There was not a crack in the sky, not a blemish on the dense blue enamel. Even the sun, floating in the middle of it, did no more than fuse the immediate surroundings so that gold and ultramarine ran and mingled. Out of this sky, heat and light fell like an avalanche so that everything between the two long cliffs lay motionless as the cliffs themselves.
The river water was flat, opaque, dead. The only suggestion of movement anywhere was in the trace of steam that rose from the surface. The flocks of river birds that stood where the mud of the river bank was hard and shattered with hexagonal cracks looked colourfully at nothing. The beds of dry papyrus-slashed with the occasional stem that had bent, broken and leaned against the others-were still as reedbeds painted in a tomb, except when a seed toppled out of a dried crown; and where a seed fell on the shallows, there it lay and did not stir. But farther out the water was deep-must be miles deep for the sun burned down there too and fused the blue enamel of an undersky that matched the heavy blue vault above the red and yellow cliffs. And now, as if two suns were more than they could bear, the cliffs half hid themselves behind the air and began to shake.
Between the cliffs and the river, the black earth was burnt up. The stubble seemed as little like life as the feathers caught everywhere among the separate stubs. The few trees, palms, acacias, hung down their foliage as if they had given up. The houses of limewashed mud seemed as alive as they and not more motionless; not more motionless than the men and women and children who stood on either side of a beaten track that lay parallel with the river and an easy stone's throw from the bank. These people were all looking away down river, away from the sun which made short, cobalt shadows at their feet. They stood over their shadows and looked down river, hands raised a little, eyes unblinking, mouths open.
There was a faint noise down river. The waiting men looked at each other, rubbed sweaty palms on their linen kilts, then held them up, palms outward and even higher than before. The naked children began to call out and run round until the women bent down in their long robes of linen girt above the breast and shook them into silence and stillness.
A man came into sight on the track from the shadow of a group of palms. He moved in somewhat the same way as the shuddering cliffs. Even at this distance it was easy to distinguish him from the scattering of other figures by the strangeness of his dress and by the fact that they were all looking at him. He came to an open patch of stubble and now it was possible to see that he was running, jogging along, bumping up and down, while the groups he passed gesticulated, cried out, and clapped their hands as they kept their eyes on him. He reached a nearer field and his costume came clear and strange as his movements. He wore a kilt and tall hat both of white linen. There were gleams of gold and blue from his sandals, his wrists and from the wide pectoral that was bouncing on his chest; more gleams from the crook and flail he held in either hand. There was a general gleam from his dark skin, where the sweat ran off him and fell on the cracked earth. The people shouted louder when they saw the sweat fall. Those who had run a little way with him, wiped off their own sweat, slackened their pace and let the runner get away from their land.
Now the runner was so near he could be seen in detail. His face had been oval once, but good living and authority had slabbed it to a rectangle in keeping with his stocky body. He looked like a man who had few ideas but held those he had without examining them; and just now, his idea was to run and keep running. But there were outliers to this central idea, outliers of astonishment and indignation. The indignation was reasonable enough, for the linen hat fell every now and then over one eye and the runner would jab at it with the crook. The strings of the flail were made of alternate blue and gold beads and if he lifted it too high they flicked him in the face. Now and then, as if he had reminded himself of something, he would cross the crook and flail before his stomach so that the requirements of running made him rub one on the other as though he were sharpening a knife. All this, and the swarms of flies, were enough to account for his indignation, though the source of his astonishment could not be detected so easily. He came thudding across the field, with now no more than one runner near him-a lean and muscular young man who shouted mixed encouragement, prayer and praise.
"Run, Great House! Run for my sake! Life! Health! Strength!"
As the two men approached the nearer side of the field it was as if they crossed an invisible boundary. The people grouped by the few houses moved forward and began to shout.
"God! God! Great House!"
All at once they were voluble as the young man and tumultuous. They welcomed the runner with shouts and laughter tears. The women hurried to stand in his path and the children were forgotten among the quick, dark feet. He came jogging through the little street and men began to run with him. There was a blind man, thin and knotted as the stick that supported him, who stood with one hand lifted and looked in the general direction of the runner with eyes as white as balls of quartz; but who cried out none the less.
"Life! Health! Strength! Great House! Great House! Great House!"
Then the runner was away again and beyond the hamlet, having drawn the young men with him while the women were left laughing and crying.
"Did you see, Sister? I touched Him!"
But Great House was still trotting on, still jabbing with his crook at the uneasy hat, still indignant and if anything, even more plainly astonished than before. There were few who ran with him now and none from farther back than the hamlet, except the lean young man. After a while even these stopped, breathless but smiling, as Great House and his attendant ran away from them in front of his dancing tail. There was no noise but deep breathing and the thud of receding feet. The men strolled back to the hamlet where the thick beer was being brought out in jars and jugs and dishes to trestles in the crowded street.
When the runner was out of hearing, the blind man who had stood so long by the track lowered his hand. He did not join the crowd in the hamlet. He turned, felt his way with his stick across some stubble, then through a mass of undergrowth until he came to bare mud in the shade of palms where the mud hexagons of the river bank began. A little boy sat in the shade, cross-legged, hands slack in his lap, head lowered, so that the single lock of hair left by the razor fell past his ear to his knee. He was thin as the blind man, though not so dark-skinned; and his kilt was brilliantly clean except where the twigs and dust of the foreshore clung to it.
The blind man spoke to the air.
"Well. He is gone. We shall not see that sight for another seven years."
The boy answered listlessly.
"I saw nothing."
"The young man, the one they call the Liar ran with him. He talked all the time."
The boy started up.
"You should have told me!"
"Why?"
"I would have gone to see!"
"The Liar, rather than the God, your Father?"
"I love him. He tells me lies that take away the weight of the sky. And he is."
"Is what?"
The boy spread his hands.
"He just is."
The blind man lowered himself to the ground and laid his stick across his knees.
"It is a great day, little Prince. You knew that, surely?"
"My nurses told me, so I ran away. A great day means standing in the sun and keeping still. Then I am sick. I have to have smokes made and words said. I have to eat things, wear things, drink things."
"I know. Who does not? Your walk sounds like the walk of a little old man. But today the God proves Himself and perhaps you will be better."
"How can He prove Himself?"
The blind man thought for a while.
"If it comes to that, how can He keep the sky up and make the river rise? But He does. The sky is there, kept up; and the river will rise as it has risen before. These are mysteries."
The Prince sighed.
"I am tired of mysteries."
"We live by them," said the blind man. "I will show you. Do you see that palm tree on your left?"
"The sun is too bright."
"Well then. If you were to look, you would see notches cut in the trunk. An arm's length from the root is the Notch Of Sorrow. If the water were to rise no farther than that, men would starve. How old are you? Ten? Eleven? When I was not much older than you, it happened so and the God of that time took poison."
"People starved? They died?"
"Men, women and children. But the God is strong, a great lover-though He has no children but your sister and you-a great hunter, eater, drinker. The water will creep up the trunk to the Notch Of Excellent Eating."
The Prince was interested, despite the sun.
"Why is there a notch right at the top?"
The blind man shook his head forebodingly.
"It was prophesied once, I cannot tell when. The notch was made by a God, they say, and the water has never reached it. Too much is worse than too little. The whole world would be drowned and the waters would lap at the House of Life. That is called-" He bent sideways and whispered-"the Notch Of Utter Calamity."
The Prince said nothing and after a moment the blind man fumbled then patted his knee.
"This knowledge is too high for you. Let it be. One day, when I am gone and the God has entered his Now in the House of Life you will be a God yourself. Then you will understand."
The Prince cried out, his head lifted in grief and urgency.
"I don't want to be a God!"
