She clapped her hands. A young slave appeared. She whispered something into his ear.
“Does Cartaphilus enjoy music and dancing?”
“Of course, Princess.” I was piqued at the idea of being interrupted.
What I had taken for marble walls, dissolved and vanished, and the room in which we were became as large as a street. The ceiling was studded with enormous diamonds, which shed a light, soothing and cool like the sun at dawn, when the lower part of its circumference still touches the thin blue line of the mountains.
In the farther corner of the room, several girls were playing Oriental melodies, which were the passionate pulsation of a lover’s blood. Suddenly, strident and insistent, the music changed into a raging sea beating against metal shores.
Naked giants, red-bearded and black, dashed into the room. Their dance mimicked love’s final siege. Was it an amorous embrace? Was it wrestling? Their limbs united, separated and clenched again, until one half lay panting, outstretched under the colossal weight of their conquerors.
The Princess watched the play of their enormous sinews with half-closed eyes.
The bearded giants were followed by clean-shaven men,—black, white and yellow, dancing native dances to which they added movements reminding me of the convulsive spasms with which the body responded to the caresses devised by Flower-of-the-Evening.
These were followed by youths with fleshy hips, whose hair fell over their shoulders in long silken ringlets. Their dancing was almost motionless, like half-congealed waters or wary snakes that creep among the grasses more silently than summer breezes.
The Princess threw a bracelet to one of the dancers. He walked over to her with tiny, mincing steps, balancing his hips like a young Hindu girl, who carries upon her head a crystal vase filled with perfume. Salome caressed him, and bade him sit at her feet. His head against her knee, he remained motionless in an attitude of adoration.
The music played softly a Lesbian air, stirring epicene dreams and shadowy atavistic desires. Girls entered, some tall, slim, with wiry muscles; others, with full-blossomed breasts, wearing like a badge of love, the triangle of Astarte. They formed a semicircle, in the center of which a tall woman, her body half hidden by many veils of various hues, began to dance, first slowly like the young men; but gradually quickening her movements until she seemed like a wind of many colors, turning in a mad spiral.
Salome bade her approach, placed around her neck a gold chain, and embraced her.
The girls sang to the accompaniment of a harp. Slaves shook perfumes out of ivory bowls the shape of roses.
Salome waved her hand. It was as if some divinity had commanded a storm. The bearded men fell upon the women with groans of anguish and delight like wild beasts mating. The women, like maenads, encircled the youths and embraced each other. Bearded giants, full-breasted women, girls indistinguishable from boys, boys hardly distinguishable from maids, curious figures in the chasm between the sexes, all danced to a music that was like a madman’s joy. It was a feast of Priapus, an orgy of sex in which sex over-flowed its limits and blood mingled with kisses. It was a battle of lust punctured by the crash of cymbals and the swish of lashes.
The music died slowly; the dancers, exhausted, dropped to the floor in heaps of two, three or four; the lights dimmed until one could distinguish merely motion, like some ocean tossed by winds blowing in many directions…
Salome clapped her hands. The walls moved back into their original position. The lights shone once more. The storm abated. One heard nothing save the loud yawning of the cub.
Salome brushed aside one of her braids, and looked at me, smiling. I understood what she meant.
“You wish to convey to me by this exhibition that you too have explored the ways and the byways of pleasure,” I said.
“I too,” she said, “have discovered unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged. I have traversed the two hundred and sixty ways of love, the thirteen secret ways that are known only to the Emperor, and the seven ways that are not known even to the Emperor himself. I seek something beyond the ultimate portal of pleasure…”
“Is this orgasmic medley your definition of love, Princess?” I queried.
“Love, Cartaphilus, what is love?”
The silk curtain stirred a little, and the long, hairy arm of Kotikokura moved slowly in, followed by his head.
“Who is that?” Salome asked.
“My slave, Your Highness. His fidelity is so great that he fears to leave me alone.”
Kotikokura withdrew.
“Is he a man…or a beast?” She sat up, wrinkled her brow a little, as Damis used to do, when very much interested. “Who is he, Cartaphilus?”
“A denizen of the forest, Princess. I found him in Africa.”
“In Africa?”
“A curious country…peopled with extraordinary beings.”
“What is his name?”
“Kotikokura.”
“Kotikokura…” The name seemed to float like music from her throat.
“It means ‘The Accursed One.’ ”
“The Accursed?”
“He dared to laugh at the gods…”
She looked at me, fathoming my thoughts.
“It is not difficult to become a god, Cartaphilus…”
Again her eyes traveled to the curtain where the eyes of Kotikokura gleamed.
“Cartaphilus, will you sell me your slave?”
“He is not really my slave. He is my friend, who has saved my life on several occasions.”
“Your life, Cartaphilus?” There was a touch of irony in her intonation.
“Not my life, then, my skin…”
She remained silent for a while. “I will give you in exchange three of my slaves, a maid, a boy and if you wish, my favorite hermaphrodite…”
“I cannot barter my friend for your slaves.”
“Take six of them…twelve, Cartaphilus. They are marvelous people, past masters and past mistresses in the art of pleasure…and pain.”
I made no answer.
“Well?”
“Kotikokura!” I called.
He appeared immediately. I made a sign. He returned with a casket of jade, and walked out again. Salome watched him with a curious fascination.
“Princess, deign to accept this.” I opened the casket, which was filled with exquisite trinkets of jade and ivory. I recounted their history and their symbolism. I spoke of the great artists who had imprinted them with their dreams. Salome, paying no attention to my explanation, toyed with the tiny figure of Li-Bi-Do, an obscene god, long forgotten, even in the Celestial Realm, and carelessly tossed the others aside.
“Kotikokura has an extraordinary head…and what arms!”
‘Did she need a headless lover to excite her emotions?’
“A strange head,” she mused.
Was it her intention to decapitate Kotikokura?
‘Should I offer his head for her love?’
“Let me have Kotikokura, Cartaphilus.”
I remained pensive.
“Does Cartaphilus believe that Salome desires to repeat the same sensation forever?” she remarked, again reading my thoughts.
“Kotikokura shall remain with Princess Salome, if she commands, for one night,” I said angrily.
“What will you take in exchange?”
“Cartaphilus does not bargain.”
XXX: SALOME WRITES A LETTER—MAGIC RUINS—THE TOKEN—I LAUGH
AT dawn Kotikokura appeared, bringing me a letter. It was in Hebrew, on thin parchment: “What Cartaphilus seeks Salome must also seek. In strange things and strange places she seeks her soul. Farewell!”
I looked intently at Kotikokura. He lowered his eyes, and bent nearly in two. I raised my fist to strike him. ‘Cartaphilus, are you jealous…jealous of an ape?’ I laughed, opened my fist and caressed his head. “It is well, my friend. Salome preferred Kotikokura, as she once preferred…but no matter…”