Reassured, Tarao wanted to hear the Syrinx again. He sat down in the shadow and said: “Doubtless I will not embarrass your confidence, since it is wordless...”
And the old man listened.
Dionys repeated his plaint to Fatality.
After that, the Sicilian sought out the master-potter when his trouble was propitious to his art. It was a consolation, all the more so as Tarao took pleasure in its beauty above all, and let him understand that a dolor that bore such fruits ought not to seem too dear to him.
Meanwhile, Dehva became anxious. She sensed a strange presence in her companion’s cares. And, full of the finesse of amorous young women, she searched the face and attitude of her lover for the signs of that hostile force. She had a marvelous instinct for divining the ungraspable, and although no image fixed her anxiety, she was never mistaken regarding the traces of the unknown adventure. In the mornings, when Dionys still had the atmosphere of the Umbrian woman about him, the young woman was wild, capricious and almost hostile. She turned away, her laugher was shrill, her eyes full of a strange gleam; she approached Dionys with a cold visage and did not accept his caresses. Afterwards, she became somber, full of rancor; she isolated herself in her room or in a corner of the gardens, and, silently, a sadness tightened her beautiful mouth, the presentiment of experience that casts a shadow over young beings.
When the trace was effaced, she returned to Dionys with a brighter visage, her smiles rejuvenated. Life candid and full, faith, strength and hope brought her back to tenderness. She hastened to the Sicilian, she used all her weapons of grace; she enlaced him with her youthful beauty, like a net of amour.
As he felt more culpable, she entered more profoundly into his future.
One morning, when they were alone, she took his hand, and drew him into the garden among the tall shady laurels. Something wild and wayward was within her, her eyes were full of disorder and provocation. She was wearing no other garment than a linen tunic that followed the contour of her hip.
“What’s the matter, Dehva?” he said, disquieted by the child’s wild silence.
She raised a resolute forehead, and darted her amour from the depths of her somber pupils. Then, raising her arms, she crossed them over the young man’s nape. Her red lips pressed angrily upon Dionys’ mouth.
He resisted at first; she held on to him with all her strength, resolute in trying her power; she leaned her small, elastic breasts, semi-naked, against her lover. Then he weakened. He remained as if buried by her kiss. Attentively, she listened to the man’s heart beating. When she was fully assured of his desire, she suddenly pulled away and fled, without having broken the silence.
All day long she was tranquil and cheerful, but the following day, she recognized the enemy presence again. Dionys had been with the Umbrian woman the night before. Anxiety took hold of her again. She no longer limited herself to scrutinizing her lover. She began to watch what he did. An energy rose up within her, the desire to protect her happiness and to employ all her strength in doing so.
The Syracusan went to the gardens of Licinius twice a week. He penetrated into them without fear. The dogs had become his friends; they welcomed him with silent caresses, as they would once have devoured him in silence. He no longer had anything to fear but the vigilance of the slave watchmen.
Often, the Umbrian woman came to meet him, even outside the enclosure, and guided him to shelter herself.
Dehva knew about those excursions. She got up, quivering, when she heard the sonorous house creaking or the sound of the door grating. She got up and watched the young man departure, furtively; she watched him disappear along the white road. She believed every time that she was determined to follow him, but then she recoiled, seized by an invincible disturbance. Often, too, she thought of calling out to him, of retaining him, but a secret pride, a singular repulsion, prevented her from doing so.
One night, however, she decided. The sky was vaporous, the light of the stars more uncertain. She could see Dionys’ silhouette at fifty paces, however. She had difficulty following him, inasmuch as she had to muffle the sound of her footfalls. As long as he was on the white path, she did not alert his attention. Supple and adroit, she did not make a single stone shift. Thoughtful, impatient to reach his goal, already accustomed to traveling the route without any mishap, he did not turn his head.
But in the narrow paths, the rustle of branches attracted his attention. He stopped and listened. She had stopped at the same instant, shivering. He believed that he had been mistaken, and set forth again.