"What's this? Who else is there?"
The Prince beat the dry mud feebly with his fists.
"I won't! They shan't make me!"
"Quietly, child! If they were to hear you-have you no thought for me?"
But the Prince was staring into the white eyes as if he could force them to see him.
"I won't-I can't. I can't make the river rise or keep the sky up-I have dreams-there is darkness. Things falling. They press, they weigh. I can't move or breathe--"
The tears were trickling down the Prince's face. He snivelled and smeared one arm across his nose.
"I don't want to be a God!"
The blind man began to talk loudly and firmly as if to force the Prince to listen.
"When you are married to your Royal Sister--"
"I'm not going to be married, ever," said the Prince with sudden passion. "Not ever. Especially not to Pretty Flower, but not ever. If I play with boys they want to play at hunting and I get out of breath. If I play with girls they want to play at being married and I have to bounce up and down on them till I get out of breath all over again and then they bounce up and down until I get giddy."
The blind man was silent for a while.
"Well," he said at last. "Well."
"I should like to be a girl," said the Prince. "A pretty girl with nothing to do but be pretty and wear pretty things. Then they couldn't turn me into a God."
The blind man scratched his nose.
"Not keep the sky up? Not make the river rise? Not slay a bull or shoot at a mark?"
"I could never see the mark, let alone hit it."
"What can you mean, child?"
"I have a kind of white smoke in my eyes."
"Prince-are you telling the truth?"
"It grows thicker. Slowly, but thicker."
"No!"
"So you see--"
"But Prince, poor child-what do they say?"
"I have told no one. I am tired of spells and smells and filthy things to drink. I am tired."
The blind man's voice ran up.
"But you will go blind! Little by little, year by year-child! Think of us! Think of the Notch Of Utter Calamity!"
"What has it to do with me? If I were a girl--"
The blind man was scrabbling with his stick and feet.
"They must know. He must know at once-poor Prince, poor weak one. Poor people!"
The boy laid hold of the blind man's ankle who pulled himself away and stood up unhandily.
"Don't tell anyone!"
"I must, poor child. They will cure you--"
"No!"
"I shall call out to the God at the end of His run and He will hear me!"
"I don't want to be a God!"
But the blind man was hurrying, tapping with his stick at the accustomed trees, stepping without fail on the narrow paths between the irrigation channels of dry mud. The Prince ran round him, ran by him, crying and calling out and tugging at his loincloth, snatching at his hand. So the blind man hurried on, muttering and shaking his head and fending with his stick.
"Poor child! Poor child!"
At last, breathless, crying, and half-blinded by the sun, the Prince gave up, slackened his pace, trailed and came to a stop. He knelt down in the dust and wept for a time. When he had done weeping he stayed there, head down; and presently he began to recite phrases as if trying them for size or making sure he would remember them.
"I don't know what he's talking about. I can see quite well with both eyes."
And again; a phrase picked up perhaps in the corridors of the Great House.
"The man's possessed."
Again-simply.
"I am the Prince. The man's lying."
He got on all fours and stood up. He kept his eyes slitted and walked in the shade of trees. As he went, he repeated the words to himself like a lesson. "The man's lying. The man's lying."
Then there was a flurry of skirts, a shower of talk, a babble. The two nurses, the black one and the brown one, swooped on him and gathered him in. He was enveloped, enbosomed, cried over, cursed over, adjured, admonished, loved and smothered. They bore him off towards the Great House and after a while they put him down and hugged and kissed him, cleaned his skirt, caressed him in sweat and smell, in mammary abundance and fat arms. They told him how wicked he was to pretend to sleep while they slipped out to watch the God-told him how they had looked all over-how he must tell no one-how unkind he was to his nurses who had no single thought nor moment without concern for his happiness. Then they led him, hand in hand, to a side gate of the Great House, took him in and smartened him quickly for show. He may not have heard of the dangers from crocodiles, river monsters, lions, jackals or dirty old men; for he muttered to himself every now and then without paying attention to them.
"He's lying."
At last they led him through the Great House towards the courtyard that lay inside the main gate. Even though this was the day for the God to prove himself the courtyard was almost empty. But outside the main gate two rows of soldiers-black men with huge shields and spears-kept a lane clear, and the people of the river valley massed behind them on either side. The noise from them had sunk from the clamour that announced the beginning of the God's run. They had looked enough now, even at Pretty Flower where she stood in front of her women on a dais by the gate. They were tired of peering down the lane and along the path under the cliffs by which the God would return. The shawms were silent, Pretty Flower motionless if decorative, the God out of sight; and they needed something else to look at and the Prince provided it. He appeared at the inner edge of the forecourt, on the steps that led down from the entry to the Great House. He was flanked by fat, painted columns, and fat nurses. His pleated kilt had no dust on it and the gold studs of his sandals gleamed. So did the little necklace hung over his shoulders and the bracelets on his wrists. As for his sidelock, it had been combed, brushed, oiled till it looked like a shape cut out of ebony. He had a faint, public smile round his lips, and as the women in the crowd cried out how sweet and pretty he was, the smile became one of genuine pleasure. He paused by the dais, squinted up at Pretty Flower's face before its backing of fans, then lowered his hand to his knee in the appropriate gesture. His nurses helped him on to the dais and he stood there, blinking. Pretty Flower leaned, undulating. Her smile became one of love and she touched his cheek in an exquisitely feminine gesture with the back of her hand. She murmured down to him.
"You've been crying, you little runt."
The Prince examined his feet.
The noise of the crowd sharpened. The Prince glanced up and Pretty Flower took a step towards the edge of the dais, pulling him with her. From behind them, palm fronds were thrust into their hands. They looked where the crowd was looking, along the path.
Upriver, and just within sight, was a kind of foot of stone, sticking out of the cliff. There was a long, low building on this foot and a tiny figure moving by one end of it. Then a second figure appeared beside the first. They were difficult to see; and their movements were complicated by a wild vibration from the sunheat. They were manikins who changed shape with it or even disappeared in it for a moment. All of a sudden, the crowd on either side of the lane became thickets, hedges, groves of palm fronds moved by a perpetual wind. The shawms brayed.
"Life! Health! Strength!"
The first of the two figures was not the God. He was the Liar, the bony young man, who ran not only straight along the path, but back along it now and then, circled the God, made desperate gestures, urging him on. He sweated but was tireless, voluble. Behind him came the God, Great House, Husband of the Royal Lady who had attained her eternal Now, Royal Bull, Falcon, Lord of the Upper Land. He was running slowly and sharpening his carving knife with a vigour that had a dawning desperation in it. He shone more wetly, and the kilt stuck to his thighs. He came out of the shuddering of the land and the sunblink. His white headgear had collapsed and he no longer jabbed at it with the crook or flail. Even his tail seemed affected and jerked about like the tail of a dying animal. He reeled sideways in his run. The Liar cried out.
"Oh, no!"
The crowd noises were as desperate as the runner's face.
"Great House! Great House!"
Even the soldiers were affected, turning sideways and breaking rank as if to help. The Prince saw a remembered figure with a stick edge between them into the path. The blind man stood there, face up, stick out. The God came thudding down the lane and the crowd closed in behind him. The blind man was shouting at the top of his voice-shouting something completely inaudible. The God's feet made an irregular pattern in the dust. His knees were bending, his mouth opened wider, his eyes stared blindly. He was falling. He struck the blind man's stick, his arms dropped, his knees gave. Still staring, he fell on the stick, rolled and lay still. The headgear of white linen trundled away.
In the sudden silence, the blind man was heard at last.
"The Prince is going blind, God! Your son is going blind!"
