Читать книгу The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5 - Doris Lessing - Страница 8

When she reached the top of the pass that led from the plain to the plateau, she reined in Yori, and looked up at the heaped mountains all around. Her life had been lived among these mountains; and watching how they changed and deployed inside their moulding atmospheres had been her recreation and her mind’s nourishment. Now, as she gently turned her horse about and about she saw them as she always had — but saw them, too, as she had from far down in the lowlands, looking up with Ben Ata. She knew that at this moment, now, he would be gazing at those peaks, forbidden or not: he would not be able to help himself. And seeing him stand there, momentarily lost to himself among the tents and picket lines of the camps, his officers, first glancing at each other, with raised eyebrows, would one after another themselves look upwards — and then, following them, the soldiers. Al·Ith was wondering about the women, whom she suspected of being custodians of all kinds of private beliefs. Probably they, or many of them, had never ceased, when no one could see them, to watch the skies westwards, where the mountain snows jay so high in the heavens it was hard to tell them from clouds.

Now she remembered a song — yes, hearing it as she lay in Ben Ata’s arms, not taking it in then, but retaining enough to hear it again now. The song had been part of the mounting delights of their two astonished bodies:

How shall we reach where the light is, Come where delight is?

High on the peaks light changes, Hope ranges.

Clouds? — no, Snow …

Rain here, Snow there:

Freeze-fire white. Flake light.

How may we go there Climb in the air there

Up, up, up from this flat land, Into the high land

That is our way That is our way …

A woman’s high sweet voice had rung through their lovemaking, and these words would now always be melded with their memories of each other.

And yet she knew that the words actually heard by any casual person listening, soldier or uninitiated soldier’s wife, would not have been these — the initiated women would hear them, and she with Ben Ata had heard them — but had he? Well, she would ask when they met next!

She rode forward again and now all along the roads groups of people called out to her, welcoming her back. And she stopped to talk, to listen to their messages, and to tell them, too, that she was pregnant by Ben Ata. The news flew across the plateau as they called to each other, and when she rode into the streets of our capital, the crowds were lining the way and singing and calling out a welcome to the new child, and by the time she had reached her home, she was back in the high easy friendliness which is the common mood of Zone Three.

On the wide steps were waiting her sister Murti· and all the children who called her Mother. She was enclosed by them in love and welcome, and was with them all for a day and night, to hear their tales of what had happened while she was gone. Meanwhile, the bells were ringing out from our information tower, so that no one in all of our Zone could fail to know that she was home and safe and that there would be a new child.

Then, retiring with her sister, leaving the children to their Mind-Fathers and their lessons and games, she went right to the very top of the palace, where the roofs stretched everywhere, level on level, and where it was possible to climb up even farther to a spire higher than any other in the capital. Right at the top of this tower she stood with Murti and she said to Murti, who was wondering at this exertion to visit a place she could not remember ever having tried to reach before, ‘Look, look there …’ and she pointed northwest between a deep gap in the mountains there. The blue of Zone Two gleamed like sapphires. Murti· could see nothing at first but a gap in the mountains with a haze in it.

Al·Ith gazed, letting her eyes fill with the blue, and thought fondly of how Ben Ata had said it was a waste of time, so that she was smiling, and Murti·, glancing at her, knew that she was thinking of her husband, for that smile could mean nothing else. She laughed, and was about to turn to her sister and tease her, begging for facts and bits of news of this famous Ben Ata, the great soldier, but Al·Ith said, ‘No, no, just stand and look …’ For all of her life, she. Al·Ith, had had the possibility of climbing up to this high place and finding Zone Two with her eyes. No one had said she should not! But no one had ever mentioned Zone Two! And yet — yes, as a child she had come here. Now she remembered. She had been a very young girl, before menarche. She had been impelled to climb up and up, first to the immensities of the roofs spreading all over the tops of the many palaces so that she could, if she had wanted to, have jumped from one to another, and around and about for weeks of days. But instead she saw the tall spire, and the little door at its foot and she had crept up and up. And up. And at last had reached the end of the interminably swirling stairs and stood breathless and giddy on the little platform they stood on now, enclosed by the lights of the evening sky. Birds sped past, and called to them. High over the mountains the eagles swung and swerved. She had clung here and looked up and out and it had been as if her whole self had filled with a need to leave here and let herself be absorbed by that endless blue — the blue, the blue, the blue! And it was hours before she had crept down again, her head filled with blue air, and — then, what? She could not remember! She had told someone and been warned? She had not told, but had simply forgotten?

Did it matter? The fact was, all her life the possibility had been here for no more effort than the climb up flights of difficult stairs. And yet it had been as if her own mind had closed itself off to what it could do. Should do. Wanted to do …

Her sister was clinging to the rail with both hands, her fine clear profile lifted, her eyes shining. She seemed to shine everywhere; the strong evening light polished her soft gold hair, and the embroideries on her yellow dress glowed. She had seen!

When she turned to Al·Ith all she said was, ‘Why did we forget it?’

And Al·Ith had no reply.

Next, Al·Ith ordered the bells to peal out an invitation for all the regions to send in messengers, and as quickly as was comfortably possible. Then she took supper with her sister, who wanted to know about this new husband, and while normally she would have told Murti· everything, without any feeling of disloyalty, or betrayal, she found her tongue weighted. Why? Only partly because news about Zone Four must be so foreign to Murti· that it would be necessary to say everything again and again from a dozen different angles before she could begin to understand it, but also because she could feel Ben Ata thinking of her. She did not like this connection with him. She could not remember ever before, with any man, whether for parenthood or for play, feeling this yearning, heavy, disquiet. She judged it unhealthy — a projection of that Zone where all the emotions were so heavy and so strong. But this is what she did feel, and it was no use behaving as if she did not. Murti· felt the resistance in her, did not blame her, but was excluded, and she went away early to her rooms where her own children awaited her.

Surely a relation with one person that narrowed others must be wrong? How could it not be wrong?

But Al·Ith knew the real questions that faced her now were more urgent than these disquiets about that husband of hers, to whom she would certainly be ordered to return in due time — and she could not say whether she abhorred the thought or longed for him.

And she put herself to sleep so as to be fresh for the day ahead, which she hoped would bring her the insights she so badly needed.

The main Council Chamber of our Zone is not very large, for there is no necessity for it to contain more than twenty or thirty of us at a time, since this number adequately represents us: of course the representatives are different, according to their function. It is a square room, its ceiling not very high, situated where windows show sky, clouds, mountains, on three sides.

The floor has on it very large flat cushions, where we sit according to no order except of preference, and Al·Ith may sit anywhere: there is no need for her to be elevated or on a prominence with such a small number of people.

On this day she was in the Chamber before anyone else, and moved from window to window, looking down at our streets, and up at the mountains, and then for a long time at a certain spot towards the northwest. I was there that day, and found her when I entered — the second to arrive. I was struck at once by her restlessness, her anxiety. This was not the contained woman I had known since she was a baby: I am one of Al·Ith’s Mind-Fathers.

