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‘But I don’t believe it, Ben Ata!’
‘It is so. Those are the laws.’
‘If I had to live down here I don’t think I would be able to take my eyes away. Look, look … ’ and she flung her arms wide and exulted at the vast panoramas of light, of colour, that filled all the western skies. “Clouds!” she sang out. ‘Those are not clouds, that’s our country, it is what we are.’
‘We have times for looking up there. Definite times. Festivals. Once every ten years. Otherwise people caught spending too much time looking up there are punished.’
‘And how do you punish them?’
‘We put heavy weights on their heads so that they cannot look up.’
‘Ben Ata, that is wicked.’
‘I did not make the law. It has always been our law.’
‘Always, always, always … how do you know?’
‘I do not think that any one of us has ever questioned it. You are the first.’
She sank down beside him. Close. Again there was the small shrinking from her that he could not control. This exultation of hers, this rapture, was abhorrent to him. He could hardly bear to see her enhanced smiling face. Though on the other hand he did feel the beginnings of relief that she was not always so pale and serious. Her face, now illumined by the rosy light from those far peaks, was as pretty a pink as any girl’s he could remember, and her heavy hair, still pearled from the mists, was in wisps around her face.
But: ‘You must not stare like that. It is against our laws. While you are here, you must obey our laws.’
‘Yes, that is proper,’ she whispered, and turned her eyes away.
‘When you are in your own country, you can of course do as you like.’ He sounded to her like her brother, who had been steward of her household for many years before he had asked to be transferred to the post of Keeper of the Memories.
‘But in our country that is what we are, Ben Ata.’
Suddenly, and like light striking into her brain, she was dazzled. ‘Ben Ata, I’ve just had a … ’ but it had gone. She put her hands over her face and rocked back and forth, trying to remember what had just fled past her.
‘Are you ill?’
‘No, I am not. But I almost understood something.’
‘Well, let me know when you have.’
At this the soldier got to his feet, and — just for a moment — took a glance at the glories of the mountainous paradise in the skies. Muttering to himself, ‘Quite right, of course people shouldn’t waste their time on that —’ he resolutely turned his head and marched off towards the pavilions. Al·Ith came behind, slowly, along the narrow pool, passing the jets, one, two, three — she, too, took one last look at her own country, and as resolutely averted her eyes, and looked instead at how the seven jets blurred the gleaming surface of the pool which was trying to reflect the heavy grey skies.
Inside the pavilion, everything awaited them. The large, silent, airy, white-gleaming room, with its delicate embroideries, and its bright paint patterns. The deep couch, hardly rumpled from their encounter. Through the arches at the other side could be seen nothing but grey. It was raining, and the gardened hillside that sloped to the camps was blotted out.
Ben Ata stood in the middle of the room by the pillar, looking at her, in the most comically disconcerted way in the world. And she stood similarly looking at him.
They felt for each other at that moment friendship. Comradeship. If they were nothing else, these two, they were representatives and embodiments of their respective countries. Concern for their realms was what they were. This concern, in him, took the shape of obedience. Duty. In her these tight compulsions were lightened to responsiveness to events, situations, but they were of the same kind, nevertheless. Their people were what they were, their thoughts were. Their lives could be nothing else, or less … yet now both were aware, and deeply, so that they were shocked and stirred to their depths, that all this concern and this duty of theirs had not prevented them from going very wrong… . They were looking at each other, not shrinking from each other’s gaze at all, but both trying to enter in behind the sober, thoughtfulness of his grey eyes, the soft gleam of her black eyes, so that they could reach something deeper, and other.
‘What are we going to do, Ben Ata?’ she whispered.
This time it was he who extended his hand, just a little, and she went to him, and took it in both of hers. ‘We have to think,’ she said. ‘We must try and find out …’
Now he put his great arms lightly about her, almost as if afraid the size and weight of him might crush her, and as if he were attempting, or trying out, entirely new and not altogether welcome sensations and, avoiding the bruise beside her mouth, he gazed into that face of hers which seemed to him as if it were made of a substance or a light that he could never hope to, or even want to, encompass. He kissed her, as clumsily as a boy. He felt that her mouth was coming alive and responding in ways that could still only alarm him. Quick light kisses, the subtle tastes and touches of a smiling and easy companionship, the teasing and the response on response on response — all this was too much of an imposition, and after a few moments, he again carried her to the couch. He did not miss that, as he held her still so that he could enter her, she shrank from him and tightened as if everything in her and of her repudiated him. He felt this and contrasted it with the beginnings of the sensuous exchange which he had cut short. Her ways seemed too difficult for him, or at least unfamiliar, or out of his reach just then. And his were striking him as crude … he could only complete the entry and the possession by taking a furtive glance at the bruise he had inflicted, and this itself now shamed him so that as he spurted he groaned and then lay still. He was filled, amazingly, with grief.
