Our bodies mingled, merged, interpenetrated, until we were like one great marble column, inextricable.
“Do you love me, Salome?”
“Yes, Cartaphilus, I love you.”
“But you are not Salome.”
“Who am I?”
“You are… Mary Magdalene!”
She laughed a little.
“I have found you at last, Mary! And your eyes are not yours.”
“Whose are they?”
“They are John’s…the friend of my youth! You are Mary and John. Cartaphilus has found at last love’s perfection!”
“But you are not Cartaphilus!”
“Who am I?”
She whispered: “You are he…”
“Who?”
“He who returns from the uttermost rim of time, who was one with me before the soul split asunder into male and female—my lover before Adam and Eve were shaped by the Potter.”
Her voice died in the distance, and the smoke wreathed itself like a serpent around her naked limbs.
Salome greeted me. “You have slept profoundly, Cartaphilus.”
“And you?”
“I could not sleep. I watched the moon all night, meditating on the meaning of time and space.”
I stared at her.
She smiled. “Cartaphilus is still a little asleep.”
“Perhaps. How shall one distinguish between sleep and waking?”
“It is very difficult, for frequently they merge into one another.”
What had happened? Had I only dreamed? Had I really possessed Salome? Was it merely the effect of my poppied pipe? Was that exquisite pleasure a woman…a demon…or a cloud of smoke? I scrutinized Salome’s face. Did she really resemble Mary and John? Did I remember them sufficiently to be certain?
“Yes, Cartaphilus, all things are relative…dream and waking…memory and forgetfulness…and even our stay in the desert. We must go on. Kotikokura, is everything ready?”
Kotikokura nodded and grinned.
“Kotikokura, have I dreamt or was it reality? Did I at last find my perfect love? Was Salome mine for a night?”
He grinned.
I shook him. “You must tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“You were there.”
“I slept.”
“You lie, Kotikokura.”
He shook his head.
“Cartaphilus must know!”
He grinned.
I raised my fist. “Tell me!”
“I slept.”
I dug into my brain, picked each infinitesimal detail, constructed pattern after pattern. Could this be a dream? Could that? Was this reality? Or this? Had I mistaken the reflection of the moon for the glamour of her body? Was it merely the smoke, assuming the shape of Mary Magdalene… Was it the stars I saw or the eyes of John…?
I passed from doubt to certainty, from certainty to doubt, from elation to profound depression,—and always at the end, I rejected everything, as if I had been pouring sand from one hand to the other, spilling a little each time until nothing remained.
“Woman, even Salome, always prefers mystery to truth and simplicity.”
“And man—even Cartaphilus—always makes the mistake of dividing the human race into distinct elements, calling certain characteristics masculine, and others feminine. Yet, he has lived long enough to know that there is no clear division between the sexes. A woman may have everything save the loins of man and may still be a woman. A female’s hysterical scream may issue piercingly from a masculine throat. Every creature possesses the stigmata of both sexes… Every man is a fraction of a woman. Every woman is a fraction of a man. Each retains some aspect—some reminiscence, mental or anatomical—of a time when both sexes were one… Is not the son of Hermes and Aphrodite a god?”
“All this is true, Salome. Nevertheless—”
“It is Kotikokura who speaks in you, Cartaphilus!”
“Alas! I can blame no one for your perversity!”
“I am surprised,” she laughed, “that you have not invoked Lilith, the demon woman who was before Eve!”
“Lilith! Lilith!”
She continued to laugh.
“You are as wise and as cruel and as beautiful as Lilith! You are Lilith!”
“And you… Lucifer, perchance.”
“And Kotikokura… Adam, the seed.”
“We have reconstructed the cosmos, have we not, Cartaphilus?”
“We have forgotten Jehovah.”
“True… Jehovah and Eve.”
“Eve,—is she not merely the earth?”
“And Jehovah the clouds?”
“How easy it is to build a universe, Salome! How difficult to know whether one has kissed the lips of Salome or the libidinous lips of a Succubus who steals the strength of men’s loins in their sleep…?”
We were in sight of civilization again. I took Salome’s hands in mine. I looked at her long. “You are beautiful beyond compare, Salome. Your mouth inflames more than the kiss of a thousand lips…but it is no doubt best for Cartaphilus not to taste it, except in dreams…”
“You say this, Cartaphilus, because you no longer desire me.”
“It may be I no longer desire you,” I said, irritated. “It may also be that we have analyzed ourselves too minutely, to accept love as reality… We have crushed a star into fragments, and the winds have blown the flames and the ashes across the cosmos.”
“Cartaphilus and Salome are the two sides of a coin…forever together, yet never facing each other,” Salome replied.
“Neither,” I conceded, “is complete without the other.”
“Quite so, Cartaphilus.”
“We shall soon part.”
“Yes.”
“It is best so.”
“It is.”
“This time, however, let there be no pranks when we meet again…no magic.”
“Perhaps, a little before infinity, the two parallel lines will meet…” At the gate of the city, we embraced. Her lips tasted like Mary’s lips, and as I looked up into her eyes, they were John’s.
“It was not a dream,” I whispered.
She smiled.
XLV: COUNT DE CARTAPHILE AND BARON DE KOTIKOKURA, KNIGHTS—THE ARMY OF JESUS—ETERNAL SCAPEGOAT
WE rode slowly on our small Arab horses. Our armors creaked and moaned gently, while our long swords swung against our sides, like pendulums of clocks that have not been wound and are about to stop. We raised our helmets, looked at each other, and burst into laughter.
“Kotikokura, we have lived long enough to become Christian Knights, fighting for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. Who knows what other curious and ridiculous things we shall fight for in years to come?”
Kotikokura slapped his thighs in merriment.
“Remember, my friend, that I am Count de Cartaphile, and you Baron de Kotikokura, of Provence. Remember, Kotikokura, that we are infinitely more precious than all the princes and the knights of the world and all armies put together. They are mere shadows, moving grotesquely about for a while, and vanishing into the abyss of nothingness. We shall use our swords only in self-defense and remain at a respectable distance always, when a fray is on, for a wound may plague us forever…”
Kotikokura grinned, and clanked his sword.
“Do not forget the magic powder concealed in your belt, in case we are disarmed and in danger. Hurl it against the face of the enemy. He will totter for a few moments. Then gently, silently, he will cross the fine line that separates being from not-being…”
In front of us, the Crusaders, the clamorous army of Jesus,—pedestrians, riders on horseback, on asses, on oxen; wagons and carts, loaded with people and food,—and crosses, crosses, always crosses, rising above the heads of animals and people, stiff like masts of boats, undulating with the rhythm of the carriers, leaning to one side or another.
The army of Jesus! What a strange and uncouth army! Murderers escaping the noose; thieves; bankrupts; unfrocked priests; monks whom even the Church, best of mothers, would no longer shield from the wrath of secular penalty; gamblers; squires whose lands had been confiscated; the younger sons of noblemen, titleless and empty-pursed; and now and then, a poet, a mystic, a mountebank, a jester too caustic for a prince’s court…