I stood by her at the window, and she gave me the wildest saddest look, and then sank her head on my shoulder, snuggling like a small child. But as a small girl she had been too independent and striving for such an action and I was disturbed more than I can say.

She soon pulled herself away. ‘Lusik, I don’t know myself.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’

Down below in the main square was a commotion, and we both leaned forward to watch, thankful to be taken out of our anxieties.

Delegates were arriving from all our regions, on horses and donkeys, and there were children on goats. These animals were being taken into the care of some young people whose task this was, and led under trees that shaded the square’s southern side. I had come in by camel, since I live in the extreme south of our lovely southern region. This beast, who did not often have the chance to make the acquaintance of animals other than her own kind, since camels thrive so well with us they are our main transport, was standing nose to nose with a fine black mare from the eastern herds.

It was such a pleasant and familiar scene that we were both cheered, but she said, ‘All the same, we are in bad trouble and I don’t know at all what it is.’

The room filled with our people, men, women, and two small girls who had already shown a proclivity for the arts of management and were being given opportunities to learn them.

There were twenty-five of us that day. Al·Ith sat down at once, under the west window, spread her yellow skirts around her, for she knew we liked to see her beautiful and well presented, and began.

‘We all know the situation. I take full responsibility.’ She waited, then, and looked around at us. Everyone had nodded, not in animosity, but saluting a fact. She smiled, slightly, and it was a bleak little smile.

‘What we have to know is this. In the last thirty-nine days, has there been any change in our situation?’

She paused again, looked carefully from face to face, and making sure to smile at the two little girls, who of course smiled back in adoration and total submission to their desire to be like her, and better.

‘In every region it has been the same. Animals have ailed, and lost their fertility. And we, too, have not been as we were. This I know. This we all know. And I might have known it before I did had I taken as much notice as I should of your reports.’

We all nodded again: it was the truth.

‘It is clear that everyone believes that my marriage with Ben Ata is in some way connected with this decline. We do not know why or how, but we may expect to see an improvement among us. As has already been announced to everyone, I am pregnant. This presumably is part of the prescription for our recovery.’

After every statement she paused and looked around, for signs of disagreement, or that anyone wanted to add to what she had said.

‘Well, then, it is thirty-nine days since I was taken to Ben Ata.’ The was taken came out of her with a bitter emphasis, and she at once regretted it, offering us a quick apologetic smile. By now there was no one present who had not seen her inner distress. There was an atmosphere in the Council room I had not experienced before. More than anything could have done, Al·Ith’s state told us how things were in our realm.

She waited quietly. ‘There has been no change at all in that time? No? Now, I have been pregnant for five days. Has there been any change in that time?’

At this one of the little girls said, ‘My sheep had twins yesterday.’

We laughed, and the proceedings halted while Al·Ith explained to her the gestation time for sheep.

Meanwhile, we were wondering if there had in fact been any change in the last five days? Discussion began. Al·Ith was listening carefully. And then she jumped up and went fast from one window to another, returning to the west window where she leaned, gazing out and up. This was not what any one of us had observed in her before. After a time I, as the only one of her parents present, went to the window and looked where she did. I could see only the massed piles of the western ranges.

She was reminded by my being there of her duty, and sat down again.

The little girl who had spoken about her sheep was humming.

It was one of our children’s games.

Find the way

And find the way

And follow on and through.

Through the pass There we must pass And gather in the blue …

Al·Ith was leaning forward, listening. There was not one of us who had not heard it a thousand times. The children made patterns of stones and hopped through them in certain definite rhythms which kept varying according to the rules of the rhyme.

We believed Al·Ith was as usual paying especial attention to children and waited.

But she was still leaning there, intent on the little girl, who was quite oblivious of Al·Ith, but sat swaying a little, humming, and even softly clapping her hands. She was a child typical of the eastern regions: a sandy little thing, with bright blue eyes and pale hair. These scraggy chickens tended to grow up into the wildest beauties, oddly enough, and the men, too, were handsome. When we had our festivals, hearts tended to beat faster when the companies from the east came riding in, smiling charmers all of them, conscious of their power over us, ready with their songs of a much harder fiercer past …

‘What is your name?’ asked Al·Ith.

‘Greena.’

‘Well, my little green one, come here.’

The child skipped forward and sat at Al·Ith’s knee. She took her hand.

‘What is the rest of that song?’

‘What song, Al·Ith?’

‘You were singing. What comes after “And gather in the blue”?’

The child tried to think. She glanced around at her sister for help.

By now we all understood that something important was happening.

As for me, I had been present at certain heightened moments in that room, but nothing like this. The air was snapping with excitement, and Al·Ith’s lassitude had gone. She was as she normally was: alert, lively, all attention.

‘Is there any more of that song?’ Again the child looked for help at her sister, another little wisp of a girl, but she shook her head. Then, she scrambled to her feet. ‘Yes, yes, there is … I think … ‘ and sank back to the floor.

‘Listen,’ said Al·Ith, ‘what I want you to do is this. Go down to the square there — where the animals are. Forget about us up here for a time. Play that game. Just play it as if you were at home with your herds and your families. And try to remember what comes after “And gather in the blue”.’

The two little girls sprang up, and ran together out of the Council Chamber, hand in hand. We were smiling and we all knew it was because every one of us was seeing them as they would be in such a short time.

‘What is all this about, Al·Ith?’ asked a young man from the north. He was in fact her son by adoption, and had grown up near her. He even looked like her, as adopted children so often did.

‘I’m on the verge of it,’ she said, looking fast and close into all our faces. ‘Can’t you feel it? There’s something! What!’ And in her urgency she was up again and pacing all around the room, this time standing at the windows without seeing out. ‘What is it?’ We said nothing, but waited. We all know that when one of us is on the edge of an understanding that we help by thinking with her, him, and waiting. ‘I just don’t know, don’t know … ‘ and then she whirled round to the west window and leaned over. As many of us who could, crowded there and looked down. The two children had laid out their pattern of pebbles and were skipping and singing.

We could not hear the words.

Feeling our eyes on them they stopped, and looked up. We drew back out of sight.

‘We must wait,’ said Al·Ith.

We sat down. Of course we hoped to know more about her visits to the other Zone, but did not want to say anything that would bring the shadow down over her again.

She knew what we were thinking, and with a sigh, met us.

‘It is very hard to describe it,’ she said courageously, and we saw the animation had left her. ‘It is easy to describe it outwardly. Everything in it is for war. Fighting. It is a poor place. We have nothing in our realm to compare with it. As for the spirit of the people …’ She was faltering, with pauses between words. Again we recognized that she was in the grip of something. ‘War. Fighting. Men … every man in the whole realm is in the army …’ She tailed off, silent. She had virtually stopped breathing. ‘Every man in uniform …’ She stopped again, and her eyes lost all their lustre while she went deep inside herself. As for us we sat absolutely still.