She was quite still, and a look at her face showed her eyes open and desolate.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I know you think I am a boor.’
‘You have very bad habits in your country,’ she remarked at last, and it was cold. Though he believed there was at least the possibility of a revival of her friendliness.
He jumped up, pulling the cloak all around him, and covering her legs with the blue dress.
‘You know what I’m going to do,’ he positively hissed at her, ‘I’m going to order you up some dresses from the town.’
At this she began to laugh. Weakly, her head turned to one side, and her hand at her mouth, but she laughed. He smiled, in relief, though he knew this laugh of hers might just as well be weeping.
‘It’s time we both ate, anyway,’ he said. And he sounded even more like her brother the steward, so that now she laughed harder, and then turned over, put her head under her arms and called out to him, ‘Get out of here, get out, and leave me alone.’
He went, marching briskly, into the rooms set aside for him, on the right of this central pavilion.
There he bathed, and changed his garments. He put on a tunic used for ceremonies and special occasions, because there was nothing else in his cupboards that seemed suitable for this tryst, or wedding breakfast.
Then he went back into the central room. She was in her rooms. He sat at the little table in the window against the arches where grey rain was sweeping in front of a pouring wind, and almost at once put his chin in his hand and fell to thinking of their dilemmas as rulers. There she found him later, so deep in thought he did not hear her.
She had found in her cupboards a light white linen wrapper that had been left there by one of the maids who had swept and tidied the pavilion. She had left her dark blue garment behind and had come in to him dressed in what he recognized as a maid’s overall — so he saw when at last he did realize she was there.
He said nothing, however. He thought that the fresh white became her. He thought that she was quite pretty, he could suppose, if only she was able to make her face more ready to meet his needs. But she was serious again, and this matched his real mood.
Between their two chairs was a small square table, inlaid with coloured woods and carved. This, too, had been exactly specified by the Order.
Now he said, ‘What do you want to eat?’
As she seemed about to answer, he clapped his hands, and there appeared before her fruit, bread, a hot aromatic drink.
‘Very frugal,’ said he, and clapped his hands again. Before him appeared cold meats and the hard biscuit they used on their campaigns.
‘Very frugal,’ said she.
‘You aren’t impressed at my little trick?’ he enquired, brisk and as it were brotherly-sarcastic.
‘Very, but I suppose it is part of the furnishings of the Order.’
‘Yes, it is. Do you have anything like it?’
‘Never.’
‘Well, we just think of it and it arrives.’ And she could see from the boyish pleasure he was showing that he was about to cause something else to materialize.
‘No, don’t,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t abuse it.’
‘You are right. Naturally.’ And he began eating, in efficient and large mouthfuls.
This meal of theirs was prolonged deliberately by them. Both liked each other best when in their roles of sovereign responsibility — thoughtful, serious. He told himself that he longed for her to behave like the girls he was used to, but the truth was, he was already used to her, and had begun to rely on her. As for her, her natural antipathy to his physical type and kind could only be set aside when she was able to watch him thinking, and trying to approach her to share what she knew faced them both.
They talked more than they ate, and sat watching the interminable rain sweeping past the arches and enclosing them in steady hush.
Towards midafternoon it stopped and, with bare feet, they walked around and between and among the faithful fountains, still plashing into the pools that had overflowed everywhere, so that they walked through inches of warm water. Ben Ata was kicking and dragging his feet through the shallows like a child. He had the look of someone let off a long leash: it was a foolish look, and Al·Ith was repelled by it. This was a man who did not know how to play without self-consciousness. He felt guilty, he had even the air of someone who needed punishment. Soon she suggested they should go indoors and then he put on stiffness and a correct manner like a child rebuked too harshly. She took a quick glance at the peaks of her own country, already slightly tinted by the sun going down behind them in a crystalline blue, and saw him tighten his lips and shake his head. With him there was no midway — licence or prohibition, one or the other! But inside they were able to regain a balance, and to talk again.
They had reached no conclusions about what was wrong in their two realms, or where they had taken false decisions — for it was clear to them both that this must be the case. But it seemed to them that they were all the time on the edge of some understanding that nevertheless continually eluded them.
