She had experienced a great chagrin when she had found the little cadaver of a nightingale on her window sill, and she had increased that chagrin by virtue of the influence of her chimerical scruples. According to her, the nightingale would not have flown into the magnolia where it was singing except to please her. It had found new harmonies in her intention. When it had sensed that it was dying it had come to tap on the shutter of her window with its beak. But she, a coarse creature, had been sleeping heavily and had not heard anything. She accused herself of ingratitude. She suffered from remorse.
She had attached an enormous emerald to the bird’s neck and had buried it secretly beneath the dwarf cypress not far from the Fountain of Laurels. And every night, at the hour when, she thought, the bird had suffered from her abandonment, she came to sing, by way of expiation, a little poem of her own composition, accompanying herself on the darbuka.
Almazan had heard mention of Khadidja’s fantasies and he had already turned into a lateral path when she suddenly got up and advanced toward him. Her features reflected both discontentment and sadness. She spoke, without giving Almazan time to apologize for his presence.
“I knew that you would come, but why is it at this hour, which belongs to a memory that is dear to me? But why, above all, have you not come alone?”
Almazan looked around, in surprise. The pathways were empty and silent.
“There’s a Genni that accompanies you, and we cannot reach an understanding, it and I. It appears that you have acquired a great science since we talked together on a mirador facing the sea, in Malaga. You cure the wounds in legs, but perhaps you’re quite ignorant regarding certain subtle wounds of the soul. Assuredly you’ll laugh when you know that I am rendering homage to an incomparable nocturnal artist, a delicate poet that loved me, a musician exalted by the lunar dew and the wine that the night decants into the calices of lilies.”
Weakly, she lifted her darbuka as if to take the stars for her witness.
“Yes, nothing but a nightingale! But my thought rises toward it as lightly as a prayer between the holy hills Safah and Mervah. Go away. Even if that poet, returned to life, had resumed its place in the magnolia that shades my window, even if that prince had resumed its plumage of molten gold and burning slate, even if that musician resumed tapping the crystal with the pearl, you would not understand what it was saying. Perhaps, another day, I shall have the pleasure of conversing with you, but this evening, go away, quickly.”
She spoke as if she had received an insult, and she drew away without looking back.
And Almazan thought, as he returned to the Alhambra, that there might be certain very sensitive creatures who can see the sort of gray nimbus that carnal desire makes around men.
IX. Female Combat
The power of hatred that one bears within oneself is unlimited. It can multiply indefinitely, and become a reservoir of forces so great that in the end, those forces of hatred spread out, and poison the souls around them.
The hatred that Aixa had for Khadidja because of her beauty and her purity did not diminish; on the contrary, it increased the hatred that she had for the Emir’s new favorite, the Spaniard Isabelle. But that hatred, instead of reposing like a poison that one does not use, began to agitate, to burn, to live.
To begin with, Aixa had repeated, all alone, in her bedroom the name of Isabelle, as if the sounds of the syllables might be as many dagger-thrusts that she was delivering in the invisible.
Afterwards, it was with her son Boabdil that she enumerated interminably the reasons for complaint that she imagined, the grievances that grew in her mind with more force than nettles in the fields.
Boabdil bore above his face, like a crushing helmet, a disproportionate forehead, beneath which blinked eyes so small that one never saw their gaze, and a creased mouth whose thinness revealed a love of treason. His mother’s hatred procured him a mental joy that he had not yet known. He stimulated its suggestions, shared it with intoxication.
“The King of Granada is enabling a Christian to reign over the Alhambra and the kingdom!”
And that Christian might claim that she was the daughter of a Spanish Alcaide, but it was proven that she had emerged from a hovel in Seville and that the soldier who brought her had had her by the roadside. Before that slut, the descendants of the greatest families must bow down, the Zegris who were the grandsons of the sovereigns of Morocco, and the Maliques who traced their origins back to Almo-Habes, the first King of the realm of Cuco.
