Tarao stopped near a swarm of young girls on the terrace, in the shadow of a clump of holm-oaks. They were drawing or engraving ornaments of vases of soft clay. Some, with a cylinder, were repeating indefinitely interlacements, chevrons, chimeras, ducks or centaurs. Others, with the aid of molds, were imprinting battles, hunts, amorous scenes, fauns pursuing nymphs, or monsters of the abyss attached to the wake of Poseidon or Amphitrite.
Tarao addressed wise words to them:
“It is necessary to ornament vases with unskillful contours richly, but let your hand be subtle and delicate for admirable forms. The design there should be light to the point that it would only be a short step from appearing to be made of veins or fine incisions. A beautiful vase ought to live on its structure alone, like a living creature.”
They listened with mischievous lips. Their eyelashes fluttered, their cheeks defended themselves against the violence of laughter. It was not that the master’s discourse seemed ridiculous to them; they venerated him. But every speech and every gesture, reverberating from one to another, stimulated their insouciant youth and their coquettish joy.
“Laughter,” said Master Tarao, “is the amiable brother of repose. It swells the heart and gives a gentle strength to the mind. It is fitting that it interrupts toil and recompenses success, and I don’t forbid you to laugh, Faustine, for your style has traced pure lines, but you, Albe, have no reason to be cheerful; you have embedded your imprints too deeply, to the extent that the form of your kantharos has become similar to the belly of a hydropic man,”
At those words, Faustine became serious, and Albe could no longer hold back from the perversity of foolish laughter. The master-potter straightened, with a stiff tip, the contours spoiled by the engraving, and traced a few meanders. His skill caused the mischievous to fall silent. Those adolescents, born of generations of artists, admired the old hand full of charming secrets.
Tarao took pleasure for some time in their attentive youth. Before departing he exhorted them: “Fortunate are those among you who attach themselves to their work This humble clay will console them for their troubles and augment their joys. They will feel that they are accomplishing the veritable wish of the Gods, and that their soul is becoming more alive with each new beauty.”
Old Tarao was not unaware that he was repeating himself, but, apart from the fact that his age condemned him to that weakness, he knew that the people of Veila, in spite of so many repetitions, had not yet understood his thought.
When he had gone, the girls recommenced laughing, but a little of the sacred light was shining in the depths of their frivolous little souls.
Meanwhile, the master-potter went on his way. He arrived in a gallery where young men were working. At the back, Dionys was attempting to manipulate a stylus and Dehva was advising him in a familiar fashion. The old man blinked in order to see the young folk better. He was pensive. An anxious shadow passed over his face. He drew nearer, and looked at the Syracusan’s work. It was Diomedes, King of the Bistones of Thrace, delivered to the man-eating horses. Tarao considered the work momentarily, the figures of which had elegance and harmony.
“Why were you going to seek your bread in Rome?” he cried. “Your divine art would not have saved you from humiliation there, whereas you can find joy and abundance with pride in creating models for our vases!”
Dionys, penetrated by joy, looked at the young woman. The master-potter surprised that glance. He did not allow anything to show.
“It’s necessary, Dehva, to resume your work,” he said.
When she disappeared around the corner of the gallery, the old man smiled with a hint of chagrin. Then he spoke softly to his guest.
“I have learned, Dionys, that it is bad to let suspicion and anxiety sleep. Words said in good time and promises well made have a superior virtue. Dehva is consecrated to Diana Etrusca until her eighteenth year. Such was her mother’s wish, the rupture of which would bring death for her as well as her accomplice. You have sat on the ashes of my hearth and you would not want to betray it. I therefore have confidence in you. Good faith is more reliable than guards and walls.”
Dionys had no precise morality. Syracuse, by virtue of passing through the government of all peoples and subjected to hazards, had lent the most accommodating humor to its gods. Life there was soft and uncertain, embellished by civilized vices and benevolent perversities; and the act of the flesh was not held to be a sin—a misdemeanor, at the most, when it violated a proprietary right. But the young man understood the profound virtue that attached a guest to a host. He felt that he could not betray Tarao.
