“No,” said Miros. “I am no one.” He leaned forward and pressed the teiva bottle into my hand. Then, with some difficulty, he pulled himself away from Laris. He disengaged his arm from around her shoulders with infinite tenderness as she grabbed at his tunic with her blunt little hands.
“It’s a mistake,” she said, drunk and sorrowful, when at last he had made her hands return to her lap. “You should have loved me, lammaro. In this house we have no shame. All of us lost our shame when we lost our brothers.”
“Look.” She pointed to her sister, the tall girl in the scarf, who sat mesmerized, opening and closing her hands in the dust of moonlight. “She wears a brodrik, but she’s not a widow. She’s not even married.” The girl’s voice sank to a whisper: “She had a baby, though. We buried it… I know she’s prettier than me, but still, my time is coming. Mun Vothis read it for me in the taubel. A man with a long shadow, she said. He’s supposed to come on a Tolie. But today isn’t Tolie, is it?” She looked around at us, her face brightening.
“It’s Valie.” Miros’s voice was muffled, his face in his hands.
“Ah! That’s good. Look, Amaiv is sleeping…” We all looked down at the child, who was curled up in a ball at my side.
“She would have been the most beautiful,” said Laris.
The next day when we were ready to leave, as I was climbing into my seat, the girl called Laris came rushing out to me. She had not combed her hair, and her scraggly plaits jangled about her face with its broad outlines, its firm, determined jaw. She caught my arm in the shade of a spindly acacia tree by the barren court. “Are you really an avneanyi?” she asked breathlessly. And without waiting for an answer she pressed my palm against her stomach, closing her eyes, in a long, sensual movement. She smelled strongly of teiva and old sweat, and I recoiled. Laris released me, giving her wild laugh. “Thank you, avneanyi,” she said, the shadows of the acacia branches jagged across her smile. “When the time comes, it will quicken me.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Courage of Hivnawir
Loneliness was descending on us: we were reaching the end of the country.
It was not, of course, the end of the known world: that place, marked on maps by the dire word Ludyanith, “without water,” lay on the other side of the desert, beyond the mountains of Duoronwei. Yet the starkness of the hills of the Tavroun, rising about us, dazzled me after the delicacy and warmth of the Valley. For the first time, the road appeared ill-kept. Go on if you like, its pitted stones seemed to say. It is no longer our affair.
One afternoon we left our horse and carriage at the stable in a wayside inn and walked down to the river to board the ferry. Stones rolled beneath our feet and clay-dust rose on the wind, a single-minded and nameless wind, colder than anything I had known before I entered that wilderness. The priest was now able to walk, but he would not speak or remove his cloak, and clung to Miros’s arm with his frail hand as we slipped down to the water’s edge. The ferry was manned by slaves. A young girl on the boat, a bride, wept as we pulled away from the shore, trying to hide her face in her dark mantle.
Across that river, the great Ilbalin, I was to meet the angel’s body. The river, bordering the highlands like the beads on a woman’s skirt, was as sacred to me as it was to the ancient Olondrians and the Tavrouni mountain people, who called it the river of Daimo the God. That water, shining with subdued lights under the gray sky, would carry me to Jissavet and freedom. It stank of fish and rottenness, like the sea. On the deck an Evmeni in a black turban sold images of the gods carved from boars’ teeth.
On the other side stood the village of Klah-ne-Wiy. Mud walls, windy alleys, carts and donkeys, cider in the single unhappy café. The walls and floor were black with smoke, and dried venison was sold on strings, and the villagers did not know how to play londo. Miros brought out his own ivory pieces and tried to teach them, but they looked at him with suspicion and sucked their pipes. Later he burned his hand trying to turn the spit on the wayward fire and one of them treated him with the juice of an aloe.
Auram crept into one of the narrow bedrooms, beckoning for Miros to follow with his trunk. Then Miros came out again, leaving his uncle alone. I did not see Auram again until the kebma hour, when he swept into the common room, his wig purplish in the light of the coal-oil lamps. He wore a dark red costume with a spiked collar and gold-lined cape, and smiled at me coldly with artificial teeth. His eyes blazed. He was splendid, beautifully made like an image of worship. One could believe that he would never die.
After we had eaten, Miros went to sit by the fire. Auram rubbed his waxen, shapely hands so that his rings clicked softly. “You have begun,” he said to me. “Have you not?”
“Begun what?” I said, although I knew.
“You have begun to speak to her. I see it in your face.”
“I do not know what you see,” I said, looking back at him boldly, knowing how my face had changed, become sterner, less readable. But the priest smiled as if he saw only what he had most hoped for, though the light in his eyes, I saw with a start, was made of tears.
“Ah! Avneanyi, it is a privilege to watch you—you have discovered, I think, the courage of Hivnawir. You do not know the story?” He laughed, shaking his head so that the black horsehair of his wig rustled. As he spoke he chased the shadows with his hands, his narrow wrists turning in the thick lace at his cuffs. “Hivnawir,” he breathed, his eyes sparkling, “is a legendary character, one of our greatest lovers. His story comes from the great era of Bain, when the clans of the Ideiri slew one another in the streets… The time when the Quarter of Sighs was built with its sturdy barred windows, when it was known as the Quarter of the Princes. Bain was a city of vicious noblemen and hired assassins, yes, in the very age of its highest artistic achievements! You must imagine, avenanyi… carriages studded with iron spikes, and women who never emerged from their stone palaces… Darvan the Old, who was struck through the eye with an arrow in his conservatory, and Bei the Innocent, who had his ears filled with hot lead! Hivnawir was born in that quarter and little is known of him but that, and the tale of his passion from the beautiful Taur, who was forbidden to him not only because she was promised to another but because she was the daughter of his uncle. Our painters adore this story: they have represented Hivnawir as a beautiful, fiery youth with broad shoulders, often on horseback; somehow he has become associated with oleanders and goes wreathed in white and scarlet flowers through centuries of fine art. As for myself, I have always wondered if he were not wan and petulant, a mediocre young man who simply stumbled into a legend! Perhaps he had a drooping lip or wheezed when he ran too fast. But never mind! The goddess forbid we should dabble in sacrilege! We know no more of the beauty of Taur than we do of the splendor of Hivnawir—her portrait was never painted, despite the fashion of the times. Her tyrannical father, Rothda the Truculent, locked her up in a series of stone chambers, like a poor fly in an amber pendant. It is said that she was too beautiful to be looked upon by men: there is the tale of a Nissian slave who cut his throat for love of her. No man was allowed close to her, not even her own relations: Rothda himself did not visit the little girl for years on end! It was the scandal of the city, as you can imagine; they said it was barbarous, and several young men were killed or maimed in their efforts to rescue the damsel. Soon after she was promised in marriage to one of her father’s creditors, her cousin Hivnawir became inflamed by the thought of her.