It was certain that in her boundless audacity, driven by her ancient habits of prostitution or by some demonic need of her body, she gave herself to men every time she could. She had been seen in the court of myrtles with the young physician Almazan, another infidel. And she had cast her eyes upon the unfortunate Tarfe, who did not enjoy all his reason. She found him handsome, he was eighteen years old and was reputed to be animated by a lubricious madness.
The most inconceivable thing was that the illustrious family of the Almoradis, to which Tarfe belonged, had conceived a pride in the fact that their imbecile child had been noticed by the favorite! What a decadence in mores! Where were the times of the virtuous Almohades, who had had musical instruments destroyed, forbidden the port to precious metals and embroideries on garments and who punished women who showed themselves unveiled with death?
Alas, since Muhamad Alhama, the arts had become flourishing, as under the Almoravides, people drank wine, women allowed themselves to be enlaced by men while dancing the zambra, and the teachings of the prophet were no longer observed! Abul Hacen, with his senile desire for pleasure, had brought those liberties to a peak. He said that he wanted to return to the traditions of the first Caliphs, who practiced tolerance and allowed woman a prominent role in the State. He wanted to resuscitate the times when Ouallada, the Sappho of Cordova, was admired the world over, when Maryem taught grammar and poetry, or Lobnah, in the pulpit of Seville, commented on the Koran before the learned men of all Islam. And under that pretext he wallowed in the arms of a creature viler than dogs.
Neither the Imams not the Alfaquis dared raise their voices against him. It was up to his son Boabdil to reestablish a virtue that he would naturally base on vengeance.
Aixa and her son had found partisans among the Zegris, who were rigid and religious men, powerful in Granada by their number and the great quantity of slaves that they possessed. Their ancient family lived in a perpetual rivalry with that of the Almoradis and since the handsome Tarfe had been noticed by Isabelle they murmured against her and sought an occasion to bring her down.
Granada rapidly divided into two camps, one of which sided with Aixa the Horra and the other with the Spaniard Isabelle. And as the Zegris had the custom of wearing a saffron-colored turban on feast days and the Almoradis wore a crimson turban, everyone, in accordance with his penchant, adopted one of those colors. The people participated in the quarrel, the suburbs were red or yellow, and Jewish merchants installed in shops on the Plaza de Bibarramba only sold scarves of those two shades.
Suddenly, destiny brought the two enemy women face to face.
In the hall of ambassadors, Abul Hacen was about to receive the extraordinary envoy of the Sultan of Egypt. After the reception, he was to take him into the music room for a secret conversation in which only the Hagib and Daoud, the Emir of the Sea, were to participate.
Then, in accordance with a ceremony imitative of that of the ancient Caliphs, the wives of the Sultan of Egypt’s envoy were to be received in their turn by the wives if the Emir of Granada. It was therefore prescribed for Isabelle and Aixa to offer sorbet and rose jam to a child of twelve who was the only wife brought by the Sultan’s envoy.
The moon had just risen, the hall of ambassadors had emptied and the moment had come for the two women to arrive there solemnly.
Isabella had put on an immense Chinese shawl embroidered with pearls, which was a present from the Sultan of Egypt to Abul Hacen, and which had been brought to him in a massive gold chest
. She had little shoes in crimson fabric whose extremities curved back and terminated in a diamond. On her fingers she had put Chinese sheaths in sculpted silver, which she had found in the Sultan’s gold chest. They had belonged to the empress Nou Wen Ta Che Li and were made to enclose immeasurable fingernails. Isabelle did not have long fingernails, but the sight of the sheaths had thrown her into such a great joy that she had not been able to resist attaching them to her fingers.
A large balcony connected the dressing room where her mirrors were with the tower of Comares. That balcony was sheer on one side over the depths of the Darro and on the other over an interior garden planted with mimosas and lilies, which was known as the cypress garden because there was an enormous cypress in the center that was reputed to be as old as the Alhambra. A wisteria with thick branches overhung the balustrade of the balcony on the side of the garden and overflowed in a torrent of flowers whose perfume mingled sweetly with the fresh air coming from the shade.