He replied with a sincerity that the love of the beautiful has caused to grow in his heart: “I will not betray the confidence of my host.”
Dehva was dangerously familiar. She had not learned to put a brake on her inclinations, which had, in any case, been rare and always borne toward young creatures of her own sex. She was smitten with the Syracusan. That affection was keen, passionate in a sense, but devoid of amorous disturbance. She had not cherished her companions differently.
She arrived in the bright morning to surprise the young man. She drew him away among the olive groves and the rose bushes, to the bank of the river. He did not have to make any effort to divert her. She had a taste for life and for making life; she drew speech from her companion, facile games and information, from which she wove gaiety. As she was untroubled, he was only troubled himself in the brief minutes when the young woman’s charms mingled with repose and silence.
That happened most frequently in a cove in the Volturne where narcissi grew. The water fell silent there, scarcely moved by the nearby waves. The pale flowers inclined their odorous faces. Shade fell like rain; the river extended its voice and its depths; large birds alighted on the promontories; others fluttered furtively from tree to tree, and black fish were visible drifting in the shadowed water. It emitted a savage and menacing impression, which held the young couple motionless.
Then, Dionys saw his young friend more clearly. She grew in him, among the old trees with wrinkled bark, the young narcissi, the pink menyanthes and the fresh mint. He was stirred in gazing at the young woman mysteriously expanding within the slenderness of the child. She opened her mouth slightly, and her lips were moist. The pleats of her stola indicated contours, as long grass curbing in the breeze reveals flowers. And he sensed a muted irritation against Diana Etrusca.
In the evening, all three of them usually sat on the terrace. The master-potter left his children, and his youth returned to his lips. Days of old crowded in his speech like statues in an ancient city. Something vague and feeble accompanied his stories. It was human fate, immortal and fugitive, crushing and pleasant, a very humble odyssey, but as adventurous as that of heroes.
Dionys listened gladly. He liked to go back, with old souls, through inflexible time. He obtained a greater liking therefrom for watching the burly Campanian oxen bringing back carts with large wheels, the laborers walking slowly along the road, the melancholy donkeys and the children in a last frantic run, like the swallows in the firmament.
Sometimes, old Tarao withdrew in order to give orders or carry out supervision. Dionys and Dehva remained alone. And those minutes threw a charming anxiety into the Syracusan’s soul.
The sun, like a great round furnace, burned between the mountains. The death of the day seemed to be the death of the world. An immense melancholy mingled with the flowers of the plain.
It was the desperate hour of amour. A kind of frenzy penetrated the young man. He dreamed, in order to escape the cruel vow, of carrying the virgin away to the abode of Shades. And the voice of clay bells, sounding the decline, rendered that anguish more intense.
Scarcely had the sun disappeared, however, than the hour became milder. Night filled life. At the same time as the stars, fireflies were seen to appear. Their hazardous flight traced meanders of light; their fire increased and decreased like lamps in the wind.
Dehva knew the art of catching them in net
s. She put them in a large cage covered with a transparent tissue. It was a magical glow prolonged over the garden: a gleam of life palpitating like a heart, numerous, sparse and turbulent, which mingled its intoxication with the immortal perfume spread over that incomparable land. When she ornamented her hair with them, when the little living stars agitated their brightness in that quivering prison, and the face lit up, or was extinguished intermittently, the musician thought that he was seeing the hair of the queen who is perpetuated among the stars.11
Dionys made progress in the art of creating ornaments for vases. He found aspired models for the black pottery that seemed metallic, which was obtained by smoking the baked clay for several days in closed chimneys. He was paid a salary. He received it with a profound joy. It was the pledge of his reconciliation with Destiny. The earth no longer seemed cruel, nor the nights menacing. He held in his hand the ingenious victory over matter. He could dream without his heart being too heavy or his breath oppressed. Regret for the sea and his island was devoid of bitterness.