‘An economy entirely geared to war … but there is not much war … hardly any fighting … yet every man a soldier from birth till death …’

Again the tight silence, and she sitting there, straight and tense, eyes blank. She was rocking back and forth, on her cushion.

‘A country for war … but no war … they are bound by a hard, strict Law … their Law is hard indeed … war. Men … all men for fighting … but no war, no wars to fight … what is it, what does it mean …’

The tension in her was frightening to see. An elderly woman who had been watching her keenly now went forward, sat by her, and began to soothe her, stroking her arms and shoulders. ‘That’s enough, Al·Ith. Enough. Do you hear me?’ Al·Ith shuddered and came to herself.

‘What is it?’ she said to us, in a whisper.

The woman who held her said, ‘It will come to you. Quieten yourself.’

Al·Ith smiled and nodded at the woman, who went back to her place and said, ‘The best thing we can do is to keep the thought whole in our minds and let it grow.’ Al·Ith nodded again.

That was the end of the hard part of the Council. Murti· brought in a tray of jugs with fruit juices, and went out to bring in some light food. She then joined us, sitting by her sister.

And then the little girls came in. They seemed disappointed.

They stood before Al·Ith and Murti· and Greena said, ‘We played it. Over and over. We could not remember. But there are words that come after. We have remembered that.’

Al·Ith nodded. ‘Never mind.’

‘Shall we play the game when we get home again and see if we remember then?’

‘Please do … and I have had an idea … ‘ All of us were alert, thinking she had achieved the understanding that had eluded her, but she smiled and said, ‘No. I am afraid not. But I have had a good idea. We shall have a festival. Soon. And it will be for songs, and stories — no, not the way we always have them. This one will be for songs and stories we have forgotten. Or half forgotten. All the regions will send in their storytellers and singers, and their Memories … ‘ Here she smiled at me, to soften it, and said, ‘Lusik, it seems to me that you have all been remiss. How is it that children can play games and know that verses have been forgotten?’

I accepted it. Of course it was true.

Shortly after, we all went home.

Now I take up the tale again, not from firsthand, as is my remembrance of the events of the Council Chamber, but pieced together the best way I can, as Chronicler.

The sisters went up to Al·Ith’s apartments, where Al·Ith said she was tired: this pregnancy was already proving more taxing than her others. She had set in train the events that were necessary, and now she wanted to retire for a few days and rest.

Murti· was concerned for her.

The two beautiful women sat hand in hand in the window that overlooked the western mountains. Al·Ith said she wanted to go up to the spire again, but Murti· asked her not to go. Al·Ith submitted. Usually, at such moments of relaxation the women would have petted each other, done each other’s hair, tried on each other’s dresses, planned new ones, discussed what innovations and developments they had noticed in the clothes of the girls and women who had been present that day, in case any might be useful to clothing generally. These were true sisters, with the same Mother, the same Gene-Father, and even sharing the same Mind-Fathers. There had never been secrets between them. Now Al·Ith said, ‘You are right to feel hurt. I can’t help it.’ Murti· kissed her and went away.

Al·Ith had not been home a full day when she knew she had to return to Ben Ata. The words came into her mind: The drum is beating. She even heard the drum, faint, but there. She put her hand to cup her lower belly, thinking she heard that small heart but it was the drum.

She went through her cupboards, this time trying to find clothes that would soothe and please Ben Ata. She put together some of these and ran down to the first floor where she would leave a message for Murti·.

There were five persons coming up the great stairs, to see her: a girl just out of childhood, her Gene-Father, and three of her Mind-Fathers. Al·Ith was her mother.

There was a problem to do with this girl, but it is not of concern here. This event is being related because just at the time when Al·Ith was in mind already on her way to Ben Ata, with all the disturbance and adjustment this meant, she had to go aside to a quiet room, with a man with whom she had had, and for years, a close friendship, the child’s real father, and three men who had been as close, but whom she had not seen for some time, as it happened, because they had been in distant parts of the country.

The room was off the main Council room, and had the usual cushions and low tables. Al·Ith embraced the girl, and held her close, and then kept her beside her when they sat down. But almost at once she felt her own churning emotions communicate themselves to the girl, and this she could not allow: she quickly got up and sat apart from her, and the girl felt she was being disliked, and sat with an unhappy face turned away from her mother. This disturbed Al·Ith even more.

These six persons, woman, four men, and the girl, had often been together thus. And Al·Ith had very often been with the men, all together or singly. These men were among the closest people to her, not even excepting her sister. It was not possible for her now to shut them out, even for her own protection. She was quite open to them, just as she was at the same time open to the demands of Ben Ata, which were claiming her fiercely. She was trembling.

The men all embraced her, and sat close. They congratulated her on the new pregnancy. All the time she was looking, and feeling, worse.

‘You are ill,’ said the girl’s real father, Kunzor, and Al·Ith said she was, she could not help it, she was sorry. And she fainted clean away.

They called Murti·, who explained that Al·Ith’s state of mind was beyond anything they were likely to understand. Murti· undertook to stand in for Al·Ith on this occasion and set herself to be kind to the poor girl, who was astounding them all by wringing her hands and saying that ‘it was her fault’ her mother was ill. This struck them as a sort of lunacy: they had never heard anything like it.

When Al·Ith came to herself, she was attended only by Kunzor, who was trying to understand her. He had known her in many complex ways, but this was entirely beyond him. Al·Ith weeping and distraught was something he had never imagined possible.

She said she had to get on her horse and go, and he took her down the steps to the square, called for Yori, and saw her ride off.

It did not help that it was early night when she reached the plain, and had to ride in the face of the cold wind from the east all the way to the frontier.

She hoped that it would be Ben Ata at the frontier to meet her, and it was. He sat cold and silent, in his black army cloak, waiting, gazing up the road, pale, intent, fixed.

At the first sight of him, her spirits sank. What had happened within her was that riding across the plain in the bitter wind, comforted only by the warmth of her horse, she had been thinking of the long friendship she had known with Kunzor, and the men whom she had been close to—she was already wondering about these words that people used. She had, in the past, not used words, not even in her mind. She had felt her closeness to them, as part of the fabric of her life. Meeting one of them again, by plan or by chance, they would at once move together as they had always, according to the intuitions of the moment. She had not said they were this and that, beyond friends. Now, she wondered, were they husbands? Certainly not if Ben Ata was one! But, during that cold ride, she had been thinking of Ben Ata, whom she was so soon to be with, as a friend — with all the simplicity of good sense and responsibility that word meant to her.

Seeing him there, the bonds in her flesh and being with the men who sustained her in Zone Three snapped and left her vulnerable.

Ben Ata waited till she had crossed into his Zone, and handed her a shield — he was right in thinking that she was likely again to have forgotten hers. Then he put out his hand to grasp her bridle — but she did not have one — and put his horse forward so that he was side by side with her, she facing into Zone Four, he into Zone Three. His eyes searched her face as if for a hidden crime.

‘What is the matter?’ she asked, irritated.

‘The matter is that I’ve understood something.’

