Long before the night wore out, the red dawn—no longer peach but bloodied wine—he knew in his heart’s heart he had not won her. And never could. None could.
None.
3. The Reject
All that day-night-day, Copper paced his apartment.
It comprised three rooms and a private courtyard on the roof. He went from one area to another, climbing up, descending, walking, turning. Now and then he touched something. A small statue of a dancing lion, a cup of black onyx, a little dagger of twisted wood Leopard had carved and given him when Copper was only five years old.
Copper wept. Chided himself and blotted up his tears. Cursed Fate and The Woman, cursed life and the world. Flung himself in a chair, wrote down his thoughts without coherence, got up and paced again, wept again, chided and blotted and cursed—again. Again.
Gods knew, if only Leopard had loved only men. There were male men who did so. Some of Copper’s nicest ‘lads’ were like that, and those like Copper, if not pretty enough to make their way, came to such gallants for solace. One indeed had married a male man from Copper’s wine-house, and they had lived happy now three whole years.
But Leopard was only Man.
So many men, despite dalliances with their own gender, were only—Men.
And so: The Woman of the Crimson City.
Copper knew, despite his hopes and wishes, and Leopard’s glamour and virtue, that The Woman would not want him for long. She had never wanted any of the ones who devoted their dreams to her and then passed all the required examinations but one. For to meet and make love with The Woman was the Ultimate Test. No man had ever passed it. Evidently. Or she would not be there still, hung like an over-ripe yellow fruit, cruel and evil with her thorns, on the tree of human longing.
How the gods must hate mankind, to do this to them.
The hours ground away under Copper’s pacing, weeping and cursing.
About sunfall, the man he had sent to watch the Palace’s Lower Gate bounded up Copper’s stair and beat on the door.
“What’s happened, Heron?”
But Heron was crying. His tears spoke loudly, in an uncouth bellow.
“So then,” said Copper, gripping in his own emotion, “did he emerge from the Gate?”
“Yes, oh yes—oh gods, I’ve seen old gentlemen whose white beards brushed the earth, whose backs were humped with age like a camel’s—and they walked more sprightly than your brother, lovely Leopard.”
“Where did he take himself?”
“Towards the bank of the river—”
“And—?”
“And my companion, Lamplit, our best runner as you know, sped after and caught him. Then Tomorrow, my other friend from next door, ran up too. They took hold of him and are bringing him here now. But slowly. He can barely move, Copper Coin.”
Copper whispered a curse then that curled up the air of the apartment. The sun too seemed to wither in it and threw herself off over the precipice of the horizon. Dusk veiled everything. Nightingales and tweet-birds sang from the tall scent tree outside.
One more hour later, when the sky was black and the bright windows and rosy lanterns of the city showed the path, Lamplit and Tomorrow helped Leopard into Copper’s reception chamber.
“Drink this.”
“Nothing. Please. Give me nothing.”
“Darling Leopard. It’s myself offers the drink. Look. Do you see me? Your brother. “
“I see you, dear. But take the cup away. The dead need no food, no water.”
Finally, persuaded to one sip, the kindly soporific in the drink took its effect.
Leopard was laid on the second bed, his head on pillows of silk.
But even sleeping, his face was old, and ruinous. He looked like a man who must soon die.
The physician came. This doctor was of high quality and learning, but once Copper told him why Leopard was distressed and ill the physician bowed his head. “I shall do whatever I am able. But I also had a brother once. This was thirteen years ago. He too went after The Woman, and won through to her. When she cast him out he lived only two months. We watched him night and day in case he tried to poison or hang himself. But in the end, without assistance of bane or rope or blade, he simply died. It was through his death I set myself to learn medicine, to understand the windings of the human intellect. But I doubt I can help you, or your brother.”
“She’s vilely wicked,” said Copper, “The Woman. A demoness sent up from the hells to destroy us.”
“Perhaps,” said the physician.
Then Leopard woke up and the physician set to work on him. Seven days, and the nights between them, trudged by.
Then seven more.
Copper went on with his usual duties, but refused all those clients he normally had pleasure with. He explained to them privately that he could experience no pleasure at this time. Only Prince Nine was permitted to arrive frequently, and he simply to talk with Copper, gratis, to steady him and try to ease his sorrow.
In the end Leopard began to be seen. He would walk in the courtyard or sit there quietly on his own. At evening, sometimes, he would dine at the communal table of the wine-house, if not in Copper’s apartment.
Regular customers treated him with care, and with respect and sympathy. If they were jealous of his having been a finalist, and briefly winning The Woman and lying with her, they curbed themselves. Decidedly they could see where his moment of success had afterwards dragged and abandoned him. He seemed quite soulless. He seemed part dead.
One evening a newcomer entered the wine-house, and sat down at the main table. He was an older man, of fine physical appearance, and perhaps a philosopher.
He spoke directly to Leopard, in an actor’s clear voice. “So you are the unlucky fellow who fucked the great bitch in the Palace?” he said.
Instantly silence deafened the room.
Heron, who had been eating, got up without a word and went straight to knock at Copper’s door, despite the fact Copper was just then entertaining a prince of the High Family of the Ninety-Two.
Leopard however raised his head and looked at the newcomer.
“I am he. But she is not a bitch. She is beautiful, and by me beloved, and will be so until the day of my ending.”
“Very well,” agreed the philosopher, if so he was. “Very well. Maybe she is a bitch since only circumstances have made her one. As also time has made her older and fatter. But I think a snake gave her such cold eyes.”
Leopard lowered his gaze. He did not reply.
The philosopher went on, in his clear and reasonable voice, “Surely you, or some of you here at the very least, must understand why men venerate and think such a creature wonderful?”
A man cried out: “Because she is The Woman.”
“Just so,” said the philosopher. “The only woman. That is,” he amended, “the only known woman yet living in our city, or in the existing world, who has not yet died of the excessive bearing of male children, or grown into an ancient hag.” A vast sigh, nearly a groan, curdled from the room-full of men. It passed on into the courtyard, where the other men had, many of them, risen and come to see who spoke such words. It drifted up to balconies of the wine-house and surrounding buildings, and was echoed back from them. It fled along the white streets and found some kind of other echo always there, in every masculine throat, in every masculine mind. For there were only men in the Crimson City, as the philosopher had stated. Men who were feminine or men who were male, and some who were gifted with both states, and those who were young or old. Or there were a few old, old women who had somehow survived relentless decades of child-bearing, scorned and sworn at on every occasion, which had been by now every occasion without exception, that they had produced, rather than a daughter, yet another son.