Then, drawing away slightly in order to look at me more fully: “Your eyes are rippling, like the surface of a pool under a vesperal breeze. Part your hands slightly. One might think that it was your breasts in particular, Naïs, that enchain you to sensuality.”
And, gently, his finger posed precisely on the taut skin of the breast, where I bear a kind of secret wound.
I shivered.
“I knew it, O Naïs, but don’t believe that I’m a magician for that. In sum, Naïs, feminine nature is as clear as an Alexandrian papyrus for anyone who knows how to read it. The color of the skin, the perfume of the hair, the meaning of spoken words and the vivacity of movements, all take on a voice in order to recount, to whoever is able to listen, a woman’s secrets.”
“You are divine, like Apollo! You frighten me, but you attract me more. A caprice, a folly, summoned you to my house, but now my soul desires you and seeks you. Would you like to love me? I believe that your caress would be an even greater initiation for me than your speech. You would whisper in my ear the revelatory words that permit the fathoming of infinity. You tell me that I am ignorant of the depth of sensuality. Perhaps so, Polemon! But at least I know that humans only comprehend one another, and succeed in tearing the veils with which destiny has separated them, when they are narrowly linked, carnally mingled and confounded!”
“Yes, indeed,” Polemon replied. “You have said it. Hectically enlaced, avid to penetrate one another, beings abolish death, identify one another with the imperishable essences, know and understand one another. That is why carnal amour can become the ultimate spiritual act.”
“O Polemon, you find soothing and yet profound words, like the Egyptian characters that, agreeable to the sight, also hide a substantial and grave meaning. You tell the truth. It is amour that enables us to read souls. Amour alone gives knowledge. And I can now confess that I desire you and that I am worthy of you. Abandon yourself to my caresses. My strength will increase in order to embrace you, and I will have you so perfectly within me that in going away, you will not cease to belong to me.”
I leaned over him, overcome by anguish and taking refuge in his bosom with the frantic disorder of a shipwreck victim. But he pushed me away gently, as if I were a child. I sensed in his movements all of his sure strength, and that sensation augmented my folly.
“I would only be insulting you, Naïs, by taking you without desiring you,” he said. “You are beautiful, and no one refuses our caprices. Perhaps for the first time, you find yourself before a being who does not desire anything. That is because nothing is new for me, Naïs. You know that I have acquired a little wisdom, but you don’t know that I’ve acquired it by means of the power of the will. My youth offered itself as prey to all the passions, my days went by in dissipation. If you ask those who knew me then—for I belong to this city and was born in the borough of Oca—they will tell you that I seemed to be in haste to enjoy and to die, to savor all beauties, to try all caresses, to sample all vices. I was so impetuous, so impatient, that I had contrived hiding places in which I placed my money, in order to be able to take it out at any moment and thus satisfy all my desires and all my fantasies promptly.
“There are no turpitudes or depravities that I have not tried, and I knew the paroxysms of amour that fraternize with death. Finally, I was weary of having scrutinized everything thus and deflowered everything, and of no longer being able to smell a perfume or taste a pleasure without knowing in advance the precise sensation that I was about to experience. It was only at that moment that I glimpsed the superior sensuality, liberated from the flesh, of which I spoke, and which one can only know with the aid of wisdom and satiety.
“One day, when I entered the school of Xenocrates, drunk and sustained by two women, I was sensible for the first time to the Word of philosophy. The voice of the master, who had received the Socratic testament from the son of Ariston’s own mouth penetrated into me and worked the miracle there that the seasons operate on the embryo of a chrysalis. From that day on, I possessed something superior to carnal sensuality...”
And as, while speaking, Polemon perceived that I was clinging to his body, that I was brushing him with my breasts, he pushed me away.
“Don’t you see, Naïs, that you can do nothing to me?” he exclaimed. “Your desire does not reach me. I look at you and I find you beautiful, but like a beautiful statue, and your instinct appears to me as groping and naïve as the thought of a little child. I could share your bed, and sleep beside you, but my arms would never close around your body.”