The labor gave him a homeland again, as did the scintillating little creature agitating around him. She was stronger than the cargo vessels of the blue waves, the palaces of yellow marble, the temples of Poseidon, Aphrodite and Hermes. And in the dawn, or the evening, under the resplendent constellations in which heroes, amorous queens, fabulous voyagers, beasts, monsters and tresses trailed toward the Occident and navigated around the Pole, the Syracusan winnowed the sonorous wheat of the Syrinx, the plaintive song that awakens the immortal arrow in the human heart.
One morning, Dehva took Dionys to the edge of the village. She wanted to procure pins and a flagon of rose-water. An old man sold those objects, along with powders, mirrors, embalmed oils, jewel-cases, fans, bubbles, alabasters and earrings.
Along the little paths, Dehva was full of life; she exhaled joy as the river exhaled its mists. She threw herself against Dionys with reckless laughter. In passages obstructed by bushes and plants she leaned her youthful body, a flower of disturbance, disorder and long tremors, against his.
She knew the people, and saluted them with a clear voice: laborers heading their oxen, spinners on the thresholds of houses, quarrymen detaching travertine, nenfro or white silex from the cliff, swineherds assembling their grunting beasts.
A farm at the exit from the vineyard interrupted their course. It was surrounded by a lattice fence. Two slaves could be seen, aided by a donkey, turning a mill; geese and chickens, attentive and quarrelsome, were pecking the grains escaped from the funnel. A young woman on the threshold was preparing pulmentum.
Meanwhile, a slave appeared, his hands chained, whom a man with the head of a legionary was a stiff beard, armed with a whip, was pushing in front of him. Children were following in tumult, with cries of joy. The slave, his head bowed, resigned, allowed himself to be tied to a stake in the middle of the courtyard. He had a humble and faded face, worn by age, shifting eyes, his mouth opening in a sort of mute plaint.
The bearded man brought down the tunic and laid the wretch’s scarred back bare. Then he raised the whip, and unhurriedly, as if without anger, started striking, counting the blows. The slave opened his toothless mouth wider; he uttered low plaints that made the young woman who was making pulmentum laugh, and the children dance.
Dehva turned away from the spectacle, but without protest, crying Ave to the man who was striking.
He interrupted himself in order to reply, with a hearty laugh: “May the Gods bless you, beautiful girl, and the man who is accompanying you.” Then he resumed his function, as placid as justice, with the same regular movement as the donkey and the slaves turning the mill, while the tortured man, his skin striped with violet bands, clamored his dolor more loudly.
As Dehva drew Dionys away she said: “Had he run away?”
“No, they would have put him in the fork. He must have neglected his work or kept poor guard.”
The cries made them uncomfortable. A little pity slid into their souls, but which they did not distinguish. They walked more rapidly.
On the far side of a field of flax they perceived a building made of volcanic stone, on ashy ground obstructed with scrap iron, mildewed wood, broken vases and shells. The sound of their footsteps caused an old man to emerge. He was sorting out fragments of bronze, enamels and worn out clothes. All the insults of the sun, the wind and inhospitable nights were inscribed on his leathery jaundiced face and his vagabond eyes. His head produced a curly yellow-tinted vegetation, some as bushy as the coat of an old ram, some in mossy patches. A sharp malice curved his mouth, crenellated with teeth the color of clay; his small, ape-like hands, sly and shriveled, were more expressive than a face.
He turned toward the young couple the grimace of a God of gardens ruined by worms, and asked: “What do you want, my beauty? Amber or pearl, carved coral, alabaster in which the soul of flowers resides? A silvery mirror or a stone that glows in the dark? Anything you desire, I’ll be able to sell you…and if it’s necessary to bring it from the ends of the earth, it will come at your order.”
Thus spoke the old prowler, expert in hyperbolic phrases, picked up along all the roads of Etruria, Latium and Campania. And he said as much to sell a sextant of embalmed oil as for a magnificent pearl.
“I want pins and rose-water,” said Dehva.
“What kind of pins, virgin similar to a gilded iris? Those that are as shiny as your eyes, and which come from Iberia, those that are inalterable and come from among the vagabond Rajas, or the small and gentle ones that come to us from Artena? And do you want rose-water sealed in alabaster by the Cilicians of the River Cydnus, or that of Campania enclosed in clay?”
