Aphrodite, Pierre Louÿs [top 50 books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Pierre Louÿs
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“And if I am caught, my little girls? If I am punished because of you? It is not you who will pay the penalty.”
“Thou wilt not be caught. Thou art alone here. There are no other condemned. Thou has sent away the soldiers. We know all that. Let us in.”
“Well! Do not stay long. Here is the key. It is the third door. Tell me when you go. It is late, and I want to go to bed.”
The good old man handed them the key of beaten iron which hung at his girdle and the two little virgins ran at once, on their silent sandals, through the dark corridors.
Then the gaoler re-entered his office and discontinued his useless surveillance. The punishment of imprisonment was not applied in Greek Egypt and the little white house which the gentle old man had the mission to keep served only to lodge those condemned to death. In the intervals between executions it remained almost abandoned.
At the moment the great key entered the lock, Rhodis arrested her friend’s hand.
“I do not know if I dare see her,” she said. “I loved her well, Myrto… I am afraid… Enter first, wilt thou?”
Myrtocleia pushed the door; but as soon as she had cast her eyes into the room she cried:
“Do not come in, Rhodis! Wait for me here.”
“Oh! what is it? Thou art afraid also… What is on the couch? Is she not dead?”
“Yes. Wait for me… I will tell thee… Stay in the corridor and do not look.”
The body had remained in the frantic attitude which Demetrios had composed to make from it the Statue of Immortal Life. But the transports of extreme joy border upon the convulsions of extreme anguish, and Myrtocleia asked herself what atrocious sufferings, what martyrdom, what rending agonies, had thus writhed the body.
On tiptoe she approached the bed.
The thread of blood continued to flow from the diaphanous nostril. The skin of the body was perfectly white; not a rosy reflection vivified the ephemeral declining statue, but some emerald-colored spots which softly tinted the relaxed body signified that millions of new lives were springing from the hardly cold flesh and demanding their turn.
Myrtocleia took the dead arm and lowered it along the hip.
[paragraph continues] She tried also to stretch out the left leg, but the knee was almost stiff and she was not able to extend it completely.
“Rhodis,” she said in a troubled voice. “Come. Thou canst enter now.”
The trembling child entered the room, her features contracted, her eyes opened.
As soon as they felt themselves together, they burst into long sobs, in each other’s arms.
“Poor Chrysis! Poor Chrysis!” repeated the child.
They kissed each other on the cheek with a desperate tenderness, and the taste of the tears spread upon their lips all the bitterness of their numbed little souls.
They wept, they wept, they gazed at each other sorrowfully and sometimes they spoke both together, in hoarse, rending voices where the words finished with sobs.
“We loved her so much! She was not a friend to us, she was like a very young mother, a little mother between us two…” Rhodis repeated: “Like a little mother…”
And Myrto, drawing near the dead, said in a low voice: “Kiss her.”
They both leaned over and placed their hands upon the bed, and with fresh sobs touched the icy forehead with their lips.
And Myrto took the head between her hands, which plunged into the hair, and she spoke to it thus: “Chrysis, my Chrysis, thou wert the fairest and most adored of women, thou so like the goddess that the people took thee for her. Where art thou now, what have they done with thee? Thou didst live to give good joy. There has never been fruit more sweet than thy kisses, nor light more clear than thine eyes. Thy skin was a glorious robe which thou shouldst never have veiled; delight floated about thee like a perpetual fragrance; when thou didst loose thine hair all glory escaped with it and when thou didst close thy heart men prayed the gods to give them death.”
Crouched on the floor, Rhodis sobbed.
“Chrysis, my Chrysis,” continued Myrtocleia, “yesterday thou wert still living and young, hoping for long days, and now, behold, thou art dead and nothing in the world can make thee say a word to us. Thou hast closed thine eyes; we were not by thee. Thou hast suffered and thou hast not known that we wept for thee behind the walls. With thy dying look thou .hast sought someone and thine eyes have not met our eyes heavy with mourning and with pity.”
The flute-player still wept. The singer took her by the hand.
“Chrysis, my Chrysis, Rhodis and Myrtocleia are very sad. And sorrow more than love unites two clasped hands. They who have once wept together will never part. We will bear thy dear body to earth, Chrysidion, and we will both cut our hair over thy tomb.”
She enveloped the beautiful body in a coverlet of the bed; then said to Rhodis, “Help me.”
They lifted her gently; but the burden was heavy for the little musicians and they laid it for the first time upon the ground.
“Let us do off our sandals,” said Myrto. “Let us walk barefoot in the corridors. The gaoler must have fallen asleep… If we do not waken him we can pass, but if he sees us he will stop us . . As for tomorrow, that does not matter; when he sees the bed empty he will say to the queen’s soldiers that he has thrown the body into the pit as the law requires. Fear nothing, Rhode… Put thy sandals in thy girdle, as I do. And come. Take the body under the knees. Let the feet pass behind. Walk without sound, slowly, slowly…”
AFTER the turning of the second street, they put down the body a second time to do on their sandals. Rhodis’s feet, too delicate to walk bare, were raw and bleeding.
