B.C.
True? Garlic and a donkey's right one doing the job in 454 B.C.? That strikes me as uncommonly precise dating for you. Generally an era is as close as we get.
But I'm not in error on this one. My experiences that year were wholly unique. Let me show you where it started.
Joe followed him across the garden. Haj Harun kept stopping to admire flowers, referring to each one as a Solomon's-seal.
How can that be? asked Joe. They're all different. Don't they have different names?
Not here. Here every flower is a Solomon's-seal. Do you see that pool, O'Nolan?
Oh nullify me, I do.
Well that's where I met her, right there. And she was holding a Solomon's-seal in her hand.
Who?
The princess.
Where's the sun gone? said Joe. Why is it looking like rain?
Joe sat beside the pool rolling a cigarette while Haj Harun roamed around the edge of the water, absent-mindedly straying into the mud. Every so often he paused and shouted.
Right here, O'Ryan. The pool was also called Bethesda then, did you know that?
O'Ryan am I now, muttered Joe. A constellation prize if that's any help when Jerusalem time is out of control. Daft heavens above and a daft gathering of the clans below in the Holy City, everybody's Holy City.
He leaned back against the bank and closed his eyes.
It smelled like rain but it was a good time for a nap all the same. Late game last night persuading a patriarch from Aleppo to see through his watery eyes. And too much poteen for sure so forty winks, why not
The cigarette fell out of his hand. His head rested on the grass. From far away a faint wail came to him in his sleep.
I'm sinking, O'Meara. Sinking.
And so he is, thought Joe, and so are we all. Hour by hour and day by day, that's what's happening to us.
O'Boyle, clay feet, wailed the voice, louder now and much closer.
That's it all right, thought Joe. That's what we have and none other.
O'Halloran, please
A voice of desperation? Joe opened his eyes and saw Haj Harun stranded in the middle of the pool. The old man had wandered in to see his reflection in the water and gotten stuck in a mudhole. He was in up to his knees and unable to move. Joe scrambled around to find a pole and pulled the old man out.
A close call, whispered Haj Harun.
No it wasn't that bad, said Joe. The water's not very deep.
Not very deep? Two thousand four hundred years ago is not very deep?
Oh that's right, I was forgetting. Now just sit down here beside me where you'll be safe.
Haj Harun smiled and did so.
It's just as well, he whispered. I shouldn't have been over there shouting in the first place. It wouldn't do to have other people overhear. It might excite them too much. I mean sexual exploits like that are unheard of today.
All true.
Well, whispered Haj Harun, where shall I begin?
At the beginning I suppose. Right here by the pool where you met her.
All right, said Haj Harun proudly. And will you keep in mind that I was quite a different person in those days?
I will.
Not at all what you see today? Strong and energetic in my youth? At the peak of my sexual powers?
The very peak, yes.
Well then, I met this Persian princess here and she was so beautiful I immediately fell in love with her. I told her so and she was also taken with me. But first, she said, she wanted to be sure I could truly satisfy her. Of course I already had a great reputation in such matters but still she wanted to be sure, given the fact that she was a princess from Persia while I was just a youth in conquered Jerusalem.
Given. And so?
And so she said she would set three tasks for me to accomplish. The first task was to come to her castle on the next full moon and deflower eighty virgins from her court, in one night, without ejaculating.
Saints preserve us. You were at a peak in those days.
And that was only the first task of three. Are you still with me, O'MacCarthy?
I am in one guise or another, some as unheard of as the sexual adventures of your youth. Now please to proceed. How went this heroic effort?
As required. Fortified by garlic and wearing my leather bracelet and bursting with love for the princess, I did what was necessary.
The donkey's right one was there on the job, I can see that.
Indeed it was. And then the next morning the princess presented me with my second task. I was to spend one full month standing naked in her court with a full erection, and the ladies of the court were to come and go as they pleased in any state of undress, fondling me as they might as frequently as they might, while I was neither to ejaculate nor go limp in all that time. I was to begin this task, O'Gara, on the next full moon.
I sense a lunar presence in all this too. Next?
The full moon came and I took up my position. It was agony but so great was my love for the princess, I managed it. The month was over at last and the princess was growing eager, I could see that.
I can too.
Awed even.
And no wonder, I say. The third and last task then?
She was secretive, she wouldn't tell me what it was going to be. Return at the next full moon, she said, for a deed that will take forty days to perform.
Lunar presence confirmed and a surprise performance surfacing. How to prepare for such a chronic sexual task of unknown nature?
Haj Harun smiled.
Garlic.
Ah, I was forgetting.
I ate garlic.
You did, it's true.
Whole bowls of garlic.
Of course you did.
Then I ate more.
I see.
And more. Yes.
More still.
Good.
Yet more.
Fine.
And more and more and more garlic, just on and on and on.
Oh God that's enough man, my stomach's on fire already, let's go to the event. The night finally came, the full moon was overhead. What state of mind?
No mind, whispered Haj Harun. I was too hot inside. Fires raged within me and flames shot from every orifice, I swear it.
You don't have to, I can see it happening. You were roaring to explode when the princess presented you with your third and final task.
I was, I truly was. Love had overwhelmed me.
Oh Christ man, on with it. Three hundred women? All at once? I can't stand it.
No, whispered Haj Harun. I was ready for something like that but it turned out I was going to be with only one woman.
One? True? Is that all?
Yes, but that was enough, O'Donoghue. In the princess's court, it seemed, was a very large woman who was round and thick in every part, with a measureless treasure and an inexhaustible appetite to have it filled. All day she lay with half-closed eyes thinking of nothing else, and why? Because this large and round and thick woman, sadly, had never had her treasure filled and her appetite slaked. Never once.
Can you imagine her physical and emotional state?
No I can't. It was a case of many having tried, yet never had the large round woman's eyes closed more or opened less? Is that the way it was? No satisfaction ever? Oh help.
That's exactly the way it was. And my third and last task was to do this woman's business unrelentingly for forty days and nights and thereby bring off success.
Not a job for a casual interloper.
By no means, O'Sullivan.
Who?
O'Reilly, I meant. Well I approached the sumptuous couch of this enormous female creature, breathing my withering fumes, and what a creation she was. Her breasts were as vast as sand dunes in the desert, her bellies were a mass of heaving mountains and at the base of these lofty ranges was an immense dripping tangle exuding the steam and the gases and the juices of a primeval jungle. Although to be frank, I've never really seen a jungle.