by John Rechy
Lucifer held her by the shoulders and stared into her eyes, into the reflection of her own vision. Then he passed his hand before her face, guiding her gaze away.
Adam stepped forward. “What is already there?”
“Tell him!” Lucifer said urgently to his sister.
Cassandra touched Adam’s eyes gently. “I perceived . . . the lineage of Adam and Eve.”
“The lineage —?” Adam understood only vaguely.
“Your children,” Cassandra said.
“Children?” Adam wondered.
Lucifer explained: “Out of your love and desire, when you fused, out of that, there’ll come extensions of you — in your image.”
Adam smiled joyously. He held me to him. I rested my head on his shoulder, rejecting sorrow. “We, together, our love, together, our desire, together, shall produce . . .? You did see that correctly, Cassandra, the children of Adam and Eve?” he asked eagerly.
“Exactly that,” Cassandra said.
I turned away from Adam, so that my tears would not dampen his joy.
As Adam held me, Cassandra addressed me in her softest voice: “Bless you, dear Eve. Blamed forever.”
Adam looked, bewildered, at her. “What possible blame, when out of all this will come our children?”
Lucifer urged his sister: “Is there no way to —?”
“— foil His new plan?” Cassandra nodded. “Only one.”
I clutched my Adam’s hand. He was still smiling, had stopped listening to their words, still exulting in the prospect of extending our love to other lives.
To keep him from following Cassandra’s and Lucifer’s stare into darkness, I kissed Adam’s eyes shut, extending the time of joy before he would discover what I realized then that Cassandra understood.
XII
“LADY!”
Madame was standing next to me, an urgent look on her face.
“Didn’t you hear me calling?”
“Now?”
“Yes. You were sobbing with your eyes closed.”
I touched the ancient tears from Eden, augmented through centuries. “Madame . . . I’m so very sad —”
“— because?”
“— of life, everything.” As we sat cooled by the shade of bougainvillea, I noticed that when they face the sun, their blossoms are scarlet, and when the sun glances away, they turn fuchsia.
“I understand, Lady. But think of this — soon, we will right so much wrong.”
That’s how our tea ended, that afternoon.
I have suggested to Madame, and she agrees, that from time to time we rehearse further the precise wording of certain crucial matters to be brought up at interviews. Now in my quarters — no new mysterious threat was left at my gates — I shall restate to you the goal of my journey — our journey, Madame’s and mine — as clarified and refined up to now. We shall redeem with the truth the lives of women unjustly blamed and called “whore,” a word we shall defuse so that it shall evoke those thus redeemed. Since Madame has surely not felt the sting of the word herself, I account for her passion like this: Being a mystic, she is able to absorb the feelings of the wronged.
Oh, am I incorrect in concluding that some of you are less hostile, do I dare suspect one or another of you may become . . . my ally?
I have fortified myself with a piece of fruit, a pear, until tea with Madame tomorrow. Hunger sharpens my memories. I feed on them. I eat nothing else.
She’s hallucinating from hunger.
I’m glad I did not anticipate allegiance from all of you. I ask you: Why must one fight for credulity?
I have begun to consider — I shall discuss this with Madame — organizing my more casual thoughts into a volume of Pensées, observations of a more general nature, accounts of brief encounters in my many lives. I shall make all entries clear, while leaving room for intelligent interpretation, always guarding against inviting rampant impositions, as all artists and dreamers must. The great Dramatist told me that. Shall I enter something from that encounter now, begin my Pensées? Yes.
I met the famous Dramatist in a salon done in shades of mauve. He was in a sour mood because he was aware of the clumsy attacks by noisy “critics” dismissing as “vile” his writings illuminating the darkest chambers of the human heart. Our hostess, who was fond of reckless pronouncements, had just predicted, in a false whisper, that he and his work would disappear “with coffee . . . fads which will pass” — a remark that aroused derisive laughter about the salon. My eyes met the Dramatist’s across the room —
Not beyond using a cliché!
That is how it happened, and I am committed to the truth. Our eyes did meet across the room.
“What do you think of them, dear sir?” I used my beauty as passport to approach him boldly after dinner — the Great Dramatist enjoyed only the breast of chicken, poached, with a sprig of tarragon, especially in winter. “Those ‘critics’ who create nothing yet dare to scorn a great artist like you.”
“Critics? Why, beautiful lady — and you are beautiful, indeed,” he noticed, “they end up in history as derided footnotes.” With splendid laughter, he aimed his next words at two of the most notorious of that breed, Alfred Chester and Richard Gilman, who at dinner had quibbled breathlessly about whether or not a writer I had known quite well “truly existed”: “Why, Lady, those two are like gnats believing their buzzing is arousing interest rather than mere irritation. The dream — the art — my dear, needs only the dreamer — the artist — to exist.”