The path had broadened; Dehva was advancing more easily when she tripped over a root. This time, Dionys had no doubt that he was being followed. He drew his knife and retraced his steps. Dehva made no attempt to hide or to flee. She awaited Destiny, immobile.
When he was close he perceived the pale glimmer of her stola.
“Is that you, Dehva?” he said, in a low voice, putting away his weapon.
She began trembling, so much that she did not have the strength to reply. Her constricted heart, full of sinister trouble, seemed to climb into her throat.
“Is that you?” he repeated, and his hand touched her quivering shoulder.
The soul of the virgin burst; she uttered a low and plaintive cry, while tears began to run down her face.
He held her against him; he was full of an unfathomable pity. The shaking of that beloved young body, the warm tears that his lips encountered, the small sound of sobbing, caused an upheaval of tenderness and also of sly sensuality, which rose up urgently at the contact of feminine dolor.
He remained full of anguish between the amour to which he had consecrated his life and the scintillating slave of Licinius. And, thinking that one was sure and the other fleeting, he was ready to yield to his friend’s pain, to renounce the garden of temptation.
In a low voice, he spoke, inconsequential, soft and infantile words. She perceived his weakness.
“Stay!” she whispered in his ear.
He did not reply, intoxicated by the slight breath that brushed him. Then, gripping him with all the energy of her little arms, she went on: “Stay, Dionys. It’s as if I were about to die.”
He turned his head away. He no longer had any strength. He abandoned himself to a kind of gentle vertigo.
Meanwhile, a glimmer of light increased on the black horizon and rose toward the stars. The hills to the west became visible, outlined in silhouette. Suddenly, a horned moon, red and deformed appeared amid the mists.13
“You see!” Dionys cried. “Diana does not wish it. She has appeared, bloody, at the moment of response. It’s necessary to flee, Dehva, before the homicidal goddess...”
And he tore himself away from her.
III. The Sacred Joy
Flavia was combing her hair. Her small hands had withdrawn the pins and undone the hair. The tresses fell over her semi-naked shoulders; Dionys perceived the tawny hair under the armpits, the breasts pressed against one another, the beautiful cambered loins beneath the transparent tunic.
When the hair was spread out, Flavia untangled it with an agile hand. The comb made a slight hiss, which mingled with the frisson of the cloth and the slight sound of her joints. Her mouth was smiling obliquely, but her eyes were grave and attentive.
Dionys was intoxicated by the spectacle, with a mixture of hope and discouragement.
“You can kiss me,” she said, finally, “but quickly.”
With one bound, he was beside her. She abandoned her mouth momentarily, passive and closing her eyes.
“Your lips are good,” she said. “They’re made for kissing...”
He returned to sit down. She put up her hair again; she moistened her face with water mixed with bran and iris. Then she perfumed herself and polished her fingernails with a pink powder. Then she passed an infusion of mint over her teeth, as shiny as silver and as translucent as the enamel of seashells.
Dionys did not budge, He contemplated all the young woman’s movements; it was an
accomplished game, a mimic masterpiece of living beauty. He loved those cares as a consecration of the royalties of the flesh, like savant and magical rites.
Flavia interrupted herself and drew nearer to him. He did not budge.
“You’re tranquil,” she said, with a hint of mockery. “Has your amour become torpid?”
“It’s resigned, Flavia. You’ve taught it patience, and the art of suffering without a quiver.”
“And you have no rancor?”
“Sometimes. But that rancor isn’t profound. It will only become so if you keep me any longer in suspense. You’re my enemy, but not irreconcilable. Everything is ready within me to love you gently—for I recognize that your will is just, and that it’s necessary to know how to suffer for your beauty.”
“But you’re not happy, Dionys?”
“I’m miserable. I have never been so miserable. I thought I recognized misfortune when I reposed my limbs on the hard ground and lamented my hunger, but then I was full of hope, because a stroke of luck could put an end to my indigence and I sensed youth, strength and long days seething within me. Today, I’m gripped by an obscure fatality. I no longer have an age. I’m at the limits of life. If my adventure is fatal—it doesn’t matter whether I am twenty-five years old or thirty—it will have marked me with an ineffaceable seal. I will have lost that which will never return, and which is worth several human existences.”