The Prince made a despairing gesture upward to Pretty Flower who was still smiling. He cried out his lesson.
"He's lying!"
"The Prince is going blind!"
Pretty Flower spoke clearly, calmly.
"Of course he's lying, dear child. Soldiers-take him to the pit."
The soldiers were pushing, striking out, clearing a space round the fallen God and the Liar who crouched by him. The crowd was swirling round the blind man who became a toy, a shouting doll. Pretty Flower spoke again.
"He tripped the God with his stick."
Other soldiers got at the blind man. They fought round the group on the ground; they got the Blind Man between them. Pretty Flower took the Prince by the wrist, shook it, and spoke sideways down to him.
"Smile."
"He's lying, I tell you!"
"Little fool. Smile."
The tears ran into the Prince's smile as she pulled him away from the dais, and then with what dignity was possible, through the Main Gate. Soldiers forced a way for them, and others carried the God. Pretty Flower and her women hurried the Prince to where the nurses took him and bore him and his tears out of sight. Then she and her women disappeared too.
A procession met the God in the forecourt as if it had been prepared for just this occasion. There was a couch borne by six men. There was a man in a leopard's skin and one-if he was a man-with the head of a jackal. They were led by a tall man much older than Great House, who wore a long robe of white linen. The sun winked from his shaven head. The Liar reached him first, still talking.
"Terrible, terrible, Head Man-and so unnecessary-that is, I mean-terrible! How could you have known? How could you guess?"
The Head Man smiled.
"It was a possibility."
"Remember I have no claim-no claim whatsoever!"
The Head Man smiled down at him benignly.
"Come now, my dear Liar. You undervalue yourself."
The Liar leapt as if a soldier had pricked him with a spear.
"Oh no, no! Believe me, I have no more to give!"
The God was on the couch. The procession moved towards the Great House. The Head Man watched it leave.
"He likes to hear your lies again and again."
The Liar stopped him before the entrance, holding him by the robe.
"He's heard them so often he could remember them himself-or get someone to make pictures of them!"
Turned half-back, the old man looked at him.
"That's not what He said yesterday."
"Indeed I assure you, I'm not in the least necessary!"
The old man turned right round, looked down, and laid a hand on the Liar's shoulder.
"Tell me, Liar-as a matter of interest-why do you avoid life?"
But the young man was not listening. He was peering past the old man into the Great House.
"He will, won't he?"
"Will what?"
"Run again! He was tripped. He will won't he?"
The old man examined him with a profound professional interest.
"I don't think so," he murmured gently. "In fact I'm sure he won't."
He walked to the Great House alone. The Liar stayed on the steps, jerking, trembling, and tugging at the pallor round his mouth.
Pretty Flower took most of it out on the Prince. In the comparative privacy of the Great House, she sent him off with a slap on the cheek that made up-as he had known it would-for all the affection on the dais. He went to bed whimpering, as the sun set.
The Liar was not disposed of so easily. He caught her alone in a dark corridor and seized her by the wrist.
"Unhand me!"
"I haven't handed you yet," he whispered. "Can't you think of anything else but sex?"
"After what you did--"
"I did? We did, you mean!"
"I won't think of it--"
"You'd better not. You'd better succeed. You'd better keep your mind on it!"
She slumped against him,
"I'm so tired-so confused-I wish-I don't know what I wish."
His arm crept round and patted her shoulder.
"There, there. There, there."
"You're trembling."
"Why shouldn't I tremble? I'm in deadly danger-I've been in it before; but never like this. So you'd better succeed. Understand?"
She stood away from him and drew herself up.
"You want me to be good? You?"
"Good? No-oh, yes! What you call good. Be very good!"
She moved past him, stately and pacing.
"Very well, then."
A whisper pursued her down the corridor and floated to her ear.
"For my sake!"
She shivered in the hot air and kept her eyes averted from the dim figures looming from the high walls. There was a noise now to hide any whispering-a confused sound, from the banqueting hall, of voices and music. She passed the hall to the farther end and drew aside a curtain. Here a space had been curtained off and lit with many lamps; and here her women waited, silent for fear of those henna'd palms and painted nails. But Pretty Flower had little thought for her women this evening. Silent and withdrawn, pure and determined, she allowed them to undress her, anoint her, spread her hair and change her jewels. She went and sat before her mirror as at an altar.
The mirror that Pretty Flower used was priceless. It was fabulous. For one thing, it did not reflect merely her face, but her body as far down as the waist. If she leaned still farther forward she could even see her feet. Only the Great House held treasures such as that. Then again, apart from the size of the mirror it was neither copper nor gold as was customary if a woman had a mirror at all. It was of solid silver which gave back to the user the most precious gift of all-a reflection with neither flattery nor distortion. The winged sky goddesses who held the mirror on either side were gold, and supported the shining centre in an impersonal way, as if determined to exert no influence on the user which might sway her judgment. The surface of the mirror had been rolled, beaten, ground, polished, until there was no other surface to which it might be likened. Indeed, as a surface it could not be said to exist, unless you breathed on it, or touched it with your finger to assure yourself of the invisible solidity. The surface was a concept, was nothing but a reversal that brought the world face to face, not with its own image, but with itself.
Absence of distortion, absence of flattery was exactly what Pretty Flower needed. She sat, gazing at her magical sister who gazed back, and they both became absorbed. The women in the brightly lit room recovered from their fear and began to murmur together as they busied themselves about her. She did not feel them nor hear them. She sat on a stool before the low table that supported the mirror. She was naked now, except for a belt of blue and gold that marked her waist without constricting it; and this last was just as well since any constriction of that slenderest part of her body would end what nature had so nearly completed and divide her in two. Flattery from the mirror or any other source would have been superfluous. Pretty Flower had achieved an exuberant Now; and no change could have been an improvement. They had heaped up her shining black hair out of the way on her head, though a curl or two had escaped. Her eyes did not blink for her absorption had deepened. The surgeon's stare before the body, the artist's before his work, or the philosopher's inward gaze at some metaphysical region of thought-none of these was more concentrated and abstracted than Pretty Flower's stare at her own image.
She was considering a colour evidently, for she held a bruised reed in her right hand where she could dip it with decision into the array before her on the slate palette. She could choose malachite crushed in oil, or crushed lapiz, or white or red clay, saffron. She could choose gold if she wanted to for on a small stand next to the palette hung little sheets of gold leaf that trembled like the wings of an insect in the heat from the naked lights.
"They are ready--"
But Pretty Flower ignored her women-indeed, was unaware of them. By some exercise of mental force, some inner pain, she had thrust herself up out of indecision to a level of clear understanding. Crimson it should be, must be, by the obscure but logical pressures of the rest. Her underlip slid out from where her upper teeth had gripped it against the lower and she nodded to her magical sister. Crimson enhanced with blue-not the dark blue of midnight, hardly to be distinguished from the black, nor the dense, grainless blue of midday over against the sun-but azure with white in it, seeming to shine from below the surface. With infinite care, she applied the colour.
"They are waiting--"
Pretty Flower laid the titstick among the others on the table.
"I'm ready too."
She dropped her arms and the bracelets tinkled as they fell to her wrists. She undulated to her feet, and the light shone, ran together, pulled out or disappeared over the dark brown smoothness of her skin. The women covered her, swathing her, wrapping her in folds of fine lawn; and she wound herself into them, moving more and more slowly, till the seventh veil covered her from hair to instep. Then she stood still, listening to the roar of conversation and sound of music from the banqueting halt She drew herself up-unaware perhaps that she spoke aloud, in tones of sorrow and resolution.
"I will be good!"
