And so I was supposedly quite vital, unusually so, it seemed, even for this world. I was a palimpsest, with texts concealed beneath texts. On this world what had been written on me on my world, to obscure the underlying truths, had been scraped off, the dross scraped away to reveal the suspected, now-revealed, infinitely more precious message beneath.
How liberating it was for me to come to this world, where I might, at last, be myself, as I truly was!
To be sure, vitality is expected in a slave. In markets, we may even be tested for it. It is not only, you see, that a profound sexuality, an acute sexual sensitivity, an uncontrollable responsiveness, is permitted in a slave; it is required in her. It is one of the things for which we are purchased. We are slaves, you see. We are not free women.
But of what use would my vitality, if such it might be, be in this place?
I wanted to feel the arms of a guard upon me. I wanted to lie, moaning, in his arms. But instead I lay cold, and bound, in a net.
I twisted, and sobbed.
“There is someone there!” announced a voice, a woman’s voice, from somewhere to my right, in the darkness.
“Yes,” I said, startled.
I heard the creak of a chain, to the right.
“I knew something descended into the net,” she said. “I thought I heard it.”
I turned, as I could, in the net, toward the voice. “It was I,” I said.
“You are in the power of these brutes as well?” she asked.
I was silent. I did not know who was there in the darkness. I heard the chain creak once more.
“You are in the power of these creatures as well?” she asked.
“Totally,” I said.
“Are you chained?” she asked.
“I am bound,” I said, “hand and foot.”
“They bind us well, do they not?” she inquired.
“Yes!” I said.
“I am imprisoned,” she informed me.
That intelligence seemed strange to me, as it seemed her voice was quiet near me. To be sure, I could not see in the darkness.
“I am soon to be free!” she assured me.
I was not certain as to how to interpret this remark, issuing from the darkness, from this unknown source.
“How I despise these fools!” said the voice.
To such a remark, of course, I did not dare reply.
“How poorly they treat us!” she cried.
I did not dare respond.
“Have they treated you well?” she asked.
“I have been whipped,” I said. Indeed, I had been twice whipped.
“Poor thing!” she cried. “You must be of low caste!”
I was silent.
“They would not dare to whip me!” she announced.
I thought the speaker might profit from a whipping.
“You have an unusual accent,” she said, suddenly.
“I am from far away,” I said, evasively.
“Are you clothed?” she asked.
“Please!” I protested.
“The beasts!” she said.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“In the pits,” she said. “I think somewhere beneath the keep, somewhere beneath the fortress. I truly do not know. This place is a labyrinth!
“What ransom are they asking for you?” she asked, suddenly.
I was silent.
“It will not be as high as mine,” she informed me.
“You are from far off?’ she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you know in what city we are?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I was brought here, my features wrapped in my own veils!”
I decided I should not dare to speak further to her, even in what seemed to be our common predicament.
“How were you brought here?” she asked.
“My features, too, were obscured,” I said. Need she know that I had, in much of my journey, worn a slave hood?
I was becoming very uneasy with our conversation.
“None of these beasts have so much as glimpsed my features,” she averred.
I could make no such claim, of course. I was, and had been, public to men; I belonged to them; I was subject to their regard and whim; I had been exposed as frequently and routinely, and, I suppose, as naturally and as appropriately, as any other sort of domestic animal. Indeed, but I bit before, I had performed for men, before the dais, providing them not only a glimpse of my beauty, if beauty it was, but with an authentic, detailed, lengthy, provocative display of it, an exhibition designed to leave little to conjecture concerning at least the externals of whatever interest I might hold for them. It seemed I could have done little more unless I had stood chained on a sales platform, to be literally handled as the curved, tender little beast I was, or had perhaps been conducted behind the purple screen to be tested in a more intimate fashion. In such exhibitions, in such performances, movement, grace and rhythm are, of course, quite important. It is the moving, living, breathing, vital woman which is of interest. One must not only look beautiful, you see, but one must be beautiful.
“Such, I gather,” said she, “has not been the case with you.”
“No,” I said.
“Men have looked, then, upon your face?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“They would not dare to look upon mine!” she said.
I was silent.
“And have they seen more than that?” she asked.
“I am naked,” I admitted.
“Poor thing!” she cried. But I think she was pleased to have been concretely apprised of this intelligence.
“You, too, are at their mercy!” I exclaimed, trying to sit up in the net.
“No, no!” she cried. I heard a rattling, as though the bars. I thought she must, then, be clutching them, and shaking them. She seemed frustrated. I heard the bars shaken again. I heard, too, the creaking of a the chain from the right. Below me, too, if I was not mistaken, I heard again, a stirring, in the water. Somewhat below, perhaps, had surfaced, or approached, hearing the sounds above.
“I am of high caste!” she cried. “I should not be here thusly, so held, so humiliated!”
I was silent.
I lay back in the net, bound.
“Men are fools!” she cried.
It was she, of course, and not they, who seemed to be in some sort of confinement.
“They are fools!” she wept.
The men I had seen on this world did not seem to me to be fools. Indeed, they seemed to be anything but fools. By the force and intellect in them I had often felt awed. They did make many men of my world now, in this perspective, seem fools. Here men seemed assured of themselves. They had not been confused, and bled, and subverted, and crippled, by a sick society. Here they had never surrenedered their natural, bestial magnificence.
“How I hate men!” she cried. “How I despise them!”
I would certainly not respond to this. Indeed, what if she were a spy, set to examine me, perhaps even, cruelly, to trap me into some insolent inadvertence, trying to tease from me some careless, thoughtless, prideful, idly arrogant remark? Too, of course, more importantly, I did not, in fact, hate the men I had found here, nor did I despise them. If anything, I tended to admire them, and feel grateful toward them. Too, they tended to excite me, as a female, as few men of my old world had. To be sure, I did regard them with a healthy respect, even fear. They were, after all, the masters.
“But what could one such as you, of low caste,” said the voice, “know of one of my sensitivity and nature? How could one such as you understand the feelings of one such as I?”
“Only with great difficulty, if at all, doubtless,” said I, perhaps somewhat testily.
“But have no fear,” said she. “I will be patient with you. We are, after all, despite the discrepancies in our caste, sisters in sorrow, in misery and grief.”
I was silent.
“We have in common our precious freedom,” she said.
I did not respond to this. To be sure, I was confident that she was in some sort of confinement, and I lay bound and naked, in a net. But I did not doubt she had in mind some more serious sense of freedom, and one that made me uneasy. From things she had said, I had little doubt but what she was, in a sense important on this world, “free.” On the other hand, in a sense also important on this world, and doubtlessly more profoundly important, I was not “free.” It was not merely that I had a collar on my neck, close-fitting and locked as it might be, and a brand on my thigh, lovely and unmistakable, put there deeply and clearly for all to see. Nor was it even that my nature was such as to put me helplessly, lovingly, and appropriately at a man’s feet. It was rather that in the full legalities of a world, in the full sanction of the totality of its customs, practices and institutions, in the fullness of its very reality, I was not free. I was an animal, a property, a slave.