Salome smiled, her eyes half closed. Was she thinking of the time when she had rejected me for Kotikokura?
Salome laughed a little.
“Cartaphilus still is angry at me a little.”
“How shall he hide his emotions before Salome? It may be true, he may be a little angry, or a little sorry…but he is happy that Salome rides at his side.”
The stars were dimming like old eyes covered with thin cataracts. Salome yawned and laughed. “Salome must yawn now and then, Cartaphilus. Sleep is another form of slavery.”
“Kotikokura,” I called, “the Queen is weary. Raise the tent, that she may sleep quietly within it, and not be disturbed by the Sun, when that great Slaughterer of Dreams stamps his golden feet upon the sand.”
Salome stretched out her arms. I helped her descend from the camel. Her hands were small and white, as a child’s almost. I kissed and caressed them.
“The desert makes us sentimental. The realization of our cosmic insignificance stirs pity in us, and creates new measures of values, purely human. We become important to one another, when we no longer matter to the universe.”
“Yes, Cartaphilus. Besides, are we not both children of that strange race, most bitter and ironic, and yet how sentimental?”
We watched Kotikokura arrange the tent.
“And who is Kotikokura?” I whispered. “Is he perhaps also one of us,—a scion of the Lost Tribe?”
“He is the link that unites man to animal, Cartaphilus. He is yourself, perhaps, as you were a thousand generations ago…”
“I love him, Salome.”
“I have vainly sought a woman companion like him! I tried to discover one whose blood could mingle with mine…”
“Is your blood, too, poison to others?”
She nodded.
“Some day,” she added, “I may find a vessel strong enough to bear life of my life.”
“A blossom of your own body?”
She shook her head.
Kotikokura grinned and clapped his hands. The tent was ready. I wished Salome happy dreams, and withdrew.
Kotikokura stretched out beside me.
“Are you sorry that you are no longer the High Priest of Ca-ta-pha?”
“Kotikokura always High Priest of Ca-ta-pha.”
“Tell me, are you not curious to know where Ca-ta-pha has been these many years, and what he did?”
“Ca-ta-pha was in Heaven.”
“In Heaven?”
He nodded.
“Don’t you remember the time we were both shipwrecked?”
He nodded.
“And you believe that Ca-ta-pha went to Heaven?”
He nodded vigorously.
“Who carried him to Heaven?”
“Ca-ta-pha is God.”
“And how did you get back to Africa?”
“Ca-ta-pha carried me.”
I meditated on the curious mechanism of the human mind.
“Oh, by the way, Kotikokura, what became of the belt I gave you? There were enough precious stones within it to purchase a caliphate.”
Kotikokura laughed a little, like a small dog barking, and pointed to his waist.
“You still have it?”
He explained how he showed the belt to his tribesmen as a proof that Ca-ta-pha had sent him to be his High Priest. The belt remained on the altar. Anyone but himself touching it, died. But since Ca-ta-pha had come in person, it was no longer necessary to leave it there. Besides, the sacred parrot would remind the worshipers of their God.
“Kotikokura, you are too subtle for an honest man!” I exclaimed.
He laughed.
“Tell me, did anyone ever touch the belt and die?”
He nodded.
“How did he die?”
He made a motion which indicated that he had strangled him.
“Did anyone see you do it?”
He shook his head.
“Kotikokura, you are almost clever enough to be a god yourself.”
He shook his head. “Ca-ta-pha God.”
XLIV: LOVE MAGIC—PARALLEL LINES—SMOKE—SALOME SMILES
THE moon was surrounded by an immense aureole, whose reflection flooded the desert like a white sea. Salome her eyes half-closed, looked at me and smiled.
“Cartaphilus, will you forgive me for my little jest in Persia?”
I remained silent.
“Are you really still angry at me? Do not two hundred years suffice to cool a man’s ruffled vanity?”
“This time the incomparable Salome has not guessed my thoughts.”
She smiled.
“I was merely shaping in my mind a reply which would prove most convincingly that the pleasure of being with Salome atones for the ancient pain.”
“Was it really pain… ?”
I nodded.
“Are you less sensitive now, Cartaphilus?”
“Perhaps. I have lived…”
We both laughed.
“Of course, you were so young in passion! How many centuries, Cartaphilus?”
“And you?”
Kotikokura laughed.
I turned around. He was too far in back of us to hear our conversation.
“Did he always laugh so much, Cartaphilus?”
“He hardly ever laughed. It is something he has learned recently.”
“He, too, is growing up.”
The white sea of sand continued to flow in utter silence in front of us.
“Salome, were you really in Persia,—or was it illusion?”
She laughed. “Of course I was.”
“Were you in a magnificent palace, mistress of a thousand slaves, guarded by eunuchs?”
“Do you not know the power of mirrors and shadows dancing upon them? Are you not an adept in magic?”
I looked, incredulous. She patted my hands. “Cartaphilus will be a child…forever.”
“The happiest child in the world, if Princess Salome remains at his side.”
She shook her head. “No, no! That must not be.”
“Why not, Salome?”
“Cartaphilus desires most to be alone, and unhampered until he finds himself. Delve into your soul, and see if I am not right.”
I remained silent for a long while.
“Well, Cartaphilus,” she said quietly, a little sadly, “am I not right?”
“Perhaps. And yet…are we not logical companions, predestined mates, bound by one race and one fate…forever?”
“We are two parallel lines drawn very close to each other…so close indeed that no third line, however thin, could be drawn between them.”
“Will the two parallel lines ever meet?”
“Yes. In infinity.”
“Ali Hasan!” I exclaimed, “had you ever dreamed that there was so much poetry and pathos and sorrow in mathematics?”
“Who is Ali Hasan?”
“My master of mathematics, an Arab of incomparable wisdom. He died of sheer pleasure.”
“Of sheer pleasure?”
“In Damascus, that I might forget Salome, I bought a harem of a thousand women. Now and then I invited my friends. Many could not endure the delights, and died. Ali Hasan—may he sit at the right side of Mohammed—was among them.”
“And did the thousand women make you forget Salome?”
“They only intensified my yearning for her.”
She closed her eyes.
“While all the time Salome never even thought of Cartaphilus…” I said, a little bitterly.
She did not answer for some time. “We may force ourselves to forget what we dare not remember. Forgetfulness may indicate deeper depths of emotion than recollection.”
“Have you, too, reached the conclusion that there are no fixed stars in the firmament of emotion…all things are relative…everything flows…?”
“Cartaphilus!” she exclaimed “Will you never overcome your masculine conceit? Will you never understand that woman’s brain may work as subtly…or more subtly than man’s?”
“It is difficult, Salome, to overcome an idea held by hundreds of generations preceding us, and transmitted to us with the milk of our mothers.”
“Well, that shall be the mission of Salome—to overcome this idea! To combat man and his arrogance! To give woman, the great mother, justice!”
“Cartaphilus will not combat Salome!”
“Yes, always…whether he wills it or not. Man and woman are the eternal antagonists. And for this reason, too, it is best for Salome to forget Cartaphilus. It is better for the two parallel lines not to meet…save in eternity, where all things are one.”