The Emperor Waltz (42 page)
Authors: Philip Hensher
‘He would not listen,’ the slave said. ‘But he would hear what I said, the words, and they would stay with him after my death.’
The merchant’s daughter did not pay any attention to this. Her slave, dressing the bruises on her arm with an almond paste late that night, was often full of what she should do for her beliefs. The merchant’s daughter believed that she found solace in the statement of what her Christ would have expected of her, and also in the flagellation she subjected herself to for not doing any such thing. The merchant’s daughter listened patiently, but she found this tiresome, as she found any situation on this earth that would never change.
At the end of the next week, she lost the child she had been bearing. There was no obvious cause. There was nothing she had eaten and no exercise she had been taking. She had not gazed upon a nomad, or upon a virgin. She had had the child only for a time and then it was gone in a flush of blood.
But she was saddened by the death of this child. She did not know why. She found herself saying to her slave that she did not know why her God allowed such things to happen. It would be better to think and feel nothing about it, like a dog that loses a puppy and then quickly forgets.
‘We do not know that they forget, of course,’ she said.
‘We are not animals,’ her slave said. ‘We know that the child had a soul that is now gone to another place.’
‘How can you know that?’ the merchant’s daughter said, then quickly forbade her to answer. She knew what the slave said to all questions of that sort. ‘How does your God permit us to feel such pain and anguish when there is nothing to be gained from it?’
‘Because we are not animals, and we are not the wild men in the desert, beyond feeling and beyond sympathy,’ the slave said. ‘Because we mean something to each other, whoever we are. We want to speak to each other, and when we cannot, what we are made of – it fails. Even Copreus is not like that. Even the wild men of the desert. They have a spark that flies upwards, too.’
The merchant’s daughter did not understand, quite, but she pressed on. ‘And why does your God allow such people as the wild men of the desert? Why does he not speak to them? And why the death of my child? Is it to allow myself to be strong and silent and not to speak of it?’
‘One day my God will speak to the wild men of the desert,’ the slave said.
The merchant’s daughter had been running a comb through her red hair. Now, with a single gesture, she smoothed it back behind her shoulders and prepared to sit while it was pinned up. She ran her palms over it again: it was quite smooth. The slave began to show her how her God permitted suffering in the world.
In the dreadful wastes of the desert, far away, the camels formed a ridge. The nomads in their blue cloaks sheltered behind them out of habit, though the night was windless and cool. There was the noise of groaning and creaking somewhere far off. It was the sound of the sands, singing. The men sat in a circle and listened. Their faces were lined and blank, their eyes bright in the dusk. One of them began, without invitation or preamble, to tell the story.
‘Once there was an evil king,’ the storyteller said. ‘And the evil king ruled over an evil kingdom and the men were slaves and they lived inside and were never permitted to see the sky. The king kept every horse in the kingdom for himself, and every camel. One day She-of-They came to the city, and she saw the great walls and the great gates, and she dismounted and beat on the gates and the gates were opened to her. The gatekeeper had never himself seen a horse like the horse She-of-They rode upon, or a camel like the camels that bore her goods and her household. She-of-They said that she would come inside and she would meet with the three sons of the evil king. And the evil king heard of this and said, “She is our enemy that would meet with my sons,” and he sent word that his eldest son would meet with her in a room, in the palace. And She-of-They went to the palace, and she entered into a room full of spun gold …’
‘Ah,’ his audience said, and muttered, remembering the room full of spun gold. It made the story for them.
‘… and she waited, and in a moment a man came in and was announced as the eldest son of the evil king. But it was not the eldest son of the evil king. It was only a servant, and when She-of-They was still suspecting, he brought out his sword and he smote her head from her shoulders. But a strange thing happened. She-of-They reached down and she picked up her head, and she placed it back on her shoulders, and it was as if nothing had ever happened. The head laughed, and then it opened its mouth, and said,
‘“You can take of me my life,
You can make of me your wife,
But I cannot be harmed by a liar.”
