“It is said that he was passing down a hall in his uncle’s palace when he heard a girl’s voice, sweet and sad, singing an old ballad. He was alone, and he searched the corridors for the source of the music and, unable to find it, finally called out. As soon as he spoke, the music ceased. Then he thought of his cousin Taur; he was certain that he had happened upon the regions of her prison. Knowing this, he could think of nothing else and returned there every day, carrying a taper and pounding vainly on the walls. The more he searched, the less he found, the more he craved a meeting. After all, he reasoned, she is my cousin; there can be no impropriety in my meeting her just once, simply to congratulate her on her engagement! But his determination was more than that which a kind relation would feel. He was stirred by the rumors of her perilous beauty. And Taur, in her carpeted prison, heard the faint cries of the unknown man and drew her shawl about her, trembling.
“At last his persistence began to drive her mad; she was cold around the heart, afraid to play her lyre or even to speak. And her curiosity, too, began to grow like a dark flower, so that her breath was nearly cut off by its thorns. Her women saw how she languished, losing her aspect of a bride, which they had tended so carefully by feeding her on almond paste. ‘O teldamas,’ they cried, ‘what can satisfy your heart?’ And she answered weakly: ‘Bring me the name of the man in the corridor.’
“So it began. Once she knew his name, she became captivated by the thought of her cousin, as he was by the thought of her. The poet says that she ignited her heart by touching it to his; and after that there was no peace for either of them. Taur began to harass her women, demanding that they arrange a meeting, which they refused with exclamations of terror. She became moody and would not eat, but played her lyre and sang, so that the shouts of her distant lover grew in their inarticulate frenzy. ‘Bright were her tears, falling like almond blossom’—that is Lian. Who knows where she discovered such bitter strength? Where did this secluded girl develop the strength to threaten to kill herself—to attempt to dash her brains on the wall? One supposes that she inherited the truculence of her father, along with his cunning of a teiva merchant… for just as he had satisfied a prince to whom he had lost everything at cards by promising him this pure and unseen girl as a bride, so Taur entangled her women in a net of lies and threats so that they lived in dread of the tales she might tell her father. They wept: she was a cruel girl; how could she threaten to say that they were thieves, so that their eyes would be put out with a hot iron? How could she force them to risk their lives, how could she endanger her cousin whom she loved—that unfortunate youth in the corridor? But she would not be dissuaded, and at last they reached a compromise: they would allow her to meet with the young man on the condition that they did not see one another: the women themselves would hold a silk scarf between them, so that the youth would not be deranged by the sight of her.”
Auram paused. Outside the sleet was whispering in the stunted trees by the road; a donkey cart went by, creaking. The priest looked dreamily at the lamp, his painted eyes glowing deeply, slowly filling up with the tale’s enchantment. “One wonders,” he said softly, “how it was. One can imagine her: what it would mean, the voice in a distant passageway. She had books, after all. So no doubt her cousin became the symbol of what she lacked: the sky, the trees, the world. But he…” The priest gave me a brilliant, significant glance. “What of Hivnawir? He had everything. Everything: riches, women, horses, taverns, the stars! That is why I said ‘the courage of Hivnawir.’ It is the courage to choose not what will make us happy, but what is precious.
“Well, the cousins met. They knelt on either side of the silken scarf, neither one touching it. They spoke for hours. For days they met like that, weeks, months, speaking and whispering, singing and reciting poetry. A strange idyll, among the servant women tortured by dread, the lover risking with every meeting a sword in his reckless neck! In the stone room with its harsh outlines disguised by hanging tapestries, in the perfumed air of the artful ventilation… The love of voices, naturally, produces the love of lips. Imagine them pressing their ardent mouths to the silk. The poet tells us that Hivnawir outlined her shape with his hands and saw her ‘like a wraith of fog in a glass.’”
The priest sat silent now, tracing a scar in the dark old table, his face still haunted by a fluttering smile. He sat that way until the sleet stopped and the night crier passed outside, wailing “Syen s’mar,” which is in Kestenyi: “The streets are closed.”
At last I asked: “And what happened to them?”
“Oh!” The priest looked startled and then waved his hand, conjuring vague shadows. “A series of troubles—a muddled escape, an attempt on the life of the girl’s intended—at last, a sword in the back for the tragic youth. And Taur burned herself in her apartments, having chosen to meet her love and to wound her father by destroying her wondrous beauty. The barb went deep, deep! For Rothda hanged himself in the arbor where, in other times, he had played omi with the princes of that cruel city. A famous tale! It has been used as a warning against incest and as a fanciful border for summer tablecloths. But think, avneanyi—” He touched my wrist; his teeth glinted. “They never saw one another face to face.”
Village of Klah-ne-Wiy, I remember you. I remember the shabby streets and the cold, the Tavrouni women in striped wool blankets, the one who stood by her cart selling white-hot odash and picking her ear with a thorn, the one who laughed in the market, her dark blue gums. I remember her, the flyaway hair and strange flat coppery face and the way she tried to sell us a string of yellow beads, a love charm. She pointed the way to the sheep market, and Miros and I bought sheepskin coats and caps and leather sleeping-sacks to survive the cold of the inn.
Cripples begged for alms outside the market. A great bull was being slaughtered there, and expectant women stood around it with pails. One of them clutched Miros’s arm and quoted toothlessly: “The desert is the enemy of mankind, and the feredhai are the friends of the desert.” Geometric patterns in rough ochre framed the doorways, turning violet in the pageantry of dusk. By the temple smoked the lanky black-haired men called the bildiri, those whose blood mingled the strains of the Valley and the plateau.
Only once we saw the true feredhai, and they were unmistakable. They came through the center of Klah-ne-Wiy in a whirl of noise and dust. There were perhaps seven of them and each man rode a separate skittering mount, and yet they moved together like an indivisible animal. They drove the dogs and children into the alleys, and women snatched their braziers out of the way, and someone shouted as baskets overturned, and yet the riders did not seem to notice but passed with their heads held high, men and ponies lean and wiry and breathing white steam in the cold. The men were young, mere boys, and their long hair was ragged and caked with dust. Their arms were bare, their chests criss-crossed with scabbards and amulets. They passed down the road and left us spitting to clear the dust from our teeth and disappeared in the twilight coloring the hills.