‘And what is that?’ She rode forward, sighing, meaning him to hear it, and he came after her, and rode so close her foot had to be curled in on poor Yori’s side to avoid being crushed.

‘You don’t love me,’ he announced.

Al·Ith did not respond at all.

The words had simply gone past her. She had seen that Ben Ata was in a fine old state about something, and that there was no point at all in expecting any comfort or sustaining from him. She was engaged in strengthening her inner self.

He rode close, casting dramatic looks into her face, and trying to lean forward so that he could see into her eyes.

It was early morning. They were riding down the escarpment, looking into fields where as usual mists were rising, admittedly very pretty in the weak sunlight.

‘You do not love me. Not really,’ he was shouting.

This time Al·Ith heard the word love. She was making a note that the two Zones used it differently.

What had happened to Ben Ata was this.

When she had left him on the frontier, he had been shaken by emotions he had not known existed. If Elys had indicated to him that in the physical realm there were facts that perhaps he might have missed, he now saw that there was a world of emotions that had been kept from him until now. He visited the madam of the whorehouse with this problem who, after a brisk diagnostic exchange, said that it wasn’t Elys he needed — she in fact had gone back to her own town, much congratulated and very pleased with herself — but a serious affair.

He had of course been aware that affairs were what some people had, but not, surely, soldiers!

Seeing Dabeeb brushing down her husband’s uniform, where it hung on a line behind the married officers’ quarters, he speculated on her possibilities. At once appropriate emotions invaded him in swarms, quite amazing him, for he could not imagine where he had got them from.

Dabeeb was disconcerted, of course, and enjoined caution, common sense, and then secrecy. It goes without saying that she was frightened of her husband. Affairs she had had, but not for the purpose of stimulating Jarnti. She was even more afraid of Ben Ata. She had no intention of yielding him her person, but kept him off with a variety of kisses and touches of the hand, all nicely adjusted to holding the situation while she could think what best to do.

Jarnti found his king in a compromising situation with his wife.

Violent scenes. Jealousy. Reproaches. The men fought, decided that the friendship of men outweighed the love of women, clasped hands, drank together for the whole of a night, fell together into a canal at dawn … all according to the book.

Ben Ata was now violently in love with Al·Ith.

Riding together through the golden mists, he ground his teeth and yearned towards her, while she murmured, ‘Is there a dictionary in the pavilion?’

‘What?’

‘It is the word love. We use it differently.’

‘Cold. Cold and heartless.’

‘Cold, I certainly am. I am frozen through.’

Compunction touched him but was inappropriate to the moment.

‘Very well then, how do you use the word love?’

‘I don’t think we do. What it means is being with someone. Taking the responsibility for everything that happens between you. Between the two people in question and of course all the other people involved or who might be involved.’

It occurred to him that during these tumultuous six days he had forgotten what Al·Ith was like.

His elation drained away. He rode apart from her, and with a good distance between them the two horses cantered together up the hill to the gardened pavilions where the drum had been beating since the evening before.

As they let the horses go to find their own way to attendants, they were in a welter of wet, and ran through it to the pavilion, where she fled shaking water everywhere to her rooms. The cupboards were empty again of the dresses from the town, and she dried herself and looked through those she had brought for one that would be right for this dejected mood she found in herself. The bright gold of yesterday was like a bird’s plumage in a wrong season. A brown was too lowering, but she raised that note a little with a tawny-orange, which seemed something she could aspire to, if things went well. Having put her hair up into Zone Four’s matronly braids, she took herself to the central room as Ben Ata came in from the other side. There was not a suggestion of armour about him. His under-tunic looked as if it had been put on with a view as to how it would look to her, and his hair had been brushed close to his handsome head. All this, together with his needy and hostile looks, made her sink down as far away from him as she could get, which was at the table. He, having had no other idea in his head for the last twenty-four hours at least, strode over, and was about to haul her to the couch when it occurred to him that this was exactly what had set off all the turmoil of the last few days which, matched against the appraising reality of Al·Ith, seemed now, to put it mildly, inappropriate.

Swearing vigorously, he sat down opposite her, looking as ever on his side of the little table as if an incautious movement might collapse not only it, but the whole pavilion. He leaned back, sighed, and seemed to return partly to himself.

They were both considering, with fortitude, the uncertain term that they faced during which they would have to sustain their incompatibility.

‘I would like to know,’ said he, ‘all about your arrangements for this sort of thing — in your country.’

Now Al·Ith had already given thought to this problem. She could not imagine that he would accept the proprieties of Zone Three, not on any terms. She tackled the immediate point of his disquiet with: ‘There is absolutely no doubt at all — there can be no doubt — that this child is yours.’

‘I said nothing about that,’ he protested, while his pleased face showed she had been right.

He waited.

Having discovered she needed food, she had thought her requirements, and what had arrived before her was a delicacy of her country made of honey and nuts. She began to crumble bits off it. Without ceremony, he put his finger out, scooped up a fragment, tasted it, rolled up his eyes, and was resigned.

‘It is very good for pregnant women,’ she said.

‘I hope that you are taking proper care of yourself! After all, this child will be the ruler of Zone Four.’

This thought, too, had not been overlooked by her. She contented herself with: ‘If the Providers so decide.’

His checked gesture of rebellion told her what his thoughts were — what his actions might be.

‘I take it,’ said he, positively radiant with sarcasm, ‘that I am only one of your lovers.’

At this she leaned back, held up her two hands, and began counting on her fingers, with a look of pretty self-satisfaction, hesitating on the third finger with a little moue, returning to the second, going back to the third with a nod, then on to the fourth, the fifth — changing hands, with deliberation, six, seven, eight — allowing her counting forefinger to dwell lovingly with a reminiscent smile on the ninth; heard his indrawn and outraged breath, wondered if she dared to count back again, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and did so, rather perfunctorily, fourteen, fifteen, and ended on nineteen with a competent little nod, like a steward who hasn’t forgotten anything.

She looked at him, inviting him to laugh— at her, himself, but he was quite yellow with disastrous thoughts.

‘You know,’ she began, but he finished for her, savagely, ‘“Things are not the same with you as they are with us!” I give thanks for it. Decadent, spoiled, immoral …’

‘It is true I can’t imagine you making much of our ways.’

‘Very well, how many lovers have you had?’

She winced at the word and he noted it. Not without interest, a dispassionate interest. This encouraged her to try and explain, openly — though she had previously decided against any such attempt — with a real intention to persuade him out of his barbarity of perception.

‘First of all, that word means nothing to me. It would mean nothing at all, to any woman in our Zone. Even the worst of us, and of course we have our failures as you do …’ She noted him noting that word as being different in emphasis from any Zone Four might use. ‘Even the worst of us would be incapable of using a word that described a man as some kind of a toy.’

This earned a glance of appreciation. Finding she liked him enough, she continued, and explained the sexual arrangements of Zone Three to him. As she went on, his pose, his fists, tightened until she was almost brought to a stop; then he became absorbed, and listened carefully, missing — she could see — nothing.

