am gone?"
"Have you learned to break hearts already?" he said. "I never taught you that."
"But do you love me?" I had asked it of no one since my mother died.
"Never say that to him. It would be considered far too oncoming."
I looked into his face; relenting, he hugged me like a child, which did not seem strange to me. "Truly I love you, and when you go I shall be desolate." He spoke like one who reassures a child against ghosts and darkness. "But then comes tomorrow. I would be cruel to make you pledges; I may never see you again. If I do, maybe I cannot speak to you, and then you would think me false. I promised not to lie to you. When we serve the great, they are our destiny. Count upon nothing, but make your own nest against the storm ... Do you see this?"
His brow had a scar, growing old and pale. I had thought it gave him distinction. Among my father's friends, anyone without a scar or two seemed scarcely like a man. "How did you get it?" I asked.
"I was thrown at the hunt, doing something that needed doing. It was that same horse you rode; it's still mine, you see; I have not been treated shabbily. But he can't bear flawed things. So try not to get yourself knocked about"
"I would love you," I said, "if you were covered with scars all over. Did he send you away?"
"Oh, no, I am very well provided for. Nothing is done unhandsomely. But I belong no more with the perfect vase and the polished gem. Don't build upon the wind, Gazelle-Eyes. That is the last of my lessons. May you not be too young to bear it, for you are not too young to need it. We had better get up. I shall see you again tomorrow."
"Do you mean," I said, "that tomorrow will be the last?"
"Perhaps. There is one more lesson after all. I have never told you the proper motions of the prostration."
"Prostration?" I said puzzled. "But they do that for the King."
"Just so," he said. "Well, that took you long enough."
I stared at him in a kind of stupor. Then I cried aloud, "I can't do it! I can't, I can't."
"Whatever is this, after all my trouble? Don't stare with those great eyes as if I'd brought you a death warrant, instead of your fortune."
"You never told me!" I grasped him in terror till my nails dug in. He loosened them gently.
"I dropped you hints enough; it was clear you'd do. But you see, till you are accepted in the Household, you are on probation. It is assumed you might fail, and be turned away. Then, if you had known whose service you were training for, it was thought you might know too much."
I threw myself on my face, convulsed with weeping. "Come," he said, and wiped my eyes on the sheet. "You have nothing, truly, to fear. He's had some hard times, and is in need of consolation. I am telling you, you will do very well indeed; and I ought to know."
3
IWAS SOME days in the Palace, before being presented. I thought I should never learn my way about this high maze of splendors; everywhere tall columns of marble or porphyry or malachite, with gilded capitals and twisted shafts; on every wall reliefs, colored and glazed brighter than life, of marching warriors, or tribute-bearers from the further empire, leading bulls or dromedaries, bearing bales or jars. When one lost one's direction, one seemed alone in a solemn crowd, with nobody to ask.
In the eunuchs' courtyard I was received without much warmth, as being destined for privilege; but for the same reason, none treated me ill, lest I should take my grudges with me.
It was on the fourth day, that I saw Darius.
He had been taking wine and hearing music. The room gave onto a small fountain court, sweet with the scent of lilies; in the flowering trees hung gold cages of bright birds. By the fountain the musicians were putting up their instruments; but the water and the birds made a soft murmuring concert. The court had high walls, and was part of the room's seclusion.
He was on his cushions, looking into the courtyard; by him on the low table were the wine-jug and empty cup. I knew him at once for the man at my father's birthday feast. But he had been dressed then for a long ride up rough roads. Now he was robed in purple worked with white, and wore the Mitra; the light kind he used when at ease. His beard was combed like silk, and he smelled of Arabian spices.
I walked with downcast eyes behind the chamberlain. One must not look up at the King; so I could not tell if he remembered me, or whether I found favor. When my name was pronounced, I prostrated myself as I had been taught, and kissed the floor before him. His slipper was of soft dyed kid, crimson, embroidered with sequins and gold wire.