Thus spoke Polemon.
Already my eyes were no longer looking at him, and my ears were not hearing his voice. I was offended, ashamed, and the idea of seeing him go away pained me and maddened me. Gradually, a sort of muffled irritation and unreflective chagrin invaded me. And suddenly I exploded into insults, desiring to humiliate him, to wound him, to do him harm, to lacerate him with him fingernails.
“Rather say that you’re like an effeminate Lydian,” I cried at him. “Confess that nothing of the man remains in you. Your flesh is a bruised plant, frozen by winters. All your words about sensuality make me feel pity. They are like eloquence in the mouth of a mute, like the freshness of a dried-up spring...”
But Polemon placed his hand on my shoulder, as if to calm me down, and said: “You’re going to insult me because I refused you. In sum, you’re acting in accordance with human logic. Know, however, that it is not my flesh, as you think, but my reason and my will that are rejecting you.”
I tried to throw myself upon hum frantically. He pushed me away again, firmly gripping the hand that was clinging to him in despair. When I cried out in pain, he let me go and left.
Throughout the evening I saw the flame of the lamp aureoled with multicolored circles. My altered blood hammered in my arteries as if to force them and rupture them. Numb and breathless, I experience simultaneously the flame of desire and the mortal fatigue that follows satisfaction. And I slept late, in a leaden slumber.
XIII
Drinking my shame again, I climbed the Acropolis. It was painful for me to admit to Demetrius my complete defeat. Although I had made the resolution to keep silent about the details of the conversation with Polemon, it seemed difficult for me to omit that I had not succeeded in moving him for a single instant. I therefore climbed the great marble staircase in perplexity, and gazed at the severe statue of the Promachos. Perhaps that was what gave me courage and counseled me to simplicity.
Demetrius was in the sanctuary of Minerva, relaxing from affairs with the courtesan Demo, whom he preferred at that moment to all the others. The audacity and the great frankness of that young woman diverted him extremely.
When I went in, he was opening a superb basket enveloped in crimson and filed with fruits. There were Nicostrates grapes, the pride of Attica, noble figs from the borough of Aegila, superb violet arbutus berries and black myrtle berries.
Demo perceived me first and said, abruptly, by way of a greeting: “You’ve come at a good moment, Naïs, to give us your advice. I claim that Lamia is too old a lover for Demetrius.”
I was frightened by that criticism, for I knew what attachment the tyrant experienced for his former mistress.
But he laughed, and turned toward Demo, saying: “It’s naughty of you to remind me of Lamia’s age at this moment. Don’t you see how good she is to send me such delicious fruits?”
“If you consented to lodge and sleep with my mother she’d send you more,” the courtesan replied, untroubled.
“Let’s talk seriously, Demo.” And, addressing me: “Since you’re alive and still so beautiful, you’ve certainly only come here to bring me news of your victory, O Naïs! I’ll order that the bowl be sent to your home.”
“No, Demetrius, on the contrary, I’ve come utterly humiliated, and, to be completely frank, I ought to add that the defeat surpassed all my anticipations and all my evaluations. Instead of my seducing him, it was Polemon who succeeded in enamoring and inflamin
g me. I was like a child before him. Like the master of a ship who animates his hollow wood and guides it meekly through the wind and the waves, that man governed and steered me in accordance with his will.”
“Then you’re unlucky, Naïs,” Demetrius replied to me, smiling. “But you can console yourself for it. You have only failed before the impossible, and where you have been humiliated, any other woman would certainly have no occasion to be proud. Eat this beautiful pomegranate, which conceals a treasure of fire. I give it to you in order that you can slake your thirst on it, and above all, in order that I can watch you eat it. Your gestures have something immodest and slyly feline when you eat, and in your mouth these red seeds will be as many kisses of nymphs or satyrs.”