Inside the banqueting hall the conversation had reached that point in a meal where it becomes a steady note. No one gave the Great House more than a casual glance every now and then. Since he seemed content to eat and drink and chat with the Head Man or the Liar, it was only courteous to ignore him-to pay him the courtier's supreme compliment of apparent indifference. For this reason, the long tables down either side of the hall contained groups which, while they were held together by the string of the occasion, nevertheless behaved as if the string was an elastic one. For if three guests-two women and one man, perhaps-seemed absorbed in themselves, even so, after only a few moments, one would be drawn into the next group which would divide correspondingly. All down either side of the hall, behind the tables and under the steady note, it looked as if the lillied head-dresses were stood in water and moved by a gentle wind. No courtier was drunk yet. Though their inspection was covert-as if by nature and not art-they had contrived to drink dish for dish with the God, no less and no more. Since he was older than anyone but the Head Man, and since he was evidently better at drinking than running, they would soon be drunk; they would soon be drunk, but not before the God was.
He was not as animated as his courtiers. He was recovered and content. He lay on a broad couch big enough for two. Leather cushions were so heaped that his left elbow disappeared among them. Just now, he held what was left of a roast duck in his right hand and ate delicately. The Liar and the Head Man sat below the couch on either side of the low table where the rest of the meal was. The Head Man was quiet, smiling, and watching Great House with an air of friendly attention. The Liar was as fidgety and jerky as ever.
Great House finished the duck and held it out behind him where it vanished in dusky hands. Other hands held out a bowl into which he dipped two right fingers and a thumb, twiddling them. As if this were a cue, the three musicians squatting to one side at the other end of the hall began to play more loudly. They were blind. Presently one of them sang nasally, the old, old song.
"How sweet are thy embraces,
Sweet as honey and hot as a summer night
O my beloved, my sister! "
The God peered glumly at the singer. He crooked his little finger and took another dish of beer out of the air. The Head Man raised his eyebrows, still smiling.
"Is that wise, Great House?"
"I want a drink."
All along the tables the dishes were being refilled. Everyone felt thirsty.
The Head Man shook his head.
"It's a very long dance, you know, Great House."
The God belched. The roar sagged for a moment, then came back, punctuated by belches. Over the left and in a corner, one lady, with brilliant resource was noisily sick and everyone laughed at her.
The God tapped the Liar on the shoulder.
"Tell me some lies."
"I've told you all I know, Great House."
"All you can think of, you mean," said the Head Man. "They wouldn't be lies if you knew them."
The Liar looked at him, opened his mouth as if to argue, then slumped a little.
"Have it your own way."
"More lies," said Great House. "More lies, more lies!"
"I'm not very good at it, Great House."
"Tell me about the white men."
"You know about them."
"Go on," said the God, playfully tweaking the Liar's ear. "Tell me what their skin's like!"
"They look like a peeled onion," said the Liar dutifully. "Only not shiny. They're like that all over--"
"-every inch of them--"
"They don't wash--"
"Because if they did, the paint would come off!" Great House roared with laughter as he finished speaking and everyone else laughed too. The lady who had been sick fell off her chair, shrieking hysterically.
"And they smell," said the Liar, "like I told you they smell. Their river runs round their land in a ring and rises up in great lumps and is salt, so that if you drink it you go mad and fall down."
Great House laughed again, then was silent.
"I wonder why I fell down," he said. "It was quite extraordinary. One step I was running, then the next step wasn't there."
The Liar jerked up.
"You were tripped, Great House-I saw it. And you drank all that beer before you ran. Next time--"
"You weren't drunk, Great House," said the Head Man, still smiling. "You were exhausted."
The God tweaked the Liar's ear again.
"Tell me about-" he laughed suddenly-"when the water goes hard."
"You heard it before."
The God thumped the couch with his right hand.
"Well, I want to hear it again," he said. "And again and again!"
The roar sagged and died away. The curtain at the end of the hall was drawn back on either side. Between them was a sort of monolith of white linen supported on two little feet. It advanced on them a span at a time until it stood in the centre of the space between the tables. The drummer began to beat very softly.
"-really as hard as stone," said the Liar. "In winter, the rocks by a waterfall are bearded with it like a pebble with weed. But it's all water."
"Go on," said Great House passionately. "Tell me how white and clear and cold it is, and how still-that's very important, the stillness!"
From somewhere, a black girl had appeared. She held one end of the outer shawl and gathered it in as the little feet turned beneath. The Liar continued to talk to the God; but his eyes flickered sideways.
"The marshes are black and white and hard. The reeds might be made of bone. And there is cold--"
"Ah! Go on--"
"Not just the coolness of evening or a breeze off the river. Not just the coolness of a porous water jug; but cold that seizes a man, makes him dance at first, then makes him slow, then brings him to a full stop."
"Did you hear that, Head Man?"
"If he lies down in the white dust which is water, he stays where he is. Presently he becomes stone. He is his own statue--"
Great House cried out.
"His Now is still! It moves no longer!"
He flung his arm across the Liar's shoulder.
"Dear Liar, you are very precious to me!"
The Liar was dirty white round the lips.
"Oh no, Great House! You are just being kind and courteous-I am of no importance to anyone!"
But the Head Man was coughing. They both turned towards him, and his eyes showed them where they were expected to look. The shawl was just slipping from the monolith. A shining torrent had fallen free. The head was turned away but began to nod on this side and that. The torrent glittered, swung in time to the drum. The feet worked and turned.
"Why," cried the God, "it's Pretty Flower!"
The Head Man was nodding and smiling.
"Your lovely Daughter."
Great House raised a hand in greeting. Smiling over her shoulder, Pretty Flower turned her back in exquisite time to the music and another shawl came off as the shining fall of hair swung femalely from hip to hip. Along the tables the roar had changed in quality to accord with the God's smile and wave. There were affectionate smiles everywhere, gentle cooings, a delighted welcome for Pretty Flower into the family. The reed instrument and the harp joined the drum.
"She's grown, you know," said Great House. "You wouldn't believe how much she's grown!"
The Liar tore his attention from Pretty Flower, licking his lips. He leaned towards Great House and came near to nudging him.
"That's better than hard water, eh, Great House?"
But the God's eyes had focused a long, long way beyond his daughter.
"Tell me some more."
The Liar frowned and thought. He came to some decision. He bent his bony face into a salacious grin.
"Customs?"
"Customs? What customs?"
The Liar whispered.
"Women."
He hunched himself still nearer and began to whisper behind his hand. The God's eyes became intent. He smiled. The two heads moved closer and closer together. The God reached behind him and brought another dish of beer to his mouth without looking at it. He sucked. The Liar began to shake with a prolonged snigger and his words came out from behind his hand.
"-sometimes they've never even seen them before-strange women!"
Great House snorted, and sprayed the Liar with beer.
"You can tell the most dirty--"
The Head Man coughed once more, with severe meaning. The rhythm of the music had changed. The reed instrument seemed more nasal, more plangent as if it had discovered something it wanted but did not know how to set about getting it. Pretty Flower had changed too. She was nakedly visible above the waist and she moved more quickly. Once, her feet had been all that moved. Now they, and her head, were all that was still. Her smile had gone, and she inspected her breasts, one at a time. For example: she would stand, right arm across her face, forearm down, palm outward and indicating her left breast, while her left curved to indicate it from below. Thus, her breast was delineated by two palms, offered, as it were, and made to pulse and quiver gently by a subtle rotation, of the left shoulder so that its warmth and weight and scent and texture was evident. Then bonelessly, she would evolve into a mirror image, this time concentrating on her right breast. It was now, with a brace of crimson nipples shaking out a perfume into the heavy air, that the reed instrument began to understand what it wanted. The nasal tone became a more than human cry. This cry was taken up along the tables, where there was some kissing among the drinking and a little delicate pawing. The Liar's head turned slowly, compelled from Great House. His mouth was pinched as if with thirst.