There were moments when she was afraid that all his self-pride was going to mount to his head and explode in fresh violence against her, but he contained it. By the time she had finished, aggression had left him, and there remained only the philosopher.

She thought herself some wine, and at a gesture from him, some for him as well, but stronger. He took the glass from her, with a nod of thanks.

‘It’s no good pretending that I can go along with any of that,’ he pronounced at last.

‘It seems to me,’ said she humorously, ‘that you are going to have to.’ But, as a threat of trouble reappeared, she told him that since their first association, claims (she was not going to say ‘higher’ ones) had made their appearance, and it looked as if absolute fidelity to Zone Four was going to be the order of her day. ‘It seems,’ said she, ‘that there is some sort of prohibition laid down in my flesh — laid down somewhere — and that it is not merely the touch of another man I cannot allow, but the touch of anybody.’ He was smiling, and she said, ‘And that is not good, oh great king, it is not. I regard it as pernicious, and unfriendly, but we are both stuck with ways not our own and we have got to get on with it.’

On the tip of his tongue hovered words such as ‘then you must love me after all,’ but this calmly explanatory mode seemed to forbid it. Melancholy settled on him. It had enclosed her. The reason was, simply, that whenever a natural spring of vitality flourished in either of them, it was instantly suppressed by the natural disposition of the other.

Melancholy took them to the couch in fellow-feeling, made them love each other with many whispers of condolence for their unfortunate linking, caused sympathy to flow from one to the other, made their sexual play — if that could possibly be the word for such sorrowful exchanges — so unlike their previous encounters that neither could recognize the other in them, and culminated in groans and cries from both of them that were nothing less than expostulations at the mismanagement of absolutely everything.

But Al·Ith had noted in herself, and with dismay, the sharp — as if with an ambiguous wound — pleasures she felt in being ground and pounded into these ecstasies of submission to fate. She had not known anything like it before, and could not believe that she could ever want them again.

Meanwhile, it rained. They lay in each other’s arms listening to squelches and wallows of rain, and both marvelled at the infinite possibilities of variation there were that neither had expected of themselves.

Still under heavy rain they rose and bathed, and dressed, and returned themselves — she this time using the bright orange dress in a quite desperate attempt to bring some sunlight into this marriage of theirs — to the central room.

They were as close and connubial as any Order could have wished.

But there was also the edge of asperity in both voices that goes so ineluctably with this marriage mood.

She wished to get at the truth of this martial Zone of his.

Do you mean to say — her questions began, while he sat with his chin in his hand, elbow on the table, with the air of one admitting to everything because he was forced to, but nevertheless preserving inner independence.

‘Do you mean to say that those singlets of yours you make such a great thing about are all a fake? They don’t do anything at all? They can’t repel weapons?’

‘They are very good at keeping off the rain.’

‘Do you actually mean to say that these hideous grey round buildings you’ve got all over Zone Four don’t make death rays? That’s a fake, too?’

‘Everyone believes we’ve got them. It comes to the same thing.’

‘Ben Ata, sometimes I can’t believe my ears!’

‘Why are you in such a fuss about it? For one thing, building one of those death ray fortresses is a major undertaking. We have so little stone. It has to be carted right across Zone Four, sometimes. I don’t know how often I’ve had the army pestering for a campaign, and I’ve got them building a couple of death ray fortresses instead. They were the best idea I’ve ever had!’

‘Do you mean to say it was your idea?’

‘Well … I heard about something of the sort.’

‘Who from? When?’

‘A man came through here once, and he mentioned them. All sorts of ideas like that.’

‘What man? From Zone Five?’

‘Zone Five! They didn’t so much as know about spears till they saw ours. Even so they like catapults best. No. A man came through. That was in my father’s time. I was a boy. I listened. He said he had come from — where was it? Not Zone Five. Was it Zone Six perhaps?’

‘I know a little about Zone Six. It can’t have been from there.’

‘A long way, I am sure of that. He talked of a place where they had weapons we hadn’t even imagined. They can use the air itself to make weapons of.’

‘But if they can use air to make weapons, they can use it to make things that are useful?’

‘He said nothing about that. It is a place somewhere. A planet. It is an evil race. They kill and torture each other all the time, for the sake of it … no, Al·Ith, I’m not taking that look from you! We are not like that in Zone Four — not anywhere near it. But I thought it all over, and that is when we spread the rumours about our invulnerable vests and our deadly rays.’

‘They don’t seem to impress Zone Five much.’

‘Anyway, that isn’t the point. I’ve told you it keeps a lot of men busy.’

‘Weil,’ she summed up, ‘this is how it seems to me. Nine-tenths of your country’s wealth goes into the the preparations for war. Apart from the actual growers of food, and the merchants for food and household goods, everyone is in the employ of the army, in some capacity. Yet you have not in living memory had a war. When you do have a war, I have only to make a list of the supposed reasons for it, and you admit to their inadequacy. Even these wars were in previous generations. Your skirmishes on the borders of Zone Five are because if you have two fighting forces in close connection both will, by their nature, attack, and will similarly accuse the other. The standard of living of your people is very low —’ here he groaned, admitting it — ‘but, Ben Ata, all this goes on under the Law. Under the Providers. All for each and each for all. So what has gone wrong?’ She noted that in this somewhat hectoring analysis, she felt not an inkling of the rush of nearness to understanding she had felt yesterday. You put one person with another person, call it love, she was thinking, and then make do with the lowest common denominator.

He yawned.

‘It’s much too early to go to bed, you know,’ she said. ‘It can’t be even late afternoon yet—if we were able to see where the day had reached in this downpour.’ For it was still pelting down.

‘Very well. Al·Ith, I want you to picture your affairs to me, just as you have ours to me.’

She was hesitating because it occurred to her to wonder why she had not actually made such an analysis — for while such a way of thinking did not conduce to intimations of a higher kind, they were certainly useful for clearing the mind.

‘Now come on. Al·Ith, you are ready enough to criticize me.’

‘Yes, I was just … very well. The economy of our country does not rely on any single commodity. We produce many varieties of grains, vegetables, and fruits …’

‘But so do we,’ he said.

‘Not to anything like the same extent.’

‘Go on.’

‘We have many different kinds of animals, and use their milk and meat and their hides and their wool …’ And, as he was going to interrupt her again, said, ‘It is a question of degree, Ben Ata. A half of our population produces these things. A quarter are artisans, using gold, silver, iron, copper, brass, and many precious stones. A quarter are merchants, suppliers, traders, and tellers of stories, keepers of Memory, makers of pictures and statues, and travelling singers. None of our wealth goes into war. There are no weapons in our country. You will not find anything beyond a knife or an axe for household use or the use of a herdsman, in any home in our country.’

‘And what if you are attacked by a wild animal? If an eagle takes a lamb?’

‘The animals are our friends,’ she said, and saw the incredulity on his face. Also, he found her account lacking in any drama.

‘And where has all this got you? Except where we are, in trouble … or so you say we are —’

‘Is your birth rate falling or is it not?’