Playing with the silver sheaths on her fingers, swinging a flap of her Chinese shawl, Isabelle took a few steps along the balcony and gazed at the narrow white streets of the Albaycin that unfurled facing her on the flanks of the fill. She seemed to be looking for something. She leaned over a little, and suddenly stepped back, leaping on her feet while laughing all alone and waving her shawl in the air. She had perceived a little red flame on the terrace of a distant house, which had been lifted up three times, like a signal.
At that moment someone went past her on the balcony. It seemed to her that a scornful snigger departed from that figure silent emerged from the stones.
Annoyed to have been surprised, and desirous of knowing by whom, Isabelle took a step forward, seized a corner of the veil of the nocturnal stroller and said: “Who are you?”
Aixa slowly lowered the veil that hid her face, showing her features, in which she had assembled the immense sum of the scorn of which she was capable, and, dreading allowing herself to be seen thus, suddenly spat on the ground in the direction of her rival and continued on her way.
She took three or four steps in an infinite jubilation. She was fearless, believing in the cowardice of her rival. She received a mighty slap from Isabelle’s hand on her ear, from behind, while the Chinese sheaths stung her cheek. Instinctively, she parried a second blow by raising her arm.
She did not think of striking. Her dignity did not permit her to do that. She murmured: “I’ve just walked over the vilest of ordures.”
But Isabelle, drunk with fury, careless of Aixa’s tall stature, which surpassed hers by a head, barred her route and, very close to her, in a low voice, she recited in Spanish all the insults she had learned in Seville.
Aixa did not understand, but the forcefully thought words acted on her sensibility by the mysterious magic of syllables. An earthen color covered her face and her lips began to tremble, at the same time as she was invaded by the unique idea of putting to death the execrable being she had before her.
She was physically the stronger. Isabelle, entirely given over to the satisfaction of insult, had her back to the balustrade that overlooked the Darro. An abrupt shove, and she might have fallen backwards from the height of the Alhambra. Those condemned to death had once been launched thus into the void.
Aixa delivered that push, but it was not strong enough, and Isabelle only fell to the ground, where she remained stunned for a second. She got up, and in the movement she made to rise to her feet she threw away the shawl that enveloped her and immobilized her left arm. She also cast off the sheaths from her nails. Like a launched stone she went to strike her enemy’s midriff with her head, and the two of them rolled on the ground. They remained there, borne to the right and he left by their mutual fury, hammering one another with their fists, trying to lacerate one another in an enlacement that stuck them together, mingling their breath, confounding their perfumes and multiplying their hatred.
In the first shock Isabelle had ripped Aixa’s silk tunic from top to bottom, and in hanging on to her she had also torn her broad bouffant trousers. She took advantage of that to belabor the chest and the midriff, which offered themselves to her so well that she when she saw the five bloody furrows left by her fingernails she uttered a little laugh of triumph.
But Aixa had twice Isabelle’s volume, and she ended up by pinning her adversary beneath her. Her turban had fallen off, her hair was uncoiled, and she perceived over her shoulder, like a cold drop of steel, a large pin as sharp as a dagger, which was planted in her tresses. She seized it, and leaned forward to put out Isabelle’s eyes.
The latter had seen the flash above her; she turned her head and bit Aixa’s thigh, which was within range of her mouth. She bit it desperately, putting all her force into her teeth. Pain caused Aixa to drop the pin and seize with both hands, by the nape of the neck and the gilded hair, the head whose closed jaw was biting with a delirious intensity.
She ended up freeing her leg and, as if by virtue of a kind of truce, the two women came apart and contemplated one another, crouching down.
There was no longer anything in them of royal dignity, or even feminine jealousy. Thought was no longer animating them. They were two beasts avid to bring down and bite, and to obtain the immobility of death in the other.
They contemplated one another, unkempt, deprived of their ornaments, almost naked. And suddenly, Isabelle burst out laughing—but a stifled, quiet laughter, for by common accord they were acting as silently as possible and their rage was only expressed in sighs.