"She's beautiful," he groaned. "Beautiful, beautiful!"
"She is indeed," said the God. "Tell me some more, Liar."
The Liar groaned in agony.
"You must watch her, Great House-don't you understand?"
"There's plenty of time for that."
Pretty Flower was doing things with both breasts. Her hair flashed and floated wildly. The Liar was torn between her and the God. He beat his head with both hands.
"Very well," said Great House sulkily. "If you won't tell me any more I shall play checkers with the Head Man."
The board appeared at once, like the beer. As Great House leant over it and shook the dicing sticks in the cup, a change came over the tables. There was less pawing, more muted conversation about food and drink and social matters and games. Pretty Flower and the musicians seemed to be performing to themselves, or the air.
"Your move," said Great House. "Good luck."
"I've sometimes thought," said the Head Man, "it might be interesting if we didn't let chance decide the moves but thought them out for ourselves."
"What an odd game," said Great House. "It wouldn't have any rules at all."
He glanced up, saw Pretty Flower and gave her a quite charming smile before he looked down again. She was indicating the smallness of her waist and the complex bearings of her hips which were moving in a slow circle beneath the last shawl. If there was any expression to be read behind her elaborate make-up it was one of anxiety, turning to sheer desperation. As she went into each new figure of the dance, she prolonged it, as if to enforce the invitation by sheer strength. She gleamed with more than unguents.
This was hard on the musicians. The harpist raked at the strings with the insistence of a woman rubbing out meal between two stones. The reed player's eyes were crossed. Only the drummer beat easily, changing hands now and then, using two sometimes, sometimes only one. Along the tables, the talk was of checkers or hunting.
"Your move, Head Man."
The Head Man shook his head and the dicing sticks at the same time. The Liar, greatly daring, was tugging at the God's skirt for attention. The last shawl had come off Pretty Flower. She was naked and shining except for her jewels. Her mouth, drawn down at the corners in a stylized grimace of desire, had set round her gleaming teeth. She went into her last figure. This began at the other end of the hall, and brought her-the music commanding it and giving it power-in a series of convulsions down the whole length. Every few yards it threw her into display, arms out, knees apart, belly thrust forward. It brought her down the hall from a Now to a Now to a Now. Her thighs struck the God who struck the checker board and the ivory pieces flew in every direction. The God jerked back angrily and stared up.
"Do you mind ?"
Then there was silence along the tables, silence from the collapsed musicians, silence from the dais where the ivory pieces had ceased to roll, and the only things that moved were the breasts of Pretty Flower. She fell, collapsed on the floor of the hall, face downward.
Great House moved, the anger dying out of his face. He passed the back of his hand across his forehead.
"Oh yes. Of course. I forgot."
He swung his legs off the couch and sat on the edge.
"You know, I--"
"Yes, Great House?"
Great House looked down at his daughter.
"Very good, my dear. Most exciting."
The Head Man leaned close.
"Well then--"
The Liar was hopping and desperate, between Pretty Flower and the couch.
"You must, Great House! You must!"
Great House had either hand laid on the couch beside him. He braced his hands, stiffening the muscles of his arms. He drew himself up, drew his stomach in, so that some faint indication of a muscled torso appeared beneath the quivering thickness. He stayed so for a few moments.
"Great House-please! Dear Great House!"
The God let out his breath. His eyes unfocused. His body slumped between slackened arms and his insides bulged out slowly into a smooth and rounded belly. He spoke flatly.
"I couldn't."
The sound of indrawn breath was like the flyby hiss of a monstrous arrow. Not a face in the hall but stared down. Not a finger or an eye but was motionless.
Suddenly Pretty Flower scrambled to her feet. She hid her face in her hands and fled shuddering and stumbling down the length of the hall and the curtains swung together behind her.
A young man came hurrying from the shadows at the back of the dais. He bent and whispered in the God's ear.
"Oh yes. I'll come now."
The God got to his feet and the hall rustled as everyone else got to their feet too; but all faces still stared down, all mouths were silent. Great House followed the young man through the shadows and out into the open. Over the courtyard night was growing heavy at the zenith, oozing down and uncovering a myriad skypeople as it came. Beneath the creeping night and nearer to the horizon the sky was lighter blue, fragile, hardly able to bear the impending weight. Great House paused only to glance round at the fragility, whistled softly, then hurried to one of the four corners. He muttered to the young men as he went.
"I've cut it fine tonight, haven't I?"
In the corner was a low altar built against the wall. Great House cleaned himself with holy water as he gazed round him apprehensively at the darkening sky. He dropped a pinch of incense on the glowing charcoal, then muttered a few words so that a thick column of white smoke pushed up into the darkness. He went hurriedly to the other three corners and made more columns. He stood for a while checking on the columns; then turned away to go back to the banqueting hall. As he went he muttered again, either to himself or the young man.
"At least I can still keep the sky up."
In the hall, the guests were ranged behind the tables, looking down, and saying nothing. The Liar knelt by the couch, his hands fastened to one of the legs as if it would save him from drowning. Great House heaved himself on to the couch and lay on his side.
He spoke.
"I should like a drink."
But before anyone could move, the Head Man had caught him by the wrist and was speaking to him through his quiet smile.
"Don't you understand, Great House?"
Great House turned to him. His solid face quivered.
"Understand?"
"This morning you fell. This evening--"
Great House caught his breath. Then he began to laugh.
"You mean, it's a beginning?"
"Just so."
The silence behind the tables broke up. There was a sudden gust of whispers.
"A beginning! A beginning!"
The Liar let go the leg of the couch, grabbed at the curved head, knelt there, eyes shut, head up. He shouted.
"No! No!"
But Great House still laughed. He swung his legs off the couch and sat there, laughing and speaking directly to the assembly.
"Strong beer and no hangover!"
The Head Man smiled and nodded.
"Beautiful, changeless women--"
The Liar began to babble at the God.
"Of course, Great House! What else does any man need? Beer and women, women and beer, a weapon or two-what else does anyone need?"
"His potter," said the Head Man. "His musicians. His baker, his brewer, his jeweller--"
Great House tweaked the Liar's ear.
"And his Liar."
The Liar's babble ran up so that all other sound in the hall died away. The Head Man patted him.
"Calm yourself, my dear Liar!"
The God looked down at him, his smile broadening. He was in high good humour.
"What's all this? I simply couldn't do without you!"
The Liar screamed once. He leapt to his feet, glaring round him. Then he was off, sprinting down the hall. He dived over the musicians and took one of the curtains with him. There was a scuffle and a series of thumps, soldier-sounds, blows. There were orders. The Liar yelled again.
"I won't!"
The scuffles and thumps receded down the corridor; and once more, but fainter this time, the assembly heard the Liar, shouting in terror and indignation.
"You fools! Can't you use models?"
Nobody moved. Every face in the hall was flushed with shame. The darkness where the curtain had been torn down was like an obscene wound in the fabric of life itself.
At last the Head Man broke the silence.
"No more tiredness."
Great House nodded.
"And I shall make our river rise. I swear it."
Now, along the tables, people began to laugh and weep.
"Forgive your Liar, Great House," murmured the Head Man. "He is sick. But you shall have him."
The guests were beginning to move towards Great House from the tables. They wept and laughed and stretched out their hands. Great House dashed a tear from his eye.
"Dear family! My children!"
The Head Man cried out.
"Bring Great House the key!"
The guests moved into two groups that left a passage down the hall. Presently, from the darkness beyond the place where the curtain had been, a little, old woman came veiled and slow and carrying a dish. She gave it to the God, then turned aside into the shadows. Great House received the drink and laughed with excitement. He held the dish up with both hands. He cried out in a loud voice.