“Do you know, my beauty, the latest epigram about Lamia?” Demo said to me, frantically pursuing the design of diminishing her rival.
“You’re insupportable, Demo,” said Demetrius.
“It’s necessary that Naïs hears these lines, Listen, Naïs, you’ll find them delightful. ‘I tell you, Lamia, we’re growing old. Soon will come, I warn you, the icy breath that puts amour to flight. Here come wrinkles, silver hair, a slack and graceless mouth. Your attractions are crumbling. Soon, no one will approach proud Lamia to coax her and draw her to him. No one! We shall pass before you sadly as before a tomb!’”
I saw Demetrius frown. I even thought that he was about to get annoyed. At the same moment, however, the door opened and I blushed, and then went pale, on seeing Polemon came in. Contrary to his habit of simplicity, a clasp ornamented with cornelians attached his garment at the shoulder. His beard was curled and his eyes, which reflected something akin to a distant and mysterious Orient, appeared singular to me.
“I’ve come in response to the summons you sent me, O King,” he said, bowing to us.
“No, I don’t want to see you,” cried Demetrius, with a feigned irritation. “I only desire to associate and have commerce with those who ‘yield to all human weaknesses,’ to speak like Menander. But you, on the contrary, are a stone, a being devoid of entrails, and since you’ve been able to resist the charms of this divine Naïs, one ought, I believe, address to you the lofty malediction of Pindar: ‘The man who can stare at the flamboyance emitted by the visage of Theoxena without being agitated by the most impetuous ardors must certainly have a black heart, forged in icy fire with the aid of diamond and iron. Let him therefore be the despicable object of the hatred of Venus, let him pursue all his life a sordid gain and, a slave of women, let him carry water to them servilely thought the streets.’”
“Those verses are beautiful,” said Polemon, softly. “I blush at not meriting them. Above all, Demetrius, I do not understand how you know...”
“Have you not divined that it was me who sent Naïs, hoping to see you succumb and thus to be able to enjoy your confusions? For some time you’ve been annoying me with your counsels of sobriety, and the precepts of your wisdom.”
“By Jupiter, O Naïs!” exclaimed Polemon, turning toward me, smiling. “Have you been able to lend yourself to this tenebrous and perfidious design?”
“I scarcely knew you, Polemon, but I’ve just confessed to the king not only my defeat but also my disarray. He can render testimony to that.”
“She’s telling the truth. Although I promised her, in case of success, this Theodorus bowl, she has deliberately confessed her humiliation and her shame.”
Polemon sat down and said, in a calm voice: “Justice obliges me to declare that, on the contrary, this woman has concluded her enterprise victoriously, and that she has a right to the Theodorus bowl.”
The king sat up straight, keenly intrigued, and dropped a split fig that he was holding in his hand.
I also raised my eyes, looking uncomprehendingly at that strange man.
“What do you mean?” asked Demetrius.
“I’m saying that if she ought to receive a recompense for my seduction, you can award it to her, for she had seduced me and held me in her arms at her mercy. She succeeded easily in her objectives. Verity obliges me to admit it.”
“But, then Naïs…?”
“You ought not to listen to him, O King,” I exclaimed, “for he’s lying. Now he wants to play with me.”
“I’m not lying, Naïs,” Polemon said, in a voice that was still soft and imperturbable. “It is, on the contrary, the love of exactitude and the desire to be equitable that makes me speak in this way. It is true that I left your house having rejected your caresses and showing myself apparently insensible to your fiery gaze and your amorous philters. I believed myself that I was emerging victorious from that ordeal. I judged in accordance with vain appearances and in the interest of my egotism. But I was soon obliged to recognize that, deep down, your image had shaken the fortitude of my soul and that your attractions had spoken intimately to my human nature.
