“Did anyone see you do it?”
He shook his head.
“Kotikokura, you are almost clever enough to be a god yourself.”
He shook his head. “Ca-ta-pha God.”
XLIV: LOVE MAGIC—PARALLEL LINES—SMOKE—SALOME SMILES
THE moon was surrounded by an immense aureole, whose reflection flooded the desert like a white sea. Salome her eyes half-closed, looked at me and smiled.
“Cartaphilus, will you forgive me for my little jest in Persia?”
I remained silent.
“Are you really still angry at me? Do not two hundred years suffice to cool a man’s ruffled vanity?”
“This time the incomparable Salome has not guessed my thoughts.”
She smiled.
“I was merely shaping in my mind a reply which would prove most convincingly that the pleasure of being with Salome atones for the ancient pain.”
“Was it really pain… ?”
I nodded.
“Are you less sensitive now, Cartaphilus?”
“Perhaps. I have lived…”
We both laughed.
“Of course, you were so young in passion! How many centuries, Cartaphilus?”
“And you?”
Kotikokura laughed.
I turned around. He was too far in back of us to hear our conversation.
“Did he always laugh so much, Cartaphilus?”
“He hardly ever laughed. It is something he has learned recently.”
“He, too, is growing up.”
The white sea of sand continued to flow in utter silence in front of us.
“Salome, were you really in Persia,—or was it illusion?”
She laughed. “Of course I was.”
“Were you in a magnificent palace, mistress of a thousand slaves, guarded by eunuchs?”
“Do you not know the power of mirrors and shadows dancing upon them? Are you not an adept in magic?”
I looked, incredulous. She patted my hands. “Cartaphilus will be a child…forever.”
“The happiest child in the world, if Princess Salome remains at his side.”
She shook her head. “No, no! That must not be.”
“Why not, Salome?”
“Cartaphilus desires most to be alone, and unhampered until he finds himself. Delve into your soul, and see if I am not right.”
I remained silent for a long while.
“Well, Cartaphilus,” she said quietly, a little sadly, “am I not right?”
“Perhaps. And yet…are we not logical companions, predestined mates, bound by one race and one fate…forever?”
“We are two parallel lines drawn very close to each other…so close indeed that no third line, however thin, could be drawn between them.”
“Will the two parallel lines ever meet?”
“Yes. In infinity.”
“Ali Hasan!” I exclaimed, “had you ever dreamed that there was so much poetry and pathos and sorrow in mathematics?”
“Who is Ali Hasan?”
“My master of mathematics, an Arab of incomparable wisdom. He died of sheer pleasure.”
“Of sheer pleasure?”
“In Damascus, that I might forget Salome, I bought a harem of a thousand women. Now and then I invited my friends. Many could not endure the delights, and died. Ali Hasan—may he sit at the right side of Mohammed—was among them.”
“And did the thousand women make you forget Salome?”
“They only intensified my yearning for her.”
She closed her eyes.
“While all the time Salome never even thought of Cartaphilus…” I said, a little bitterly.
She did not answer for some time. “We may force ourselves to forget what we dare not remember. Forgetfulness may indicate deeper depths of emotion than recollection.”
“Have you, too, reached the conclusion that there are no fixed stars in the firmament of emotion…all things are relative…everything flows…?”
“Cartaphilus!” she exclaimed “Will you never overcome your masculine conceit? Will you never understand that woman’s brain may work as subtly…or more subtly than man’s?”
“It is difficult, Salome, to overcome an idea held by hundreds of generations preceding us, and transmitted to us with the milk of our mothers.”
“Well, that shall be the mission of Salome—to overcome this idea! To combat man and his arrogance! To give woman, the great mother, justice!”
“Cartaphilus will not combat Salome!”
“Yes, always…whether he wills it or not. Man and woman are the eternal antagonists. And for this reason, too, it is best for Salome to forget Cartaphilus. It is better for the two parallel lines not to meet…save in eternity, where all things are one.”
“Kotikokura, is not Salome God, like Ca-ta-pha?”
He screwed up his nose. “Salome…female.”
“But she is wiser than Ca-ta-pha. She has discovered the great law of life, which Ali Hasan and Ca-ta-pha found after much labor,—that all things are relative, that nothing is permanent.”
Kotikokura puckered his lips, contemptuously. “Salome…woman.”
“Is not woman man’s equal?”
He shook his head.
“Is not God, perhaps, both man and woman…?”
“Ca-ta-pha is God.”
“Is not Ca-ta-pha, perhaps, both man and woman…?”
He shook his head violently.
“Kotikokura, you are the eternal ancestor in me,—aboriginal, masculine! You speak for me. Because of you, Ca-ta-pha cannot accept Salome as an equal, or woman as a god.”
He grinned.
Salome and I were sitting, our legs underneath us, upon a leopard’s skin. At a distance, Kotikokura made drawings in the sand,—heads that resembled his own, and curious libidinous symbols.
Salome filled two small ivory pipes, and offered me one. We watched in silence the smoke raise thin hands, trying to capture the moon.
“Kotikokura has developed artistic tendencies. Is it a sign of advancement, or of degeneration?”
Salome smiled. “He is passing through the various stages of human existence. Some day, he will become like Cartaphilus.”
“Salome is always slightly ironic when she speaks of Cartaphilus.”
“Irony is a shield.”
“Is Salome afraid of her own emotions? Does Cartaphilus touch her heart at all?”
“Could it be otherwise? Who, save Cartaphilus, can understand Salome?”
“Then why does she refuse to remain with him always?”
She drew vaguely at her pipe. “Are you not afraid of ‘always,’ Cartaphilus? Do you not tremble at the very thought of it?”
“Always would be as a day with you.”
I took her hands in mine, and caressed them gently. “You are as romantic as you were in the days of Pilate, Cartaphilus…you remember, when you were my royal guard.”
“And you…are as cruel as you were then.”
“I was not cruel, Cartaphilus. I resented your air of invincible masculinity, which made you strut about like a young turkey. You were handsome and clever. But what right had you to assume that Princess Salome would accept your caresses?”…
“One evening, you smiled, and spoke of the love of bees and of flowers…of a conquest, subtle and strong… Was it so wrong to hope?”
“Had you only hoped, perhaps…”
“And in Persia?”
She laughed. “That was merely a little lesson in magic.”
She stretched out her arms underneath her head. I took the pipe out of her mouth, filled it again and replaced it between her lips
“Is it right to always torture me…always, Salome?” I asked. My words seemed to rise on the edge of the smoke, high, high.
“Am… I…torturing you…you?” Her words came down from where mine had stopped, and entered the bowl of my pipe.
“Yes…”
She chuckled.
“I love you, Salome.”
“I know…”
“Do you…love me?”
“Perhaps.”
“Say yes, Salome…for once!”
“For once, yes…yes.”
“Salome, my well-beloved!” I exclaimed, and lifting her head a little, kissed her mouth.
“Salome…your lips are more delicious than crushed honey, daintier than the perfume of violets. Salome, my love…”
Her robes disappeared suddenly, and I could not tell which gleamed the more,—the moon or her body. I embraced her rapturously, murmuring: “Salome…my love…my love… Salome.”