"To keep Now still!"
He drank and drank, tilting back his head; and softly, with tiny shuffling steps and a muted clapping of hands the guests began to dance. As they danced, they began to sing, nodding and looking at each other with shining eyes.
"The river is filled to the brim.
The blue flower lies open;
Now moves no longer."
Great House lay back on the couch and closed his eyes. The Head Man leaned over him moving his limbs, setting his knees together, smoothing down the rumpled kilt. The musicians began to play, catching the time from the dancers. The dance quickened and the God smiled in his sleep. The Head Man took his arms and folded them across each other so that they lacked nothing but the crook and flail. He tried the pulse in the left wrist, listened, ear against chest, for breathing. He stood up, moved to the end of the couch and slid the pillow from beneath the sleeper's head.
"The river has risen and will not fall " they sang. "Now is forever! "
They were moving in a complex weave that sorted itself little by little into concentric circles. The lamps flickered in the wafts of hot air. Servants and soldiers filled the spaces of the doors. Kilts and transparent dresses stuck to flying limbs.
The Head Man stood behind the couch and faced the dancers. He lifted his hands. The dance stilled, the music fell silent, instrument by instrument. He beckoned and soldiers and clean men pushed through the crowd. They formed round the couch, then lifted it easily. They bore it through the hall and away into the deeper and darker mysteries of the Great House. Then the guests went silently, not looking back. The banqueting hall was empty of all but the Head Man. He stayed where he was, looking at the lamps and smiling faintly. Presently, he too went away to sleep.
Only one part of the Great House remained awake. This was an upper terrace that fronted the distant river; and here, a group of women crouched, saying nothing, but staring in silence at the girl who lay sprawled in her hair with nothing but one snatched-up shawl to cover her naked body. There was tension in her every limb. The forearm on which her smeared face lay, ended in a frenetically clenched fist that jerked every now and then at a sob. Sometimes the other hand would crawl over the floor then beat on it, and from her squarely opened mouth, a long wail would issue like a child crying. When the cry had ended, she would sniff and hiccup and moan words into the silent air.
"Oh the shame, the burning shame of it!"
When the river rose at the behest of the Sleeper, the only living things taken unawares by the expected were those most immediately connected with it. The cranes and flamingoes would stagger, flap and squawk when the minute rising built up into an occasional ripple. After the first one, they greeted the rest with bird noises of satisfaction. They became busy and zestful at the unexpected ease of life. They pecked and gulped as if they were hard put to it to keep pace with the fertility of the dried mud which once wetted, spawned all kinds of agreeably edible life. When only a few inches of water were thrusting across the stubble, the ducks came in flotillas, quacking complacently and allowing themselves to be carried by the push of the flood. The hawks and buzzards that were normally indifferent to the fields now hung in a line over the limit of the advancing water. The shrews and fieldmice, the snakes and slow-worms that had no built-in foreknowledge of the inundation and now made a panic way towards higher ground, learnt a bitter and useless lesson. But the people who knew why the river was rising and knew what full bellies it would bring were filled with joy and love for the Sleeper, so that when the air was cool enough they sang and danced. In the hot time, since there was nothing else to do, they sat in the shade and watched the waters advance. When dusk released them from the tyranny of the sun, they would walk, splashing through an inch or two of warm water over mud as hard and rough to the feet as a brick, and perhaps bend and lave themselves. Those who went deeper to the limit of their fields to catch a view they remembered, felt the first slipperiness of the slime and stood, rubbing their feet in it with a pleased smile.
When the water had reached the Notch Of Excellent Eating-when the hamlets had been so long isolated that some of the younger children thought it a Now that never moved-the day of waking slid into place. It dawned like every other day, green, then red, then gold, then blue. But the people heard the shawms braying and looked at each other laughing, since the shawms and the Notch Of Excellent Eating had come together.
"Today the Sleeper wakes into his Now and will send the waters back."
For this reason they kept watch from the roofs of their houses and explained the thing to their children. All morning the shawms brayed and the drums beat; and then at midday when the sun glared down at the flood which steamed back at him they saw the procession set out along the strip of dry land left between the cliff and the flooded earth. They saw how the Sleeper himself lay at the head of the procession. He lay on a litter carried by eight tall men. He was swaddled from head to foot and richly plumped with his hands crossed over his chest and the crook and flail in them. He was of many colours but mostly gold and blue; and even at a distance they could see how his beard jutted against the shivering of the cliffs. The long-haired women came dancing after him, crying out, some trying to wake him, each with a systrum in her hand, others wailing and cutting themselves with knives. After them came clean men and other people of his household; and then a group of men and women who walked sideways, hand in hand. It was a slow journey the Sleeper took. It was a long and slow procession that straggled behind him, or paced friezelike on the causeways by the water. Many of the villagers, drawn by love and curiosity, climbed down from their roofs and waded towards the procession. They stood, big-eyed as children in the water and watched it pass. They called out to the Sleeper, but he did not wake since the clean men still had work to do on him. So they stood, since wading, they could not keep up with even such a slow mover and they greeted the groups one after the other.
There was one group they did not greet but watched in silent disbelief. At the tail end of the procession and separated from it by a gap, came a detail of soldiers with the Liar struggling among them. The collar of Great House was round his neck as were his collars round the necks of those who walked sideways and hand in hand. If the Liar-as he sometimes did-contrived to get a hand free, he would tear at the collar with it. Moreover, sometimes he shouted, and sometimes he screamed, and sometimes he moaned; but all the time he struggled with the soldiers so that they had a hard job not to spoil him. He was in a fair way to spoil himself for there was a scum of foam round his mouth. His noise penetrated most of the way up the procession.
"I won't, I tell you! I don't want to live! I won't!"
The last man of the handholders looked back then turned again to the woman in front of him.
"I could never understand what Great House sees in him."
The waders climbed on to the causeway and hurried after the procession and the Liar. When the land broadened and the procession stopped, breaking into separate groups, the waders became a crowd.
The procession was grouped before that long, low building round which Great House and the Liar had run. There was a passage, now, that led down before them, between sloping sides of rubble and the farther end was in deep shadow, away from the sun. The opening into the building occupied only half the width of this passage; and to one side of the opening, there was a slot, at eyelevel. Those in the procession who were near the beginning of the passage, could see the slot; and even those too far off, or hindered from seeing by the crowd, knew the slot was there, and what would gaze out of it.
The bearers took the Sleeper down the passage, lifted him off his couch and stood him on his feet but facing out into the air. The people, crowding forward, could see that he was still asleep, for his eyes were closed. But the clean men came with their instruments and powerful words; so that presently his eyes opened, and a clean man threw away the clay that had kept them closed. So the Sleeper woke, and Great House stood and stared through his family out of his motionless Now, in life and health and strength. Then the Head Man-since he was a clean man among other things-performed his office. He wrapped the life of a leopard round him, girding it at the waist. He lifted a small adze, with a flint blade, and he forced the blade into the wooden mouth. He levered with it, and those who were near enough heard a crackle like fire among small branches. When the Head Man stepped back again, the people could see that Great House was speaking a word in the motionless Now, for his mouth was open. So the dancing and singing began. But among the dancing and singing, many people wept a little to think how elusive their own Now was, and no more to be caught than a shadow. The soldiers, the bearers, and the clean men took Great House out of the passage and on to the roof of the building where the rare and heavy logs had been laid aside so that there was a gap. They took Great House down with them; and the soldiers who stood on the roof round the hole, saw the God laid in a stone box, saw the lid slid into place and sealed. Then the clean men climbed back and left the God among his chambers of food and drink and weapons and games.