‘It is. All right, things are unhealthy. I admit it. And now Al·Ith, in this paradise of yours, I want to know what are the men doing?’

‘They are not making war!’

‘What do they do with themselves all day?’

‘Exactly what every one of us does — whatever it is their work is.’

‘It seems to me that with women ruling there is nothing a man can do but—’

‘Make love, you were going to say.’

‘Something of the sort.’

‘And bake, and farm, and herd, grow, and trade and mine and smelt and make artefacts and everything there is to do with the different ways of feeding children, mentally and emotionally, and the keeping of archives and maintaining Memory and making songs and tales and … Ben Ata, you look as if I had insulted you.’

‘All that is women’s work.’

‘How is it possible that They expect us to understand each other? If you were set down in the middle of our land you would not understand anything that was going on. Do you know that as soon as I cross into your land I cease to be my real self? Everything I say comes out distorted and different. Or if I manage to be as I am, then it is so hard, that in itself makes everything different. Sometimes I sit here, with you and I think of how I am, at home, with Kunzor, say, and I can’t—’

‘Kunzor being your husband?’

She was silent, helpless at the utter impossibility of saying anything that could keep in it the substance of truth.

‘Well then, out with it! He is, isn’t he? Oh, you can’t fool me.’

‘But didn’t I tell you myself that Kunzor is the name of one of the men I am with?’

But he kept on his face the look of a man who has with penetration discerned the truth. His stance, arms folded, knees set apart, feet planted, announced that he was not in the least undermined or intimidated.

Yet she could see that he was in fact really trying to understand: she would be wrong to allow herself to be held off from him by his automatic defensiveness. Something she could respect, and from the most real part of her, was at work in him.

Again, automatically, he jeered: ‘And this Kunzor of yours, of course he is a finer fellow than me in every way possible …’

She did not respond to this, but said, ‘If we were not meant to understand each other, what are we doing here at all?’

From within deep thought, thought that was being protected, in fact, by his derisiveness, the stances of what he had always considered ‘strength’, he said, or breathed out, slowly, ‘But what is it … I must understand … what? We have to understand … what …’ He lapsed into silence, eyes fixed on a cup on the table. And she realized, with what delight and relief, that he was in fact operating from within that part of him which meant that he was open and ready for understandings to come into him — as she had been, in the Council Chamber. She sat absolutely still, subduing her breathing, and not allowing her eyes to rest too long on his face for fear of disturbing him.

His own breathing was slower, slower, he was stilled, his eyes fixed on the cup had no sight in them — he was deep within himself. ‘What …’ he breathed. ‘There is something … we have to … they want us to … here we are soldiers … soldiers with no war … you are … you are … what are you? What are we … what are we for … that’s it, that’s it …’

Like someone in sleep, he brought out these words, slow, toneless, each one only a summary, a brief note or abstract, as it were of long processes of inner thought.

The slow rain soaked down, they were inside a bright shell drowned in water, they were inside a hush of wet sound. Neither moved. He breathed now hardly at all. She waited. A long time later he came to himself, saw her there, seemed surprised, glanced around at the cool spaces of this meeting place of theirs, remembered everything, and at once restored face, eyes, and body to alert disbelief.

He did not know what had just happened. Yet she could see on his face a maturity that spoke for the deep processes that had been accomplished in him.

She did not now feel helpless in the face of a diminishing of herself she could not control or direct: she was sustained and comforted, knowing that despite everything, they were in fact achieving what they should … and, speaking from the highest of intentions, from out of her best understanding of what was needed, she now destroyed this precious mood of mutual benefiting.

What she said was this: ‘Ben Ata, I wonder if it would be possible for me to see Dabeeb — you know, Jarnti’s wife.’

He stiffened and stared. This was so violent a reaction that all she could do was to acknowledge that she was back on that level where she could not expect to understand him.

‘You see, we — I mean, in our Zone — we are going to have a festival of songs and tales …’

His face was working with suspicion. His eyes were red, and glared.

‘What is the matter?’

‘Oh, you are a witch all right. Don’t pretend you are anything else.’

‘But, Ben Ata, it seems to me that we may find out what we want to know — or at any rate get some inkling, by listening to old songs. Stories. Not the ones that everyone sings all the time. Ones that have … fallen out of … use … and —’ But he had got up violently, and was leaning over her, gripping her shoulders, his face six inches from hers.

‘So you want to interview Dabeeb!’

‘Any of the women. But I’ve met Dabeeb.’

‘I can tell you this, I’m not going to share one of those orgies of yours, everyone having each other.’

‘Ben Ata, I don’t know what has happened, but you are off again on some wrong track …’

‘So I am! What happens when a group of you and your Fathers get together? I can imagine!’

‘You are imagining something you’ve experienced yourself, Ben Ata, something like what happens when your soldiers invade some wretched village and …’ but she saw there was no point in going on. She shrugged. Stung by her contempt, for it was that, he straightened himself, and strode to the arched door which led out to the hill at the foot of which lay the army camp. He shouted into the rain, again, again, again … an answering shout, the sounds of feet running through water, then Ben Ata shouting, ‘Tell Dabeeb to come here. At once.’

And he turned there, arms folded, leaning his weight back on the archway, smiling triumphantly at her.

‘Well, I want to speak to Dabeeb, and I am glad she is coming. But I’ve got no idea why you are behaving like this.’

‘Perhaps you fancy having Dabeeb yourself? Who knows what you and your filthy lot get up to.’

‘Having. Having. What is this word of yours, having. How can one have another person. No wonder you can’t —’ but she had been going to say, ‘No wonder you can’t make love when you think in terms of having—’ but of course had to check it.

‘You had better get the shield to protect her, or something like that,’ she said. ‘She won’t be able to stand up to the air in here.’

‘Thank you so much. It had occurred to me, you know. How do you suppose all these arrangements were made here?’

And he indicated the devices for the protection of the people who had worked, or who still worked in here from time to time — in this case, large clasps or brooches, which were for fastening at throat level.

Soon the sound of squelching feet, and Dabeeb appeared, wrapped in a vast dark cloak, one of her husband’s old army cloaks. She stood in the entrance, not looking at Ben Ata, but very closely, and shrewdly at Al·Ith, who smiled at her. She accepted from Ben Ata the brooch — which was of a yellow dull substance, very heavy — and pinned this at the opening of her dress at the throat, and stepped lightly in, dropping the wet cloak outside the arch on the floor of the portico.

She still did not look at Ben Ata, but was waiting for Al·Ith. Who had suddenly understood what was the probable cause for all the drama. Dabeeb had not looked at Ben Ata. In this awful place, with the antagonisms inseparable from being with — from sex, as they put it — this probably meant they had had each other. She had had him, or he had had her — however these barbarians saw it — but she was not disposed at this particular time even to wonder.

Seeing Dabeeb, the neat, handsome, capable matron, with her air of shrewd humour, standing there waiting for direction, Al·Ith decided to make as much as she could of the situation.