‘And then the executioner fell down dead, because of what She-of-They had said. And the next day, She-of-They demanded to see the evil king’s second son, and she was shown into a room full of beaten silver, and in came a man. But it was not the evil king’s second son. It was another executioner. And he swung his axe, and he separated the head of She-of-They from her shoulders, and it fell to the floor, and he believed that she was dead. But the body reached its arms down, and it picked up the head, and she placed it on her shoulders, and it spoke. It said,
‘“You can take of me my life,
You can make of me your wife,
But I cannot be harmed by a liar.”
‘And the second executioner fell down dead, as he was a liar and had attempted the life of She-of-They.
‘So the three brothers spoke with their father, the evil king, and they decided that though the eldest brother would not speak to She-of-They and the middle brother would not speak to She-of-They, the youngest brother could be spared, and he would speak to her. And the next day She-of-They, when she came to the palace, she was shown into a room made of rock, and she waited. And through the door came the evil king’s youngest son. And though he had a dagger in his hand to kill She-of-They he did not want to kill her. She came to him and she bared her throat, and she said,
‘“You may take of me my life,
You can make of me your wife,
Because you, alone in the kingdom, are not a liar.”
‘And he dropped the dagger on the floor, because he had no need of it, and because She-of-They had sacrificed herself for him, he took her and placed her in the locked rooms in the palace, and she never left again, and nobody ever saw her again, and her horses and camels were given to the youngest son. And in time the evil king died, and the eldest son and the middle son were defeated by the youngest son, who was brave and no liar, and he became a good king to his people because of the sacrifice that She-of-They had made in coming to the people who were her enemies.’
The sun had fallen below the horizon as the storyteller spoke. As he reached the end, the listeners could no longer see him in the complete darkness. They rolled away, binding themselves in their cloaks, the material about their faces. They shuffled to make a hollow in the sand below their camel’s flank. Soon there was the noise of sleeping in the black desert. They dreamt of horses.
The merchant’s daughter and her slave left the house early one morning. Once, before her marriage, she had walked short distances, such as the trip to the marketplace or to the temple. But her husband expected her to travel in the incognito of the palanquin, now that she was married. Her parents made no comment, but they were not surprised by her appearance in state on the ordinary occasion of her visit. She took the palanquin, both she and the slave inside, she sprawling at full length, her slave kneeling. The house porters were expert, with no tossing or pitching. She liked to see the life of the street through the chinks in the curtain. On the corner, there was a familiar beggar. His face was rotted away, a sad black hole in the place where the nose would have been. She had no idea what his name was, and had never heard anyone refer to him in any way. She rapped on the wooden roof of the palanquin, painted with stars, and the porters set it down. Inside, she quickly wrapped her face and head in a veil, and held her hand out for the shawl that her slave always brought, in case of evening chills. It was a beautiful, fine, expensive shawl in a pale green; it would slip through a ring. It had been given to her by her mother, whose shawl it had originally been. Now it was folded up. She thought how uncomfortable the beggar must be, unable to veil himself from the hot wind and flung fine sand. And if he did not need it, he could sell it for food. In a moment, she slipped out of the palanquin. She was out of a world of shadows and dimness, where nothing was clearly seen, and into the world. She was veiled in the heat, but there was still much more of the world there for her, and she was standing in it among humanity. She shocked herself with the feeling of joy. She stood before the beggar, who must have seen that she was a great lady, and kept his eyes lowered as if in shame. ‘Take this,’ she said, and handed the beautiful green shawl to him. She did not wait to hear his thanks or gratitude. She turned quickly and slipped back into the shadowed light of the palanquin, not looking to see what the porters thought of her gift. She rapped again on the ceiling, unveiling herself. Her slave bowed her head as if expecting a beating. The palanquin was raised, and lumbered on.
‘The problem in the household,’ her husband said one evening, ‘the problem in the household is solved.’