The evening shadows enclosed the pavilions, and lights sprang up in the fluted edges of the ceilings. The two were walking about their — prison. For both knew that this was how the other felt. But they were not able to put themselves enough into each other’s place so as to understand why. Ben Ata, with every particle of himself, felt a need to throw off these surroundings, and to push away her whose very presence seemed to set up an irritable resistance in him as she moved to and fro, passing him, so that as she came near all the flesh on that side was protesting and shrinking. He had not experienced anything like this in his life. But then he had never spent such a long time alone with any woman, let alone one who talked to him, and behaved ‘like a man,’ as he kept telling himself. These waves of emotion were so strong that as they lessened, he felt astonished at himself, and wondered if he were not ill. Thoughts of her possible accomplishments in the dark arts returned. As for her, she was sorrowful, grief-struck, she wanted to weep. These emotions were foreign to her. She could not remember ever feeling a low, luxurious need to weep, to succumb, to put her head on a shoulder — not anyone’s, let alone Ben Ata’s. And yet she caught herself wishing more than once that he would carry her to that couch again, not to ‘make love’ — certainly not, for he was a barbarian — but to enclose her in his arms. This need could only amaze and disquiet her. She believed herself afflicted by the airs of this Zone, so enervating and dismal. Despite her shield, despite the special dimensions of this place, she must have become perverted in some way. With all her being she longed to be free and back in her own realm where an easy friendly lightheartedness was what everyone expected to feel, and where tears were a sign of physical illness.
Their pacings back and forth and up and down became such a frenzy that both even laughed, and tried to joke about it — but suddenly he let out a muffled shout, which she recognized easily as the sign of an organism reaching breaking point, and he said, ‘I must go and see about something …’ with which he disappeared into the dark down the hill.
She knew he had gone to the encampments — they were his home.
As for her, his going left her breathing more easily. But as she still paced to and fro, the words came into mind as clearly as if they had been spoken into her inner ear: ‘It is time for you to go home now, Al·Ith. You will have to come back later, but now go home.’
She could not doubt that this was the Order. Her spirits rose in a swoop. Not even stopping to put on her dark dress, but staying as she was in her white maid’s wrapper, she ran out in the other direction from that taken by her husband, Ben Ata, and standing among the fountains called to her horse. Which she did by thinking him to her. Soon she heard him cantering up the hill, and then picking his way through the flowers and the pools. She was on his back and off down the hill and on the road westwards before Ben Ata could have reached his soldiers.
She was not afraid of being stopped. It was dark. She had only to follow a straight road that ran without branching or even curving, straight on, and on, with the straight line of trees on one side looking like bunches of leafy twigs in the dark, and the canal lying on the other. Very few people went out at night here. In fact Ben Ata was quite shocked that in her realm the night was valued for visiting, feasts, and all kinds of enjoyments. He allowed that with them the air might be less dangerous, which he assured her it was down here. Al·Ith did not find it more than unpleasantly heavy and damp, and long before dawn the road rose steadily before her, to where the escarpment’s sharp lift began. It was necessary for her not to be stopped by the soldiers and on this side of the frontier. She ripped the sleeves out of her wrapper, tore each in half, and bound these around the hooves of her faithful horse. Then she rode on, making no sound.
She did not see the flocks and herds as she passed them, but she heard them, and thought of the poor subdued boy she had seen face down before her. She did not see the great pile of the ‘dangerous’ place, and told herself that on her next visit, which alas was inescapable, she must ask Ben Ata about it. She saw no one on the road. She heard soldiers singing and carousing not far from the frontier, but went past them without hindrance.
As the dawn lightened the sky far behind her, and she was lifting her eyes to wonder and marvel at the snow lands of her mountains, she heard a horse racing behind her, and thought it must be Ben Ata. She pulled in her horse and waited patiently for him to come up. It was Jarnti. He was without his armour, but had his shield, and was covered by the regulation cape.
‘Where are you going, madam?’
‘Home. As I have been ordered.’
‘Ben Ata does not know it. He is in the mess tent with the officers.’
‘I am sure he is,’ she said, but he did not respond to her humour. He was not looking at her, but rather to one side. He had the furtive shamefaced look she remembered as being peculiarly his. But he seemed to be straining to move his eyes further to one side … then with the same difficult movement, he was turning his head to the other side. And then he seemed to be attempting to lift his head, and failing.
She suddenly felt on the verge of an understanding.
‘Jarnti, do you ever look at the mountains?’
‘No,’ he said, making his black horse wheel about, in protest.
‘Why not?’
‘We are forbidden.’
‘It seems there is a great deal you are forbidden. Look now, look, how beautiful it is.’
Again his horse wheeled and swerved all about the road, and she could see that he was trying to force his eyes up. But while they kept flickering to one side and then another, he did not raise his head. Could not.
‘Did you cloud gather when you were a child?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were punished with the heavy helmet. For how long?’
‘For a very long time,’ he blurted, with sudden reminiscent anger. And the obedience took over again.
‘Do a lot of children disobey, and watch the mountains?’
‘Yes, a great many. And sometimes young people.’