“It’s because your breasts are sagging,” she breathed, “that you’re chaste. You daren’t show them. They’re like empty gourds.”
“All the mariners in Seville have hung on yours,” replied Aixa.
“Poor old woman!”
Then, vulgarities heard in passing in the suburbs, the words of slaves surprised by chance, returned by virtue of the stimulus of outrage to the memory of the noble and virtuous Aixa and she allowed them to escape from her convulsed mouth.
She proffered them in Arabic, and Isabelle in her turn, understood them poorly.
Suddenly, the same thought crossed their minds. With a similar bound they rushed toward the glint that the large pin that Aixa had dropped was making among the stones of the balcony. They arrived there simultaneously, their heads collided, their hands mingled and the pin, launched by the shock, flew over the balustrade and fell into the Darro. They heard its fall, like a metallic laugh, music modulating their desire for death.
They resumed the hand-to-hand struggle, like lovers avid for one another. They fell down and writhed on the stone. They were panting with exhaustion. They felt their reciprocal body heat. Their sweat mingled, their skin stuck together mutually, and the disgust they had for one another added to their rage.
Isabelle’s hand seized a handful of Aixa’s right breast and twisted it, and that caused one to utter a gasp of pain and the other a gasp of triumph
Aixa grabbed Isabelle’s slender neck and squeezed it with all her might. At the same time their knees collided and, still gripped, now naked, outside their shredded veils, they stood up momentarily, swooning against the balustrade in the midst of the violet wisteria, tumbling into the shade of the garden, still continuing their struggle.
The cypress garden was only a short drop from the balcony, and instinctively, the two women clung to one another with one hand, while the other grasped the thick branches of the wisteria. That softened their fall; they sprawled in a bed of lilies, raising a swirl of golden dust from the pistils.
A eunuch saw the scene from a window. At hazard, he seized a whip and ran out. In the moonlight, finding himself in the presence of the two slavering, bloody furies, showing their teeth and each trying to strike the other and strangle her amid the snow and gold of the lilies, he thought he was dealing with two drunken slaves, and in order to repress the prodigious scandal he whipped their wounded haunches several times.
The two women raised themselves up, howling. The eunuch recognized them, drop
ped his whip and fled. But his arrival and his blows had sobered the combatants Stifling the tide of their impulses, which had come from the depths of their being, they leapt over the bushes and quit the shelter of the cypress that extended its mute shadow over the ravaged lilies and dead wisteria.
When the doors of their apartments had slammed shut, Aixa and Isabelle, without even bandaging their wounds, collapsed, prey to the miserable despair that women always experience after action. Both of them were vanquished, since they were weeping. Both of them were victorious, since they had made the other weep. But, for want of being able to contemplate one another, they could neither measure their defeat not enjoy their victory.
Late into the night, in the midst of intact pots of rose jam and melted sorbets, a little black woman, magnificently clad, was found asleep in the hall of ambassadors. She retained, as she withdrew, the hieratic solemnity that befit the unique spouse of the envoy of the Sultan of Egypt, and she took away from her visit to the Alhambra the memory of a silent magic and a few hours of sound sleep in an enchanted palace whose queens were absent.
X. The Treasure of the Alhambra
When one loves a woman it is not sufficient for her to tell you that you are young; it is also necessary to render those words plausible by bringing her a few proofs of youth. Those proofs, Abul Hacen strove to furnish by means of unexpected and unreasonable actions.
On certain evening he drank beyond his capacity in order to demonstrate that wine had no purchase on his vigorous nature. He went for long excursions on horseback alongside Isabelle in order that she could admire his virtuosity as a cavalier, and he savored an infinite bliss when, on their return, she leaned toward him and, looking him full in the face, said to him: “What luck that you’ve remained slim. Imagine if you’d become like the fat man you were with when I saw you for the first time. I’d never have been able to love you.”
The Angel of Lust Page 19