She was grave and charming, her elbow on her knee, her pupils dilated to the point that the iris only appeared as an amethyst ring constellated with tiny topazes. Only those irises and pupils were moving in her face; the Umbrian woman only changed at intervals, slowly, the crease of the hole.
“You can’t lose everything, however, for the old potter’s granddaughter will remain to you. “
“She’s forbidden to me for a further twelve months, Umbrian. It’s too great a torture. And when it’s no longer thus...”
He stopped, his face turned to the ground, somber.
“I want you to say everything,” she murmured.
“Well,” he went on, in a languorous tone, “I can no longer imagine life without both of you. With only one, everything is incomplete, the world empty. I need you and Dehva to fill it. But also, what human, what demigod could encounter, in a solitary village, two such marvelous figures to complete one another? Because you are both more beautiful for existing together; and that is why, in losing one, I would lose what could never be again…what could never be again.”
“I couldn’t be sufficient for you, then?”
“You would have been, once.”
She struck a cold attitude: “And if I wanted to be, alone?”
He went pale, and did not say a word. An immense sadness contracted his mouth, in which there was fear and disgust.
She repeated, obscurely and cruelly: “If I wanted that?”
“How do I know?” he groaned. “If I said yes and that I would sacrifice the other to you, would I have changed my soul? The despair would remain, and the horror of being alive. Neither your will nor mine can do it, any more that a ship precipitated into a whirlpool.” As if in a dream, he added: “Oh, I ought never to have been born!”
Flavia shivered. She got up and placed both hands on Dionys. She was palpitating, full of the desire of amour. There was in her desire the pity of having vanquished, so dear to a woman’s heart, the joy of finishing a profound dolor with a caress, and the unknown agitation, the presence of the capricious god who defeats pride in the quivering humility of donation.
He swooned under the adorable weight of that flesh, but, accustomed to the disappointment of caresses, he did not divine that the moment had come. Then she called to him with a profound voice.
“Dionys!”
She weighed upon him more heavily, her eyes full of a languorous flame.
“You have vanquished.”
He raised his head like a legionary at the noise of the battle, and, seizing the woman, with a cry of triumph and servitude, he annihilated himself via her in sacred joy.
IV. The Clearing
There were two festivals of the Olive groves in the Etruscan villages of Campania. One was consecrated to Mnerfa, the Athene creative of the tree, the other to the Etruscan Ceres, who was frequently confounded with a primitive Rhea and even with a formless goddess of Chaos, most often figured by a tree trunk in which the confused pleats of a veil or mantle were perceptible. The festival of Mnerfa fell at the ides of September. She was pure and bright, particularly celebrated by children and adolescents of both sexes.
At dawn, clad in white, little boys and girls ran, in groups of seven, singing, from dwelling to dwelling. They agitated branches ornamented with olives, singing a simple hymn to Mnerfa. A woman came out, sprinkled the little singers gently with water perfumed with roses, and distributed honey-cakes and ripe fruits.
Those infantile visits lasted until a third of the way through the day; then the maidens and adolescents assembled next to a sacred wood where a priest awaited them, or, at least, an old man who fulfilled that office. A bull and rams were sacrificed in a clearing, on a primitive altar, in the shaded of an ancient olive tree. Then cockerels and owls were paraded, birds dedicated to the goddess with the glaucous eyes, and a banquet was prolonged into the night, from which license was banished.
In Veila, the festival of Mnerfa was primarily led by the maidens. All day long they were the mistresses of the village. They exercised an absolute royalty, tempered by ancient regulations. They gathered in long processions that spread out in the boscage of the Volturne, and celebrated, two by two, chaste betrothals, in which they crowned one another with flamboyant roses, olive branches and feathers from cockerels and owls. They were permitted to kiss one another on the mouth.
They regulated the order of the banquet, the decoration of dwellings and crossroads, but did not do the work themselves; the women and the men received their orders and carried them out without a murmur. Even the ancestors obeyed them.