‘And they all wear the punishment helmet and thereafter are obedient?’
‘That is so.’
‘How did you know I had gone?’
‘This horse was left alone, and he jumped over the wall and was cantering after you. I knew you had gone, and so I got on him.’
‘Well, I shall now ride on, Jarnti, and I daresay I shall see you again. But tell Ben Ata that if it is he who gets the Order that we must meet again, and here in your Zone, then he doesn’t have to send a company of soldiers.’
‘We do what we think is correct.’
‘How many soldiers did the Order specify were necessary to fetch me? None, I think.’
‘It is not safe for you to ride alone.’
‘I have ridden safely to this point, and once over the border and into my country I can assure you I have no need to fear.’
‘That I know,’ he said softly, and in admiration and with a longing in his voice that told her that he would dream of his visit to her Zone for all his life. Even though he might not know why he did.
Al·Ith examined this man while he kept his eyes averted.
He was built like Ben Ata, strong, brown-skinned, though his hair was black and so were his eyes. But she knew him, intimately, because of Ben Ata. He would be the same with his woman or women — blustering, and a boor. Yet for one moment, astounding her by its strength, she wished she were inside those arms like pillars, ‘safe,’ ‘sheltered.’ She called, ‘Goodbye, Jarnti, and tell Ben Ata I will see him when I have to.’ The grimace on Jarnti’s face was quite enough reward for her brief flare of spite, and she at once felt remorse. ‘Tell him … tell him … ’ but she could not think of anything softening and sweet. ‘Say I left because I was told to go,’ she brought out at last and sped up the road between the cliffs of the escarpment. Turning her head, she saw him trying to lift his on its stiff neck to gaze up into the forbidden mountains. But he could not: he forced it up a little way, and then his face fell forward again.
She rode over the frontier with her shield held before her, and then when she was in the fresh high singing airs of her own country, she threw down the shield, flung herself off the horse, and danced around him, shieldless, laughing so that she could nor stop. And on the peaks that stretched halfway up the sky now, the sunrise was scarlet and purple.
She wanted more than anything to be on the plateau, close under the mountains, but first she wished to make sure of certain facts. So when she had sung and danced herself back to her usual frame of mind, she got back on the horse, and turned off the road that ran to the plateau so that she would make a circle around it from right to left, through the outlying regions of the Zone. These were mostly pastoral, and farming, and she always enjoyed travelling there … but it was some time since she had made such a tour … how long? Prickling at the back of her mind was the knowledge that it had been a very long time. What had happened? How was it she had got slack like this? For she had. Irresponsible. There was no worse word. She was being stung, whipped along by it. Normally, after such a delight of dancing and retrieval of her self to the point where every atom sang and rejoiced, she would have expected to ride, or walk, or run through the long scented grasses of the steppe with nothing at her heels but the pleasures of the day, sunlight, crisp aromatic winds, the lights changing, always changing, on the peaks … but no, it was not so. She had been very wrong. Why? She even jumped down off her horse and stood with her arms around his neck and her face pressed into the slippery heat there, as if the horse’s strength could feed understanding into her. She had been particularly busy? No, she could not believe so. Life had been as it always was, delightful, with the children, her friends, her lovers, the amiable pace of this realm setting the rhythms of the body and the mind into good humour, kindliness … thinking of the smiling, contented faces of her life, she rebelled that there might be something wrong — how could there be!
A man’s voice said, ‘Are you in need of help?’ She turned and saw he was an agriculturalist from one of the communal farms. Young, healthy, with that particular glistening warmth to him that was the mark of well-being and good humour, and which was so singularly lacking in Ben Ata’s realm.
‘No, I am well,’ she said. But he was examining her in doubt. She remembered she still wore the brief white wrapper, now sleeveless and ragged, and that the horse’s hooves were bound in cloth. She pulled the rags off his hooves, and as she did so, he asked, ‘Ah, I see who you are. And how is marriage in Zone Four?’ This was the sort of friendly enquiry that she would normally have expected, but she gave him a quick suspicious glance, which she was categorizing as ‘a Zone Four look.’ But no, of course he meant nothing ‘impertinent’ — a Zone Four word! Oh, she had been very much changed by her day and a half in that low place.
‘You are right, I am Al·Ith. And I had forgotten I was wearing this thing. Tell me, would one of the women of your household lend me a dress of some kind?’
‘Of course. I’ll go now.’
And he ran off to where she could see a group of farmsteads surrounded by flocks and herds.
Meanwhile, she found a small tree, set the horse free to graze, and sat down.
When he came running back, with a garment in his hand, he saw her there, and the horse cropping, but close enough that he could lift his nose often to nuzzle and caress her.