They stood and watched, while the soldiers put back the logs and levered the huge stones over them.
As the clean men had done with Great House, so they did with his Twin who stood erect in darkness behind the slot. Only when the Head Man came with the adze, he did not lever the mouth open because it was stone but touched it merely. As for the eyes of the Twin, they were already open, and stared out of the slot.
Then those who had linked hands crowded forward and were given each what they had to carry. They went forward between the rows of clean men, the stonecutter with his drill, the carpenter with his adze and chisel, the baker with his yeast, the brewer with his malt, the women finely dressed and painted, the musicians with their instruments under their arms. They laughed and chattered as they came in, and they received their bowls of drink with pride and delight. Only the Liar still struggled; and now his screams had an even more piercing point to them. The Head Man tried to soothe him, calling him sick and bewitched but the Liar would not listen.
"If you do, I'll never tell him another lie-never !"
At that, the dancing faltered, and the favoured ones in the passage looked back in shocked surprise. The Head Man slapped the Liar sharply on the face so that for a moment he fell silent with the shock, sniffing and twitching.
"Calm yourself, Liar. Calm yourself. Now. Tell us. Why do you refuse eternal life?"
It was then that the Liar said the awful thing, the dirty thing, the thing that broke up the world. He paused for a moment. He ceased to sniff. He gave a convulsive wrench of his whole body that staggered the soldiers who held him. He crouched among them, glared back at the Head Man in fury and shouted the words at the top of his voice.
"Because this one is good enough!"
The words silenced every sound except the quick panting of the Liar. The dancing stopped and the Liar was surrounded by a ring of shocked and contemptuous faces. Suddenly, as if he felt this contempt was thrusting him towards the God, he began to struggle fiercely. The Head Man held up his hand. The Liar stopped struggling and stared at this hand as if his life was held in it. The Head Man spoke quietly, like a physician explaining a disease.
"Great House never found a man who refused a favour from Him. But this man is unclean and must be cleaned. Take him to the pit."
The Liar stayed tense only until he felt the soldiers turn away. Then he fell and would have collapsed in the sand if his arms had not held him to the soldiers like ropes. The soldiers walked away, dragging the Liar with them and his head lolled and his mouth stayed open. The crowd watched, saying nothing. The soldiers dragged the Liar back along the causeway and out of sight.
Then the people, as if united more than ever by this extravagant event, turned back to the passage. Those who waited in the passage with their instruments and bowls of drink, began to sing, and move forward; and those who disappeared at the farther end, when they could no longer be seen, could no longer be heard either, so that the singing diminished as the visible numbers decreased. When there were only two left, the song was hardly loud enough to be heard outside the passage. Then there was one, then none, and only the faintest suggestion of sound that lingered round the passage end. The crowd listened, straining, leaning forward, heads on one side-not knowing whether there was indeed a faint sound or only the memory of it. At last there was undoubted silence; and sorrow rose among those who were left with their private Nows to cope with. This sorrow was gradual as the diminution of the singing but undoubted as the silence. It came up out of the earth. The women began to wail and beat their breasts and tear their hair; and the men moaned like trapped animals. Only the clean men were untouched by this sorrow. They took food and drink and fire. They closed the entrance with powerful words, offered food and drink at the slot and spoke to the unwinking eyes that stared back at them out of the darkness. They came up out of the passage and walked with the Head Man back along the causeway. The crowd walked, drifted, waded away. Only the soldiers were left. They began to work, filling the passage with stones and sand.
The Prince was being made to practise the godpose. The Head Man had taken him away from his nurses and sat him in a suitable chair. There he was, in the gloomy banqueting hall, knees and feet together, chest out, chin lifted, eyes open and staring at nothing. He wore a childsize ceremonial outfit, complete with tail; he held the crook and flail crossed before his chest. They had taken away his lovely side-lock and he was bald as a pebble beneath the close-fitting wig. The tall, linen crown was fastened to his wig, and a beard was strapped to his chin. He sat, trying to breathe imperceptibly and not blink, while the gloom wavered and the tears of effort formed in his eyes.
The Head Man strolled round and round him. The only noise came from the faint swish of his skirt.
"Good," said the Head Man. "Very good."
Round and round. One of the tears rolled from the Prince's clouded eye down his cheek. He gave up, and blinked furiously.
"There," said the Head Man. "You were doing so well but you spoilt it. Keep them open and the tears will come for the people. Don't blink!"
"I must blink! People blink!"
"You will not be 'People'," said the Head Man crossly. "You will be the God, Great House, throned in state, holding power in one hand and care in the other."
"They'll see me cry!"
"They are meant to see you cry. It is a profound religious truth. Do you suppose any God who keeps his eyes open can do other than weep for what he sees?"
"Anyone would weep," said the Prince sullenly, "if he kept his eyes open and didn't blink or rub them."
"'Anyone'," said the Head Man, "would blink or rub them. That's the difference."
The Prince straightened himself and stared again into the gloom. He saw the wide rectangle of the entrance at the other end of the hall lighten, and knew that the sunlight was creeping along the corridor towards it. He gave up, shut his eyes and bowed his head. The crook and flail clattered in his lap. The Head Man stopped strolling.
"Not again!"
"I can't do it. Keeping the sky up-bouncing up and down on my sister-keeping my eyes open-making the river rise--"
The Head Man struck one fist into the other hand. For a moment it seemed as if he would burst out in fury; but he mastered himself, bowing his head, swallowing, breathing deeply.
"Look, child. You don't know our danger. You don't know how little time there is-your sister withdrawn-seeing no one-the river rising--"
He bent down and peered into the Prince's face.
"You must do it! Everything will be all right. I promise. Now. Try again."
Once more the Prince took up the godpose. The Head Man watched him for a while.
"That's better! Now. I have to see your sister-have to! So I shall leave you here. Stay as you are until the sun reaches from one side of the entrance to the other."
He drew himself up, raised one hand, lowered it to his knee, took three steps backward, then turned and hurried away.
When the swish, swish of the Head Man's skirt was out of earshot, the Prince let out all his breath and slumped, eyes shut. He raised a bony forearm and smeared it across his face. He shifted his skinny rump, where the tail was making it ache. He laid the crook and flail on the floor by the chair. He looked at the doorway for a moment; then tore the linen crown from his head, so that the close-fitting wig came with it, and the narrow strap of the beard broke. He flung the whole thing down on the crook and flail. He hunched, glumly, chin on fists, elbows on knees. A grain of sunlight on tiles flashed into view and he screwed up his eyes against it. The grain enlarged to a brilliant patch.
He jerked upright in the chair, then began to walk restlessly, pad, pad, round the huge room. He glanced now and then at the walls, where the bird-headed, dog-headed figures did not weep. He stopped at last, in the middle of the room with his back to the sunlight. Slowly he lifted his head, peered up at the gloomy beams and awful solidity of the rafters. He flinched away from the sight as if the beams threatened to fall on his head.
He went softly to the entrance and looked into the corridor. At one end, a guard leaned against the wall. The Prince squared his shoulders as best he could and walked steadily towards the guard, who woke and lifted his spear. The Prince ignored him and turned the corner, where a girl backed submissively against the wall to let him pass. He went away through the Great House, ignoring all the people he met until he came to the back and heard the muted noises from the kitchens. He passed them, the cooks lying asleep, the scouring and staring scullions, their court where geese roasted slowly over charcoal on spits under the open sky. The postern gate to the cliffs and desert was open. He took a deep breath, like a boy about to dive, clenched his fists, and passed through.