‘Please sit down, Dabeeb,’ she said, nodding at the chair Ben Ata had left empty. And now Dabeeb did glance at Ben Ata. The real danger of this situation — as she had momentarily seen it — had not been enough to allow her to raise her eyes to him, but now that she needed an order, a direction, she did look towards her lord.

But he had left it all to Al·Ith, and stood like a sentinel, watching the scene.

Dabeeb sat.

‘In our country we are going to have a great festival of songs and of stories. We have them often, but this one will be different.’

Already Dabeeb was alert and on guard: the eyes of the two women had engaged, and Dabeeb’s were warning. Al·Ith very slightly nodded, saying, ‘I understand, don’t be afraid.’ Ben Ata did not catch this minutest of nods, but he had seen that he had been mistaken. The sight of these two women, sitting opposite each other, both ready to catch from each other the best they could, did not fail to soothe him, and at the same time to disturb him. Their instant understanding made him feel left out, shut out.

He exaggerated his sarcastic look and soldierly straightness.

‘We want to try and find out if there are songs which perhaps we have forgotten or half forgotten that can tell us things.’

‘I see, my lady.’

Again the two pairs of eyes searched each other.

‘But there is no need to be afraid …’ here Al·Ith paused a moment, and then continued, ‘if you don’t remember any. That is why I asked Ben Ata if you would come up to talk to me. You really mustn’t worry …’ here Al·Ith paused again, and waited until Dabeeb had, in her turn, given the very slightest of nods, ‘about it. It is just an impulse I had. A whim!’ And she put on the look of one who was subject to whims and to having them indulged — a bit fatuous, self-congratulatory.

‘I see, my lady.’

‘I wish you would call me by my name.’

‘It is hard to remember.’ This was in an apologetic voice, almost a plea.

‘We have all kinds of songs, but for instance only the other day listening to some children some of us realized that parts of songs might have been forgotten, or changed — or something like that. And perhaps it is like that with you.’

‘Perhaps it is.’

‘There is a song I believe I heard the other day when I was here. The beat is like this —’ And Al·Ith rested the heel of her hand on the table’s edge and tapped with her fingers:

Dabeeb had caught it and nodded.

‘Perhaps it is a woman’s song?’

‘All manner of people sing it, my lady.’

‘Perhaps it has a tune that different words are set to, at different times,’ said Al·Ith casually.

‘I think that sometimes is so, with us,’ said Dabeeb.

Meanwhile, Ben Ata was as awake as he had never been in his life.

He knew quite well that this encounter between the two women was accommodating levels of understanding he did not, at the moment, in the least grasp. But he had every intention of doing so. But strongest in him, raging among thoughts and intuitions of a quite different character, was suspicion. And he was as forlorn and excluded as. a small child that has had a door shut in his face.

‘Is it something to do with light?’ suggested Al·Ith.

‘Light? Oh, I don’t think so. I haven’t heard that one.’

But her eyes had said yes, and begged and pleaded for Al·Ith not to betray them. Al·Ith was seeing that her idea about the women was not only correct — but had been far from adequate. She saw that here was something like an underground movement.

‘Shall I sing one of the versions for you? It is very popular.’

‘I wish you would.’

‘It is a very old song, my lady.’ And Dabeeb cleared her throat, and stood up behind the chair, holding on to it with one hand. She had a clear strong voice, and evidently used it often.

‘Look at me, soldier! He’s looking!

It’s at me he is looking!

Soon I shall smile, not quite at him, That’ll catch him!’

And now both women heard Ben Ata’s breathing, thick, angry.

Neither looked at him: they knew they would see a man in frenzies of jealousy. Everything was now perfectly clear to Al·Ith. She marvelled at her own clumsiness; and also at the aptness of events, which always pleased her, so inevitably and satisfyingly proceeding from one thing to another, turning facets of truth, the possibilities of development, to the light one after another.

She knew that Ben Ata had wanted to have this woman, and that she had not wanted to be had. She knew that Ben Ata’s mind was inflamed with jealousies and suspicions. There was nothing for it but to go along with whatever was happening and — and wait and see.

Dabeeb was singing:

‘Eyes shine— His, mine …

I know how to please him. Simple and tease him.

I’ll make him hunger. And languish and anger. And give me his pay, A corporal’s pay.’

Her strong voice left a strong silence, supported by the hushing rain.

‘We sing that at the women’s festivals — you know, when women are together.’

Seeing that Al·Ith was smiling and pleased, she said, obviously daring and delighted with herself — and even looking at Ben Ata and allowing herself a half-humorous shudder at the black rage on his face — ‘There is another version, but of course it isn’t fit for your ears, my lady.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Ben Ata. ‘Don’t run away with that idea. If you knew what they get up to in that Zone of theirs …’

Dabeeb had winked at Al·Ith, then blushed at her audacity, and had begun the song.

‘Come husband! Smooth out my — cushion … ’

‘You are not to sing that,’ said Ben Ata. He was now sustained by a calm, moral loftiness.

‘Perhaps the lady Al·Ith would like to know the worst of us as well as the best, my lord,’ said Dabeeb, in a cosy comfortable voice, motherlike. As Ben Ata did not persist, but merely strode about, snorting, she began again:

‘Come husband, smooth out my — cushion. Quick, get a push-on …’

Dabeeb interrupted herself, and drummed rapidly on the table’s edge.

‘I’m hungry as — winter.

No sin to …’

She drummed again:

‘Warm me up Fill my cup …’

She drummed.

‘Now—go. Quick. Slow.’

She drummed. She winked at Al·Ith again and, animated with the song, winked at Ben Ata, too, who could not suppress a brief appreciative smile.

‘Hard as a board this Good old bed is …’

She drummed.

‘One two three four One two three four …’

She drummed, smiling, alive with challenge and invitation.

‘That’s how we do it. That’s how we do it.

That is our way. That is our way.’

A long sustained drumming, while all her white teeth showed.

‘A fine idea you’ll have of us, my lady.’

Ben Ata was standing with arms folded, feet planted, smiling. As a result of this song, the current was running strong between him and Dabeeb, whose looks at him were confident, inviting.

Al·Ith watched with interest. Rather as she would have done the mating approaches of a couple of horses.

‘There’s a song we have …’ she began casually, and Dabeeb allowed the tension between her and Ben Ata to slacken, and she became attentive to Al·Ith.

Who was thinking that this lie she was telling would not have been possible in Zone Three at all. Occasions for lies did not arise.

Now she was saying: ‘There’s a song we have …’ when they did not, nor anything like it.

‘How shall we reach where the light is. Come where delight is …’

‘Oh, no,’ Dabeeb broke in, ‘we have nothing like that. We don’t go in for that kind of thing.’ She was obviously afraid.

‘You don’t think it might be a good idea if you had a song festival here?’ said Al·Ith.

‘Oh, a very good idea. A very good idea indeed,’ said Dabeeb enthusiastically. And her eyes pleaded with Al·Ith.

