Salome bade her approach, placed around her neck a gold chain, and embraced her.

The girls sang to the accompaniment of a harp. Slaves shook perfumes out of ivory bowls the shape of roses.

Salome waved her hand. It was as if some divinity had commanded a storm. The bearded men fell upon the women with groans of anguish and delight like wild beasts mating. The women, like maenads, encircled the youths and embraced each other. Bearded giants, full-breasted women, girls indistinguishable from boys, boys hardly distinguishable from maids, curious figures in the chasm between the sexes, all danced to a music that was like a madman’s joy. It was a feast of Priapus, an orgy of sex in which sex over-flowed its limits and blood mingled with kisses. It was a battle of lust punctured by the crash of cymbals and the swish of lashes.

The music died slowly; the dancers, exhausted, dropped to the floor in heaps of two, three or four; the lights dimmed until one could distinguish merely motion, like some ocean tossed by winds blowing in many directions…

Salome clapped her hands. The walls moved back into their original position. The lights shone once more. The storm abated. One heard nothing save the loud yawning of the cub.

Salome brushed aside one of her braids, and looked at me, smiling. I understood what she meant.

“You wish to convey to me by this exhibition that you too have explored the ways and the byways of pleasure,” I said.

“I too,” she said, “have discovered unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged. I have traversed the two hundred and sixty ways of love, the thirteen secret ways that are known only to the Emperor, and the seven ways that are not known even to the Emperor himself. I seek something beyond the ultimate portal of pleasure…”

“Is this orgasmic medley your definition of love, Princess?” I queried.

“Love, Cartaphilus, what is love?”

The silk curtain stirred a little, and the long, hairy arm of Kotikokura moved slowly in, followed by his head.

“Who is that?” Salome asked.

“My slave, Your Highness. His fidelity is so great that he fears to leave me alone.”

Kotikokura withdrew.

“Is he a man…or a beast?” She sat up, wrinkled her brow a little, as Damis used to do, when very much interested. “Who is he, Cartaphilus?”

“A denizen of the forest, Princess. I found him in Africa.”

“In Africa?”

“A curious country…peopled with extraordinary beings.”

“What is his name?”

“Kotikokura.”

“Kotikokura…” The name seemed to float like music from her throat.

“It means ‘The Accursed One.’ ”

“The Accursed?”

“He dared to laugh at the gods…”

She looked at me, fathoming my thoughts.

“It is not difficult to become a god, Cartaphilus…”

Again her eyes traveled to the curtain where the eyes of Kotikokura gleamed.

“Cartaphilus, will you sell me your slave?”

“He is not really my slave. He is my friend, who has saved my life on several occasions.”

“Your life, Cartaphilus?” There was a touch of irony in her intonation.

“Not my life, then, my skin…”

She remained silent for a while. “I will give you in exchange three of my slaves, a maid, a boy and if you wish, my favorite hermaphrodite…”

“I cannot barter my friend for your slaves.”

“Take six of them…twelve, Cartaphilus. They are marvelous people, past masters and past mistresses in the art of pleasure…and pain.”

I made no answer.

“Well?”

“Kotikokura!” I called.

He appeared immediately. I made a sign. He returned with a casket of jade, and walked out again. Salome watched him with a curious fascination.

“Princess, deign to accept this.” I opened the casket, which was filled with exquisite trinkets of jade and ivory. I recounted their history and their symbolism. I spoke of the great artists who had imprinted them with their dreams. Salome, paying no attention to my explanation, toyed with the tiny figure of Li-Bi-Do, an obscene god, long forgotten, even in the Celestial Realm, and carelessly tossed the others aside.

“Kotikokura has an extraordinary head…and what arms!”

‘Did she need a headless lover to excite her emotions?’

“A strange head,” she mused.

Was it her intention to decapitate Kotikokura?

‘Should I offer his head for her love?’

“Let me have Kotikokura, Cartaphilus.”

I remained pensive.

“Does Cartaphilus believe that Salome desires to repeat the same sensation forever?” she remarked, again reading my thoughts.

“Kotikokura shall remain with Princess Salome, if she commands, for one night,” I said angrily.

“What will you take in exchange?”

“Cartaphilus does not bargain.”

XXX: SALOME WRITES A LETTER—MAGIC RUINS—THE TOKEN—I LAUGH

AT dawn Kotikokura appeared, bringing me a letter. It was in Hebrew, on thin parchment: “What Cartaphilus seeks Salome must also seek. In strange things and strange places she seeks her soul. Farewell!”

I looked intently at Kotikokura. He lowered his eyes, and bent nearly in two. I raised my fist to strike him. ‘Cartaphilus, are you jealous…jealous of an ape?’ I laughed, opened my fist and caressed his head. “It is well, my friend. Salome preferred Kotikokura, as she once preferred…but no matter…”

I asked him many things. He merely grinned or grumbled. Nevertheless, my desire to possess Salome did not abate. She must pay for her pleasure! I was a Jew, and required payment. My generosity had been merely a gesture.

“Salome shall be mine! We go there again this evening, Kotikokura. Am I not God Ca-ta-pha?”

Kotikokura knelt. “Ca-ta-pha! Ca-ta-pha!”

The gate stood wide opened and unwatched. No sword, no eunuch. Two owls, perching upon it, hooted at our approach, and rocked it by merely flapping their wings. What the previous night had been a gorgeous garden was now a wilderness of giant weeds, which scratched our hands and faces, as we tried to make a pathway to the house. I looked in vain for the peacocks, and Kotikokura watched the palm trees, whose withered leaves were covered with a heavy white dust, to discover the monkeys. Only large bats brushed threateningly against our faces.

The steps leading to the palace, shook under our feet, and the door, hanging from one hinge, swung against us like a broken branch. We lit a torch. Rats, enormous worms and lizards, scurried into the large holes of floors and walls, or remained in the corners in menacing attitudes. Our faces became entangled in the cobwebs, which hung from the ceilings where diamonds had been glittering like lamps.

The couch Salome had sat upon crumbled at my touch; the canopy was devoured by sharp-fanged moths and other insects; the skeleton of a small animal, yellow and frail, like the tendrils of a large, fantastic leaf, cracked under Kotikokura’s step.

“Kotikokura, are we dreaming?”

He scratched his head vigorously.

“Were we not here last night? Was not this a palace, luxurious, gay?” His eyes galloped from corner to corner. The rest of the furniture was an indescribable hill of débris, except one huge bed which seemed intact. We approached it. Pathetically, like a living thing, in a vast cemetery, shone upon it Li-Bi-Do the exquisite tiny god of jade I had given Salome.

“It was not a dream, Kotikokura!”

He bent his head.

I struck the bed a heavy blow. It crumbled into a shapeless mass.

The foul air stifled me. My throat tightened. “Let us go out.” As we reached the spot where the fountain had been, I noticed a large stone basin, made white by the moon. “Was this basin here when we entered this evening, Kotikokura? Did you see it?”

He scratched his head.

“Are things changing under our very eyes, Kotikokura? Are we enchanted?”

The basin was deep. I looked into it. A large tortoise, whose back glittered like a great yellow and black jewel, lay within it motionless save for a tiny, sharp head which moved rapidly like the tongue of a bell.