One among them was the queen. She was clad in a glaucous tunic, a corselet and cothurnes. She held a little shield with a head in the center, which might have been a Gorgon or some old Etruscan deity of Fear. A transparent linen veil floated over her neck and could be lifted over her face. She was taken to the sacrificial wood on a cart pulled by rams. A domesticated snake accompanied her and a crow that knew how to pronounce the name of the goddess. In a golden ladle she received a few drops of sacred blood, which she had to knead with flour and olive oil for the symbolic cake of the banquet.
After dusk she retired, alone, to the depths of the sacred wood. She could be accompanied by a young man as far as forty-nine paces from the altar. There, in solitude, she sang a hymn to Mnerfa and requested her protection for the village.
This year, Dehva was the queen. She was pale and sad, but so beautiful that the most boorish were moved by her presence. She paraded her trouble all day along the river, the marshes and the rose bushes, and submitted meekly to her glory of a day. As she was solitary, surrounded but devoid of company, she was able to keep silence. She indicated the hymns, but only sang the first verses. Her frail majesty was more charming for her silence and the melancholy of her smile.
She could not approach Dionys or speak to him. She sought to perceive him, to follow his actions and the expression of his face. An indiscernible, confused jealousy, all the more frightful, ravaged her. She was like a traveler gone astray in a sinister night, pressed all around by hungry wild beasts, a hundred wild beasts whose nature is unknown.
She no longer feared the gods, nor the terrible goddess who watched over her. Her soul was defenseless, even against death.
However, a sort of tranquility came to her toward the end of the day. The hour was about to come for which she had been waiting since dawn, when it would be necessary to sing the solitary hymn in the sacred wood. She would be alone with Dionys.
And it seemed to her that she would extract the sad confidence from her lover. She was not thinking of unh
appiness or happiness, but solely tortured by the frightful need to know that had devoured jealous souls for a hundred centuries.
The hour for her departure sounded. She had designated Dionys. And the young man accompanied her among the age-old olive trees. It was one of the ecstatic evenings in which Campania is prodigal, when one no longer feels any other need that to love and to grow. The water is in flower like the earth. The stars project pale wakes over the lake of the sky. It seems that one can see the constellations drifting. The aromal souls of flowers enchant the expanse.
Dehva walked silently beside the Syracusan. The presence of the young man filled her with a sudden bliss, so forceful and so delightful that she annihilated all anterior will within it. She leaned on him, and breathed him in with the odor of darkness.
They approached in that fashion the clearing where the altar of Mnerfa was.
It was surrounded by immense olive trees, the least of which was believed to be two centuries old. They marched enlaced, accompanied by the rumor of cicadas. Their amorous lips encountered one another languorously. Dehva, intoxicated, scarcely perceived the foreign presence any longer.
They reached the limit that Dionys could not surpass without incurring the wrath of the goddess. Then, a slight frisson agitated the young woman, the black suspicion returned and gripped her heart.
In a low voice, she moaned: “I’m suffering from a shadow Dionys—can you not take it away?”
“There is no shadow that can separate me from you,” he replied.
She sighed, she could not find anything to say in reply, and, detaching herself, she passed under the shady branches alone. The great clearing opened before her. Ashy reflections trailed over the grass and the flowers there, which permitted her to distinguish, in the center, an olive tree a thousand years old, which neither lightning not hurricanes had been able to fell.
Dehva advanced at a fearful pace all the way to the altar of volcanic stone. Her heart was pounding violently.
She sang in a silvery voice, very feeble at first, which gradually grew louder. She celebrated the intelligent strength of the goddess, victorious over blind Mars, vast Enceladus and the sovereign of the sapphirine sea. She declared her mildness to humans, formed by Prometheus, for the heroes Perseus, Bellerophon and Heracles, for Orestes prey to the Eumenides, and for the fecund birth of the olive tree. She implored it for others, and then, in a whisper, for herself, for her feeble tottering soul and her desire, more ardent than the desire to live.
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