Dehva wanted pins from Artena and Campanian rose-water.
Addressing Dionys, however, the old man said: “Surely, young man with bright eyes, you will not leave the brilliant hair of this maiden without essence of Cilicia?”
“You can give us Oriental rose-water,” said Dionys, “but don’t hope to make me mistake alabaster from Kymé for a vase from the Magic River. I know all the perfumes that the ships transport in the Tyrrhenian Gulf and over the Sicilian seas.”
The old man looked at him suspiciously. “The water that I give leaves its soul in the vase forever.”
“That is true of all aromatics and all subtle perfumes,” Dionys replied. “The soul of Campanian roses is no less immortal than the soul of Asiatic roses. Show us your marvelous liquid...”
The old man started to laugh, with a kind of bitterness, and went into the house without replying. He soon brought back little boxes and vials of clay and alabaster.
Dehva chose her pins and her essence, while the Syracusan examined the alabasters.
“Old man,” he said, finally, “these perfumes are not despicable, and their vestment is gracious, but they come from my homeland; they are imitations made in Corinth and the isle of Crete. My ships exported them to Gaul. It’s appropriate to prefer good Campanian waters.”
“By Hermes!” protested the other. “My knowledge has grown for sixty years and yours is only just born! It isn’t me, young man, who confuses Sicilian and Cilician alabasters!”
“Dionys retorted, with a smile: “I would swear, old man, that you do not make that confusion. But it’s not illicit that you want me to make it, for the man is unworthy of divine odors who does not know how to recognize them. Nevertheless, I’ll buy this vial on which Heracles is seen among the Cercopes, a subject that certainly never inspired an artist in Cilicia. Your price?”
“Thirty sesterces,” said the other.
Dionys could have beaten him down by a third, but he had spent too long buying in accordance with his whim in the shops of Syracuse. Nonchalantly, he handed over a half-aureus, all that remained of his salary, and paid for the alabaster, the clay vial and the pins. The old man was not scornful of him, as he would have been of a man less expert in rose-waters, but rather discovered therein a sign of aristocracy.
Looking attentively at the young couple, he sa
id: “Don’t you want me to tell your fortune? I’ve learned to read in the gleam of the eyes and the signs of the hand...”
The malice of wanderers appeared in the wrinkles of his eyelids. For having seen so many destinies pass, he was able to read a little of the future that individuals contain within themselves, and he knew that, if circumstances dominate us, our sentiments are also circumstances, more invariable than others.
Curious and spontaneous, Dehva extended her hand at once. The old man, attentive to the frissons of the little hand, spoke in the voice of a haruspex:
“Young woman with long hair, whose ancestors fought on the shores of the lakes of Etruria and in the Ciminian forest, Diana Etrusca presided over your birth, and your mother made a redoubtable vow. Your heart has not yet blossomed. It is like a closed arrowhead flower in the ponds. But Eros is lying in wait for you, and his cruel tenderness. The image that will no longer quit your days has not troubled you yet, but already you cannot forget it. Be careful, young woman! Three routes are before you: that of separation, which is bitter, that of patience, which is salvation, and that of perjury, which is mortal. Flee the reeds, they will be more terrible for you than sharks to sponge-divers.
Dehva shivered, not so much at the speech as the prophetic tone. It was like a little seed falling in spring into the obscure earth. She laughed, however, but with constraint, and she dared not look up at her companion. He was more troubled than she was, for he knew that Eros was within her, full of menace and strength.
He drew the diviner to one side; his muscular handled the speech of the old man like a papyrus covered in writing.
“You lived close to blue seas; you knew the delight of being rich and living without constraint. Poverty overtook you, but it has not left you miserable for long. You bear within you the magic that will always vanquish, if you can escape death. For death is lying in wait for you. A god and a goddess are in league against you. The god is filling you with tender fury; you abandon yourself weakly to constraint. You are summoning yourself the evil that you ought to flee; you cherish it secretly, taking boundless pleasure is evoking that which is more dangerous than Scylla’s abyss. And you no longer perceive the implacable goddess and the place of execution.”
Pan's Flute Page 5