Outside the gate, he paused in the shadow of the wall and examined the knees of cliffs, sandscrees, the line of rock-edge against the sky. Everything was fierce and barren. There was nothing as pleasant as palmshade by water; but there were plenty of places to hide. He began to make his way forward and up, keeping where he could in the shadow of rocks, though there was little enough of that. As he went, he muttered.
"She can keep it up!"
He was crying.
He stumbled sideways and crouched behind a boulder, peering round it. There was a man among the rocks. This man knelt on a knoll of rock so that he was outlined in profile against the cliffs. His head was bowed as though the sun had struck him down.
The man knelt up. He began to do something regular with his arms and suddenly the Prince understood that the man was pulling a string or a rope out of the earth. No sooner had he understood this than he saw some bowls and platters appear under the man's hand-held perhaps in a net of cords too thin to be visible. The man stood up, made a jeering noise and spat down at his feet. He took up a stone and threatened the ground with it. He pretended to throw down once or twice, then did throw strongly and a scream came up out of the rock. The man turned and came strolling back, laughing, and swinging the string bag with its bowls and platters. The Prince shrank down behind his boulder and listened as the man went back. He was trembling, and went on trembling long after the postern gate slammed shut.
He got up, shading his eyes with both hands and went forward. The sun fell on his bald head and beat back from the rock. He limited himself to his one good eye and climbed the knoll.
The first thing he was aware of was the smell; then after, the flies. The knoll swarmed with them. Their buzzing increased with every step he took, and soon they discovered him.
He found himself on the edge of a pit. The sunlight lit it right to the bottom, except on one side, where there was a little shade by the wall. The flies liked the pit, evidently, for they buzzed away down there and covered the refuse, the bones and decaying meat, the slimy vegetables and stained stones. The blind man lay in one corner under the sun, his head propped against rock. The only difference between his bones and the others was that his were still covered with skin. He was very dirty. His mouth was open and his tongue showed where the flies did not cover it. As the Prince realized who he was, he heard him make a tiny sound, without moving either his lips or his tongue.
"Kek."
Near the centre of the pit and in a small area cleared of refuse, knelt a man. The Prince inspected him, then cried out.
"Liar!"
But the Liar said nothing and went on drinking. His head was in the bowl between his hands and he sucked busily, louder than the blind man's kek, or the flies buzzing. He lifted his head and the bowl together, to take the last drop. His eyes were above the bowl's rim. He glimpsed someone kneeling on the edge of the pit and ducked away.
"Don't!"
"Dear Liar! It's I!"
Cautiously, forearm lifted for protection, the Liar squinted up. His face was blistered and dirty except where there was new blood on it, and his eyes were rimmed as red as the blood.
"The Prince?"
"Help me!"
The Liar stumbled round in the refuse. He yelled back.
"You? You don't need any help! What about me?"
"I've run away."
"I'm dreaming. I'm seeing things. They said I was mad-and now--"
"I don't want to go back."
The Liar put both fists above his eyes and squinted upward.
"It's really you?"
"They're turning me into a god."
The Liar spoke with dreadful urgency.
"Get me out of here! That sister of yours-tell her to help!"
"She won't see anyone," said the Prince. "And besides, I'm running away. We could go together."
The Liar went still.
"You? Run away?"
"We could go and live where it's cold."
"Oh so easily," said the Liar, jeering. "You just don't know!"
"I've got as far as this by myself."
The Liar gave a kind of yelling laugh.
"We'd go down the river, across the sea, across the land, then more sea--"
"Yes, let's!"
"Have you ever been swopped for a boatload of onions?"
"No, of course not."
"Or felt up by a Syrian to see if you're too old to make a eunuch?"
"What's a Syrian?"
"We'd be sold again as slaves--"
The Liar paused, licked his cracked lips, stared slowly round the pit then up again at the Prince.
"Half a boatload, perhaps, only you're not very strong and you're not very pretty, are you?"
"I'm a boy. If I were a girl I'd be pretty. And not have to make the river rise, or--"
"Those bracelets you're wearing," said the Liar slowly. "They'd be thrown in. You might make a eunuch."
"I'd sooner be a girl," said the Prince with a touch of bashfulness. "Could it be arranged, do you think?"
Under the dirt, there was a still look of calculation on the Liar's face.
"Oh yes. Get me out of here and--"
"Then we're going? Really going?"
"We're going. Now listen--"
"Kek."
"Why does he make that noise?"
"He's dying," said the Liar. "Taking a long time."
"How did he break his stick?"
"I tried to climb out of the pit with it, but it broke. I was standing on his shoulders and he fell down."
"I think he's thirsty."
"Of course he is," said the Liar impatiently. "That's why he's dying."
"Why didn't he have any water?"
"Because I needed it," shouted the Liar. "Have you any more silly questions? We're wasting time!"
"All the same--"
"Listen. Did anyone see you come here?"
"No."
"Could you bribe people?"
"The Head Man would find out. He knows everything."
"You're too small to carry a ladder. But you could bring a rope. You could tie it round a rock and let the end down--"
The Prince jumped to his feet and clapped his hands.
"Oh yes, yes!"
"That sister of yours-she wouldn't have a rope-of all the ignorant, thick-headed, maddening, beautiful-Could you find a rope?"
The Prince would have danced in his happiness and excitement, had he not been so near the edge of the pit.
"I'll find one," he cried. "I'll look!"
"And another thing. You've more jewels than you're wearing."
"Of course."
"Bring them."
"Yes, yes!"
"A rope. Jewels. After dark. You swear?"
"I swear! Dear Liar!"
"Go on, then. It's my-it's our only chance."
The Prince turned away from the pit and was a few yards down the rock, before he remembered and crouched sideways under cover. But the guard was not lounging by the postern gate. There was nobody in sight at all; and the gate was shut. He decided to pick his way towards the shade of the palms and the flooded fields, then wade through the few inches of water round the side of the Great House to the main gate. But at the edge of the fields he found two naked boys playing with a reed skiff. He told them to take him to the main gate and they did so at once, not speaking, in awe of his bracelets and necklace, his sandals, his Holy Tail and pleated skirt. So he walked through the forecourt and went straight to his rooms; he woke his nurses out of their siesta, and because he was so nearly a god, they found it easy to obey him in his new determination. Jewels he must have, many jewels; and when they dared to ask why, he looked at them and they went. Finally he had the jewels heaped before him; and it was a strangely pleasant task to hang them on himself, till he clattered and tinkled as he moved.
The rope was another matter. The Great House seemed short on available rope. There were ropes at the wells by the kitchens but they were too long and too hard to get at. There were rope falls and guys to each of the masts that stood, their pennants hanging limp before the main gate. The Prince became a little vague and sat tinkling in a corner to consider what he should do. In the end he saw one thing clearly. He could not find a rope. Those servants he asked, bowed, sidled off and did not come back. He heaved a deep sigh, and began to tremble. If you really needed a rope, there was only one man to ask for it-the man who knew everything. Slowly, and tinkling, he got to his feet.
The terrace was raised, and the balcony fronted on the swollen river. An awning was spread over it, and the fabric hung dead in the motionless air. Pretty Flower was in the shade of the awning. She sat, staring at the water. She was changed, and reduced. Her long hair had been cut across the forehead and right round lower down so that it did not quite reach her shoulders. Though her head was bound with a fillet of gold from which rose a cobra's head in gold and topaz, she was thinner in figure and face, and the only make-up she wore was the heavy malachite that lay on her eyelids and matted her eyelashes into necessary shade. So she stared sullenly at the water; and if her expression was to be read, it was as one of shame, brazened out.
The Head Man stood before her. He held his chin in his right hand and rested his right elbow in the palm of his left. He was smiling still, but his smile was tight.