The night was very brilliant. All the town was silent. The iron-colored shadows were outlined sharply in the middle of the street according to the profile of the houses.
The little virgins took up their burden.
“Where are we going?” asked the child. “Where shall we lay her in the earth?”
“In the cemetery of Hermanubis. It is always deserted. She will be in peace there.”
“Poor Chrysis! Would I have thought that on the day of her end I would carry her body, without torches and without a funeral car, secretly, like a stolen thing?”
Then both began to speak volubly as though they were afraid of the silence, side by side with the corpse. The last day of Chrysis’s life overwhelmed them with astonishment. Whence had she the mirror, the comb and the necklace? She herself could not have taken the pearls of the goddess; the temple was so well guarded that a courtesan could not have entered there. Then someone had acted for her? But who? She was not known to have a lover among the stolistes charged with the care of the divine statue. And then, if someone had acted in her place, why had she not denounced him? And, of all things, why these three crimes? To what had they served her, except to deliver her to punishment? A woman does not commit such follies without object, unless she be in love. Was Chrysis, then, in love? And with whom?
“We shall never know,” concluded the flute-player. “She has taken her secret with her and even if she has an accomplice it is not he who will tell us of it.”
Here Rhodis, who had already staggered for some moments, sighed, “I can do no more, Myrto; I can carry her no longer. I should fall on my knees. I am broken with weariness and sorrow.”
Myrtocleia put her arm about her neck.
“Try again, my dear. We must carry her. It is for her life in the underworld. If she has no sepulcher and no obolos in her hand, she will wander forever on the brink of the river of hell and when, in our turn, Rhodis, we descend to the dead, she will reproach us for our impiety and we will not know how to answer her.”
But the child, in her weakness, burst into tears in her embrace.
“Quick, quick,” continued Myrtocleia. “Here comes someone from the end of the street. Place thyself with me before the body. Hide it behind our tunics. If they see it, all will be lost…”
She interrupted herself.
“It is Timon, I recognize him. Timon with four women… Ah! Gods! what will happen! He who laughs at everything will make fun of us… But no; stay here, Rhodis, I am going to speak to him.”
And, seized by a sudden idea, she ran into the street before the little group.
“Timon,” she said, and her voice was full of pleading. “Timon, stop. I beg thee to hear me. I have grave words in my mouth. I must speak them to thee alone.”
“My poor little girl,” said the young man, “how thou art moved! Hast thou lost thy shoulder knot, or has thy doll broken her nose in-falling? That would be a quite irreparable event.”
The young girl threw him a sorrowful look; but already the four women, Philotis, Seso of Knidos, Callistion and Tryphera, fidgeted about her.
“Come, little idiot!” said Tryphera, “if thou hast drained thy nurse dry, we cannot help thee. It is almost day, thou shouldst be in bed; since when do children wander in the moonlight?”
“Her nurse!” said Philotis. “It is Timon she wants.
“Spank her. She deserves a spanking!”
And Callistion, an arm around Myrto’s waist, lifted her from the ground, raising her little blue tunic.
But Seso interposed.
“You are mad,” she cried. “Myrto does not run after men. If she calls Timon, she has other reasons. Leave her in peace and let them get it over with!”
“Well,” said Timon, “what wilt thou of me? Come over here. Speak in my ear. Is it really serious?”
“Chrysis’s body is there, in the street,” said the still trembling young girl. “We are carrying it to the cemetery, my little friend and I, but it is heavy and we ask if thou art willing to aid us . . It will not take long… Immediately after, thou canst rejoin thy women…”
Timon looked at her sincerely.
“Poor girls! And I laughed! You are better than we… Certainly I will help you. Go rejoin thy friend and wait for me—I will come.”
Turning toward the four women: “Go to my house,” he said, “by the Street of the Potters. I will be there in a little while. Do not follow me.”
Rhodis was still seated by the head of the corpse. When she saw Timon coming, she besought: “Do not tell this! We have stolen her to save her shade. Keep our secret, we will love thee well, Timon.”
“Be reassured,” said the young man.
He took the body under the shoulders and Myrto took it under the knees. They walked in silence and Rhodis followed, with short and tottering steps.
Timon did not speak. For the second time in two days, human wrath had taken from him one of his friends; and he asked himself what extravagance thus swept spirits aside from the enchanted road which leads to unclouded happiness.
“Ataraxia!” he thought, “indifference, repose, O voluptuous serenity! Who among men will appreciate you? Man agitates himself, struggles, hopes, when but one thing is precious: to know how to draw from the passing moments all the joys they can give and to leave one’s bed as seldom as possible.”
They arrived at the
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