“When I was at home, and all the artifices of sagacity and pride vanished, I regretted my arrogant attitude. My body moaned and suffered from having refused you. Gradually, my false coldness disappeared, the fragile armor, made of an entirely intellectual chastity, fell apart. I repented of my triumph, which seemed to me to be bitter and derisory. Then your image returned to haunt me, all the memories of you that I carried away became burning. I evoked you in your superb nudity, such as you offered yourself to my sight, and I recognized how desirable and irresistible you were; you resumed and exercised over me your voluptuous empire. Since then, and until this moment, the flames that you ignited in me thus have only spread to cover me. Changing my attitude, I began to appeal to you. Mentally, I begged your naked arms to embrace me. Without resisting any longer, I aspire, on the contrary, to plunge myself into your amorous charm. That is how deceptive my apparent victory is, Demetrius, and I leave you to judge whether or not Naïs merits the bowl that you promised her.”
The king was stupefied, his eyes widened in surprise, while Demo laughed stupidly, repeating: “By Jupiter! Can one see a fortune comparable to that if Naïs? She subjugates men even at a distance, and vanquishes them when they appear to resist her.”
As for me, I remained perplexed. I was gazing at Polemon, I believe, with a suspicious eye, for, not understanding his conduct, I feared some secret trap, some humorous artifice.
“I do not know whether Naïs truly merits the bowl,” the king finally declared. “Above all, I cannot clearly grasp the reasons why you have come here to declare yourself vanquished, Polemon!”
“It is because, in my partial defeat, I nevertheless keep intact my love of the truth. The sacrifice of my pride is of no importance to me. It would be too wretched to attach myself to vain semblances, neglecting the real foundation of things. What good does it do me to have extracted my body from the caresses of this woman, since my soul is entirely filled by her desirable image? Ataraxia, insensibility to human passions and agitations, I thought I possessed, perfectly and unassailably—and yet it was sufficient for Naïs to tempt me and for her to be resplendent in her troubling nudity for me to succumb and become the victim and the prey of carnal desire!”
“Even so, you resisted the trap,” said Demo.
“But Polemon replied, slowly: “Even that appearance is deceptive. For I meditated returning to Naïs’ house, and if I had not found her here, I would perhaps have gone to her home, begging for her amour.”
“Since Polemon confessed himself defeated and is contrite at his defeat, I have only to send you the bowl, Naïs,” the king decided. “I did not doubt, moreover, that your charms could realize the impossible.” He turned to the philosopher. “My contentment is extreme,” he continued, “for I desire that you change and that you emerge from the cold and virtuous continence that is like a reproof toward us all.”
“I have not changed, and that is precisely what saddens me, O King,” replied Polemon. “I recognize with alarm that one cannot change anything, nor bend human nature. It is an illusion to think that one is becoming better. When Socrates declared that he was born with evil and criminal se
ntiments, which he had succeeded in mastering and repressing thereafter, he was lying. If he lived virtuously, it is because he was originally virtuous. Originally, I too was disposed to pleasure, consecrated to sensual tumult. What I believed to be a change was merely a respite and a repose in my career of dissipation. One gesture from Naïs has sufficed to demonstrate that to me.”
When we descended the Acropolis again together, while the Saronica was illuminated by the setting sun and Athens seemed as if clad in her ancient glory, I interrogated Polemon.
“Are the things that you said to Demetrius true? In the case that the account is exact, I ought to render sincerity for sincerity in confessing to you that you too have stirred the depths of my being. It is true that I began to tempt you in order to obey the king, but you quickly took real possession of me and, in wanting to subjugate you, I sensed myself becoming your slave. Now, again, I only aspire to enfold you in my warm and living arms.”
I said that passionately and sincerely, for a veritable ardor bore me toward that powerful man, who had confessed himself vanquished by my charms and had permitted me to win the bowl.
Polemon seemed to sound me with his gaze then. And, fixing my eyes upon him in my turn, I understood that I finally possessed a part of his being and that a harmonious, hermetic and carnal understanding united us.
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