Short Fiction, Aleksandr Kuprin [the speed reading book txt] 📗

by priests-castrates, and, even now, as one of them fanned her head with measured strokes of a fan made of peacock feathers, others were seated upon the floor drinking in the beauty of the queen with eyes of insane bliss. Their nostrils were dilating and quivering from the scent of her body wafted to them, and they sought with trembling fingers to touch unperceived the hem of her light raiment, barely stirring in the breeze. Their excessive, never satiated sensuousness spurred on their imagination to its utmost limits. Their inventiveness in the pleasures of Kybele and Ashera surpassed all human possibilities. And being jealous of the queen toward one another, toward all men, women, and children⁠—being jealous of her own self⁠—they adored her even more than Isis, and, loving her, hated her as an inexhaustible, fiery fountainhead of delectable and cruel sufferings.

Dark, evil, fearful, and fascinating rumours were current about Queen Astis in Jerusalem. The parents of beautiful boys and girls hid their children from her gaze; men dreaded to utter her name upon the conjugal couch, as an omen of defilement and disaster. But agitating, irresistible curiosity drew all souls to her, and gave all bodies up into her power. They who had but once experienced her ferocious, sanguinary caresses could nevermore forget her, and became her lifelong, pitiful, spurned slaves. Ready, for a renewed possession of her, to commit every sin, to endure every degradation and crime, they came to resemble those unfortunates who, having once tasted of the bitter drink of the poppy from the Land of Ophir⁠—the drink that bestoweth sweet dreams⁠—will never more draw away from it, bowing down before it only and honouring it alone, until exhaustion and madness cut short their life.

The fan swayed slowly in the sultry air. In silent rapture the priests contemplated their dread sovereign. But she seemed to have forgotten their presence. Having moved the curtain slightly aside, she was ceaselessly gazing across toward that part of the altar where at one time, out of the dark fissures of the ancient curtains of beaten gold, was to be seen the beautiful, radiant countenance of the king of Israel. Him alone did the spurned queen, the cruel and lecherous Astis, love with all her flaming and depraved heart. His glance of a fleeting moment, a kind word of his, the touch of his hand, did she seek everywhere, and found not. Upon triumphal levees, court banquets, and upon the days of judgment, did Solomon pay his respects, due a queen and the daughter of a king; but his soul was not quick unto her. And the proud queen would often command herself to be borne at set hours past the House at Lebanon, to glimpse, even though afar and unnoticed, through the heavy stuffs of her litter, the proud, unforgettably splendid visage of Solomon, in the midst of the throng of courtiers. And long since her flaming love had grown so closely joined to searing hatred that Astis herself was unable to tell them apart.

In former days Solomon also had visited the temple of Isis on great festal days, had brought the goddess offerings, and had even accepted the title of her hierophant⁠—second after that of the Pharaoh of Aegypt. But the horrible mysteries of “The Sanguine Sacrifice of Fecundation” had turned his mind and heart from the service of the Mother of Gods.

“He that is castrated through ignorance or by force, or through accident or disease, is not abased before God,” the king hath said. “But woe be unto him that doth maim himself with his own hand.”

And now for a whole year his couch in the temple had remained vacant. And in vain did the flaming eyes of the queen now gaze feverishly at the unstirred hangings.

In the meanwhile, the wine, hippocras, and the stupefying burnt perfumes were already having a perceptible effect upon those gathered within the temple. Cries, and laughter, and the ring of silver vessels falling upon the stone floor came with greater frequency. The grand, mysterious moment of the sanguinary sacrifice was approaching. Ecstasy was overcoming the faithful.

With an abstracted gaze the queen surveyed the temple and the believers. Many honoured and illustrious men of Solomon’s retinue and many of his generals were here: Ben-Geber, ruler over the region of Argob; and Ahimaaz, who had Basmath, the daughter of the king, to wife; and the witty Ben-Dekar; and Zabud, who bore, in accordance with eastern customs, the high title of the King’s Friend; and the brother of Solomon by the first marriage of David⁠—Dalaiah, a debilitated, half-dead man, who had prematurely fallen into idiocy through excesses and drinking. They were all⁠—some through faith, some through ulterior designs, others out of adulation, and still others for lecherous purposes⁠—the adorants of Isis.

And now the eyes of the queen rested, long and attentively, intent in thought, on the comely, youthful face of Eliab, one of the officers of the king’s bodyguards.

The queen knew why his swarthy face was aflame with such a vivid colour, why his eyes were directed with such passionate yearning hitherward, upon the curtains, scarce stirring from the touch of the queen’s beautiful hands. Once, almost in jest, submitting to a momentary caprice, she had made Eliab to pass a whole night of felicity with her. In the morning she had let him depart, but ever since, for many days running, she had beheld everywhere⁠—in the palace, in the temple, in the streets⁠—two enamoured, submissive, yearning eyes, that followed her entranced.

The dark eyebrows of the queen contracted, and her green, elongated eyes suddenly darkened from a fearful thought. With a barely perceptible motion of her hand she ordered the castrate to lower the fan and said quietly:

“Get hence, all of you. Hushai, thou shalt go and summon to me Eliab, the officer of the king’s guard. Let him come alone.”

XI

Ten priests, in white vestments, maculated with red, stepped out to the centre of the altar. Following them came two other