‘What problem was that?’ his father said. His father and mother, a brother and his wife and a visiting administrator from Carthage with his secretary were dining. Her father-in-law the governor, especially, wanted the evening to go well. He was not in good odour, she gathered. The administrator and the secretary had spent the previous three days going through the governor’s books, and had arrived at tonight’s dinner without having refreshed, in a perfunctory mood. They talked mostly to each other, waving away delicacies one after another. The food had been carefully ordered – it was not always what could be wished, but tonight, she thought, it was good.
‘There is a spread of Christians in the town,’ her husband said.
‘The Christians!’ her husband’s mother came in. ‘They take children out to desert caves and sacrifice them. They drink their blood. It terrifies the children – my grandchildren, I should say.’ She emphasized each word at the end, raising herself upright on her elbow. She was hardly looking at all with her purple-painted eyes at the visiting administrator, who was not paying attention.
‘It has come into our house,’ the merchant’s daughter’s husband said. Against cries of shock from his mother, he went on, ‘My man Copreus warned me of it, and with my authority, he investigated. It is lucky, in a way. They are a secret sect, but they wish always to recruit new members. So they grow, but for the same reason, they risk always being discovered, when their persuasion falls on stony ground. Copreus found a gardener’s boy weeping in the shade, and when he asked him why, the boy said that the Christians had found him. I think he thought they would sacrifice him in time.’
‘As very well he might,’ the governor’s wife said.
‘The Emperor has passed a decree, which seems to be working well. Even here. They have been stopped in this house,’ the merchant’s daughter’s husband said. In the room, the musicians began to play a dance of some sort, as if in celebration of his words. ‘I took immediate action, this evening, when he told me what he had discovered, and the culprit has been taken away. My dear …’
He turned to the merchant’s daughter. She had known what he was about to say: she had known it since the men came into her house, and a housemaid had come to arrange her hair rather than her usual maid.
‘You will just have to manage for the time being,’ he said. ‘It was your maid who was so hard at work. I hear from the courts that it is really occupying half of their time. These things come and these things go.’
She noticed that the visiting administrator had stopped talking to his secretary and, for a minute or two, had been paying some attention.
‘What a dreadful shock,’ her mother-in-law said. ‘You must be dreadfully shocked, my dear. What did you do tonight? How did you manage? You look so pretty,’ she went on, dropping into the undertone she always used when feminine trivialities were the subject.
‘A housemaid did my hair,’ the merchant’s daughter said. ‘It was quite all right, really. I don’t suppose it is as hard as all that.’
‘I think tomorrow we are going to have to talk about the cost of the marble in the forum,’ the administrator said, his voice harsh and unmodulated. The governor turned to him and smiled, his head nodding as he tore a roasted blackbird with his teeth.
That night, the merchant’s daughter dreamt. She was alone in the desert. The light was murky and obscure, and her eyes struggled against it. Something moved, gracelessly, from side to side, coming towards her slowly. She stood and did not move. The shape approached, and it was a man; it was a great slab of an Egyptian, stripped and huge, his hands spread out against her like the seats of stools. She knew that she would have to fight him when he came to her. In a series of movements, agonizingly slow, he raised his hands to her face, and she brought her hands to him. They were so small, her hands, and white against his dark rough ones. The touch of his hands was shocking, overwhelming, crushing, and she pushed against them as one might push against a wall. There was such pain in her hands and wrists that she almost cried out. But there was nothing in her throat to cry with. She pushed again, and with a feeling of righteous rage, she pushed a third time. The mouth of the naked Egyptian gaped open, and quite suddenly they were fighting. She felt a great power falling through her like the blaze of the sun. All at once it was quite over and the Egyptian fell away from her.
She woke alone, and on her knees gave thanks for what she was about to do. The next day, early in the morning, she dressed and went to the gates of the town’s prison and, after some difficulty and confusion, was admitted to the prison and to the company of four Christians, including her maid. The gates were shut and locked behind her, and in the dark, they taught her to sing. The Holy Spirit descended upon them, like a sea eagle hovering above its helpless screaming prey.