Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite Part 13

The room was quite simple, like those of the novices. A great bed, a couch, a few seats and carpets composed all the scanty furniture; but through a large open bay there was a view over the gardens, the sea, the double harbour of Alexandria. Demetrios remained standing and looked at the distant city.

Suns setting behind harbours! Incomparable glories of maritime cities, calm skies, purple waters! Upon what soul vociferous with joy or sorrow would you not cast a shroud of silence? What feet have not halted, what pa.s.sions have not withered, what voices have not died away before you?

. . . Demetrios looked; a swell of torrential flame seemed to issue from the sun, half dipping into the sea, and to flow straight to the left bend of the wood of Aphrodite. From horizon to horizon, the Mediterranean was flooded by the sumptuous purple spectrum which lay in sharply-defined hands of colour, golden red and dull violet side by side. Between this ever-s.h.i.+fting splendour and the peaty mirror of Lake Mareotis, stood the white ma.s.s of the town, bathed in red and violet reflexions. Its twenty thousand flat houses spreading in different directions picked it out marvellously with twenty thousand dashes of colour that underwent a perpetual metamorphosis according to the various phases of the setting luminary. The flaming sun shot forth rapid shafts, then was swallowed up, almost suddenly, in the sea, and with the first reflux of the night, there floated over the whole earth a thrill, a m.u.f.fled breeze, uniform and transparent.

"Here are figs, cakes, a piece of honeycomb, wine, a woman. Eat the figs while it is daylight and the woman when it is dark."

It was the little girl, laughing as she entered. She bade the young man sit down, mounted astride on his knees, and stretching her two arms behind her head, made fast a rose which was on the point of slipping down from her auburn hair.

In spite of himself Demetrios could not restrain an exclamation of surprise. She was completely naked, and when divested of her ample robe, her little body was seen to be so young, so infantine in the breast, so narrow at the hips, so visibly immature, that Demetrios felt a sense of pity, like a horseman on the point of throwing his man's weight upon an over-delicate mare.

"But you are not a woman!" he exclaimed.

"I am not a woman! By the two G.o.ddesses, what am I, then? A Thracian, a porter, or an old philosopher?"

"How old are you?"

"Ten and a half. Eleven. One may say eleven. I was born in the gardens.

My mother is a Milesian. She is called Pythias, but she goes by the name of 'The Goat.' Shall I send for her, if you think me too little? Her house is not far from mine."

"You have been to the Didascalion?"

"I am still there in the sixth cla.s.s. I shall have finished next year; and not too soon either."

"Aren't you happy?"

"Ah! if only you knew how difficult the mistresses are to please! They make you recommence the same lesson twenty times! Things perfectly useless that men never ask for. And then one is tired out, all for nothing. I don't like that at all. Come, take a fig; not that one, it is not ripe. I will show you a new way to eat. Look!"

"I know it. It is longer and no better than the other way. I see that you are a good pupil."

"Oh! I have learnt everything I know by myself. The mistresses would have us believe that they are cleverer than we are. They have more style, that may be, but they have invented nothing."

"You have many lovers?"

"They are all too old: it is inevitable. Young men are so foolis.h.!.+ They only like women forty years old. Now and again I see young men pretty as Eros pa.s.s by, and if you were to see what they choose! Hippopotami! It is enough to make one turn pale. I hope sincerely that I shall never reach these women's age: I should be too ashamed to undress. I am so glad to be still quite young. The b.r.e.a.s.t.s always develop too soon. I think that the first month I see my blood flow I shall feel ready to die. Let me give you a kiss. I like you very much."

Here the conversation took a less serious if not a more silent turn, and Demetrios rapidly perceived that his scruples were beside the mark in the case of so expert a young lady. She seemed to realise that she was somewhat meagre pasturage for a young man's appet.i.te, and she battled her lover by a prodigious activity of furtive finger-touches, which he could neither foresee nor elude, nor direct, and which never left him the leisure for a loving embrace. She multiplied her agile, firm little body around him, offered herself, refused herself, slipped and turned and struggled. Finally they grasped one another. But this half hour was merely a long game.

She jumped out of bed the first, dipped her finger in the honey-bowl and moistened her lips; then, making a thousand efforts not to laugh, she bent over Demetrios and rubbed her mouth against his. Her round curls danced on either side of their cheeks. The young man smiled and leaned upon his elbow.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Melitta. Did you not see my name upon the door?"

"I did not look."

"You can see it in my room. They have written it all over the walls. I shall soon be forced to have them repainted."

Demetrios raised his head: the four panels of the chamber were covered with inscriptions.

"That is very curious, indeed?" said he. "May one read?"

"Oh, if you like. I have no secrets."

He read. Melitta's name was there several times repeated, coupled with various men's names and barbaric drawings. Tender, obscene, or comic sentences jostled oddly with one another. Lovers boasted of their vigour, or detailed the charms of the little courtesan, or poked fun at her girl-friends. All this was interesting merely as a written proof of a general degradation. But, looking towards the bottom of the right-hand panel, Demetrios gave a start.

"What is that? What is that? Speak!"

"Who? What? Where?" said the child. "What is the matter with you?"

"Here. That name. Who wrote that?"

And his finger stopped under this double line.

[Greek: MELITTA .L. CHRYSIDA CHRYSIS .L. MELITTAN]

"Ah!" she answered, "that's me. I wrote that."

"Who is she, Chrysis?"

"My great friend."

"I dare say. That is not what I ask you. Which Chrysis? There are many."

"Mine, the most beautiful. Chrysis of Galilee."

"You know her! you know her! But speak, speak! Where does she come from?

Where does she live? who is her lover? Tell me everything!"

He sat down upon the couch and took the little girl upon his knees.

"You are in love, then?" she said.

"That matters little to you. Tell me what you know; I am in a hurry to hear everything."

"Oh! I know nothing at all. It is quite short. She has been to see me twice, and you may imagine that I have not asked her for details about her family. I was too happy to have her, and I did not lose time in conversation."

"How is she made?"

"Like a pretty girl, what do you expect me to say? Do you want me to name all the parts of her body, adding that everything is beautiful? And then, she is a woman, a real woman . . . Every time I think about her I desire somebody."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

And she put her arm round the neck of Demetrios.

"Don't you know anything about her?" he began again.

"I know--I know that she comes from Galilee, that she is nearly twenty years old, and that she lives in the Jews' quarter, in the east end, near the gardens. But that is all."