‘Perhaps we’ll talk about it, Ben Ata,’ said Al·Ith, and at once went on, speaking to him. ‘Dabeeb was kind enough to agree to give me one of her dresses. I’d like to give her one of mine.’

‘But she has dozens of dresses. She had all those that weren’t good enough for you. What did you do with them, Dabeeb? Flog them?’

‘I sold some of them, my lord. They didn’t all fit me.’ And to Al·Ith, ‘I’d be so grateful. If we could — I mean, I could, have one of your dresses …’

‘Then come with me,’ said Al·Ith, on her way to her rooms.

‘My lady, if I could have the one you have on now? I’ve never seen anything like it …’

The two women went into Al·Ith’s rooms and Ben Ata bounded across and leaned to listen. He could hear the two women, talking about clothes, weaving, sewing. Al·Ith was taking off her dress and Dabeeb was exclaiming over it.

‘Oh, this is too fine for me, oh, it is so beautiful, oh, oh, what a beautiful …’

‘When you make dresses for ordinary wear, do you always make copies for special occasions?’

A brief pause.

‘Nearly always. Al·Ith.’

‘It must be nice wearing a plain dress and thinking of the one that you’ll wear on a special occasion.’

‘Yes, it is. But, of course, we don’t have all that many special occasions. We are poor people here.’

Oh, we are, are we? Ben Ata was thinking. And he returned rapidly to sit down at the table, where Dabeeb had been. He was tapping out rhythms on the table. He had not been fooled. He did not know what was going on, though he knew something was. He would get it all out of Dabeeb. If he had not got it out of Al·Ith by then.

The two women returned to find him sitting and smiling, the picture of good nature.

He was stung into admiration by both of them. Dabeeb’s swarthy and energetic beauty was well accommodated by the tawny silky dress Al·Ith had just taken off. Al·Ith had on her bright yellow dress that seemed to take in all the light there was in the great softly lit room — and to give it out again. Her loose black hair shone, her eyes shone, she was full of mischief and gaiety. Ben Ata was thinking, frankly, to himself, of the pleasures there would be in having them both at once — a possibility that had not entered his head until recent instructions with Elys. He remembered Al·Ith’s scorn of the word have. He sat head slightly lowered, looking up from under his brows at the two — and his mind was full of a painful struggle suddenly, as if it were trying to enlarge beyond its boundaries. He was having a flash of understanding —into the way Al·Ith scorned him for using the language he did. But it did not last. A gloomy suspicion came back, while he watched Al·Ith go with Dabeeb to the arch, and Dabeeb wrap herself tightly in the old dark cloak, and then with a smile at him and something intimate and quick with Al·Ith, run off to be enclosed in the pelting grey of the rain.

Al·Ith watched her go, and smiled. And turned to him, and smiled. In her sunny yellow, she was lovelier than he believed — at that moment—he deserved. He could see that she was a quick, volatile, flamelike thing, and understood how he subdued and dimmed her. But jealousy was undoing him.

She was inviting him. Everything about her, as she stood smiling, enticed him. He got up clumsily and heavily and rushed at her. She evaded him, not out of coquetry, but from real dismay. ‘No, no, Ben Ata, don’t spoil it …’ And she was trying to meet him lightly, and gaily, as they had not long ago, during hours which now to Ben Ata seemed so far above anything he had thought and been since that he would not believe in them, any more than he was able easily to lift his gaze to the vast mountainous region that filled all the western skies. He grabbed her, and she withheld him. ‘Wait, wait, Ben Ata. Don’t you want to be as we were then?’ Oh, yes, he did, he did very much, desperately, he was all inflamed with wanting just that and nothing else — but he could not help it, or himself, or her — he had to be, just then, all grab and grind, and he extinguished all the possibilities of sweetness and the playfulness, and the slow mounting of the exchanges. He had her. And then, all the light gone out of her, she had him. It was not a new experience for him, since Elys, but all the time he was remembering that other time and he made this one obstinate and heavy because, simply, that other time had gone and was not here. This time Al·Ith did not weep, or allow herself to be pulverized into submission. She gave as good as she got, words which she chose, carefully, out of many, and handed to him, with a smiling air of indifference, scorn even.

They ended some hours of this kind of obdurate interchange unfriendly to each other, and inwardly depressed.

When they rose to bathe and dress and arrange themselves, the lovely airy room seemed denuded of its sparkle, and the drum had stopped beating.

This time, all was efficient and considered. She wrapped herself in a cloak, she remembered her shield, and stepped out into the gardens from the opposite door Dabeeb had run down into the rain from. There the fountains played coldly under a cold low blue sky.

Ben Ata came after her, similarly cloaked and ready. She called, and the two horses, black and white, came cantering up, and they leapt onto their backs and rode off, soberly, down towards the road west. They used the time of the journey to discuss what was seen along the road — the crops, the canals, the fields.

Nothing more sensible and connubial could be imagined. But Al·Ith was so far inwardly from Ben Ata that he could get from her not one little moment of real recognition. It was clear to him that she did not want anything from him — only to be rid of him. He knew perfectly well he was to blame.

At the frontier, they reined in their two horses, and Al·Ith was about to shoot forward into the sunny immensities of that plain below the mountains when he called to her hoarsely, ‘Al·Ith, wait.’

She turned and gave him the coolest of mocking smiles.

‘I suppose now you are going to Kunzor,’ he shouted, enraged.

‘And others,’ she called back, and rode off.

He muttered to himself that he would order Dabeeb back, but in fact, knew he would not. He was thinking. He had realized that while jealousy and resentment and suspicion worked in him, poisoning everything, there were other things he could be understanding. And he was determined that he would.

The people on the roads who saw him returning to the camps, remarked to each other that the king seemed subdued. That foreign one was not cheering him up, not much, that was for certain, whatever else she might be doing!

Exactly as had happened before, both Al·Ith and Ben Ata, separated from each other, one riding on into Zone Three, one riding back into Zone Four, felt that the burden of their emotions for one another was not lightened, as they had wanted, but was heavier. Together, they provoked each other into unwanted feelings, apart, thoughts of the other tormented and stung. Ben Ata felt that he was carrying around with him a curse, or a demon, who prevented him from being with Al·Ith in a way that would lead to an incredible happiness. Al·Ith felt a most painful bond with her husband — a word she was examining, turning over and over, as if it were a new ring of a complicated design or a new metal made in the workshops of the northern regions where the mines were. Ben Ata was a weight in her side, no, in her belly, where the new child was, but that was still no more than a speck or a dab of new flesh, so it could not be that which made her so heavy. Riding forward, she was in mind with Ben Ata, whose face was set towards the low, damp fields … She could have asked him this, found out that … if she had done this instead of that … for, away from him, she could not truly believe that her behaviour had been as she remembered it was. When she had come back into the tall light central room she was vibrant and strong because of the exchange with Dabeeb, which had made her alive and confident, so that she had felt far from the gloomy moods of Ben Ata. Her yellow dress had fitted her like happiness. And yet nothing had come of it but the punishments Ben Ata called love.