Into my Pensées that goes: “‘The dream needs only the dreamer to exist,’ said the great Dramatist in a mauve salon.”
I saw him again when I attended the opening of his most controversial drama, which would soon be mauled by immoral “moralists” determined to drive him from the theater. I had chosen to appear at the theater alone, an act of daring received with ugly whispers. Amid them, the great Dramatist knelt before me and kissed my hand. “I recognize your elegantly defiant act of solitude — I know you well. I know your essence.”
“That is my word,” Madame said at tea when I told her about that encounter remembered in my quarters. A strange, hot wind was rising. I heard the rustle of distant palms, their dried fronds falling, scratching at the ground.
“Oh, Madame, you cannot be competitive,” I laughed goldenly. “That was a literary man —”
“I explained it first to you, your essence.” Madame did not change her tone.
“But of course you did, Madame, and no one else shall get credit for that —”
“I don’t want credit. I simply call your attention to the fact that I said it first,” Madame upheld.
“Madame, he used the word differently, certainly not with the new meaning you’ve given it, that you’ve explained to me, the central meaning that brings all my lives together.” I said all that with passionate conviction. “Surely, you know that’s yours, only yours, Madame. And now, mine — ours.” I placed my hand on hers, noticing a new gem, a marquise, she was wearing. I made a note in my mind to comment on it at the appropriate time, which was not now. “The gentleman used the word cursorily, although in other ways he was most precise.”
“I understand now,” Madame said. “Thank you.”
The dream . . . the dreamer . . . In my chambers, I reread the Dramatist’s words entered into my Pensées.
I feel my solitude — and I add to my Pensées these sudden thoughts: Who first named the sensation we call feeling? We say it so easily — I feel love, I feel hatred, I feel desire, I feel . . . pain . . . fear. Feel! A wondrous word, coupled with others quite as startling: love, hatred, desire, pain, fear! Feel! Composed of what? — invisible molecules, smaller than that, atoms, much larger, as large as multiple universes, as vast as space and all its spinning stars, still shining although dead, or so they claim, but who can tell?
When I verbalized those thoughts for Madame Bernice’s consideration, she took an inordinately long time to nibble on an extravagant bounty of creamy petit four
s on a platter before us. She sipped her tea, prolonging even that simple act. She was in an odd mood today, perhaps related to the flare-up of an allergy.
“Imagine, Madame” — I expressed my sudden concern — “the first person who ever felt yearning — and gave it words — and said, ‘I yearn —’”
“As long as you’re at it, imagine the first person who ever sneezed!”
There was no ignoring her sarcasm.
“I can explain why I’ve had those thoughts.” I assured her of my seriousness: “This morning when I woke, Madame, I wished . . . I wished that I could die.” Not wanting her to see my tears, I pretended to drop my napkin, which Ermenegildo — he continues to astonish me — picked up with his beak and extended subtly back to me.
“Lady” — despite my attempt, Madame had discovered my tears — “why are you speaking like that?”
“Oh, Madame,” I dismissed the matter, “surely you know I was talking only metaphorically about wanting to die, just an expression. After all, my essence is eternal . . . even though the body dies.”
Madame Bernice’s gentle voice soothed me immediately: “Let’s rehearse the love affair between Helen and Paris, shall we, Lady?”
The dry wind abated, leaving a carpet of burst blossoms on the lawn.
“Surely there were some lovely times?” Madame coaxed.
“Oh, yes.” My memories returned me to Troy, to a mild spring day when I encountered Cassandra as I was on my way to meet Paris at the seashore.
She walked along with me, looking very pretty in the reflected light of the calm sea. I spotted her brother ahead. He lingered at the edge of the water, gazing at his own reflection, beguiled by his own seductive form, aware that along the sandy bank admiring eyes gazed, as always, upon him.
“Troy will soon fall,” Cassandra said. It amazed me, with what casualness she announced terrible events. I did not believe that the bickering that was going on between the two countries over my Trojan escapade with Paris would lead to war. How could she deduce this?
“What is more certain than doom?” She had answered my silent question.
I was no longer surprised by her quickness. “As simple as that, dear Cassandra? — all your prophecies?” I tried to match her casualness.
“Deductions,” she corrected me.
“Oh, Lady, Cassandra was so very wise, wasn’t she?” Madame would not permit my reference to pass without paying homage to the woman she so admires.
“As fond as I was of her then, I did not understand her as well as I have come to now, through your expert guidance, Madame, centuries later when you’ve explained my lives to me, here on this very lawn on which we sit having tea . . . Oh, and what a lovely marquise.” I admired her new ring.
Madame responded with silent pride on all compliments, her understanding of Cassandra, her explanation of my many lives, and my comment on her ring. Then she urged me on: “I assume we’re now rehearsing the real reason for the Trojan War?”
Did I detect the slightest bit of impatience? I quickly deduced the reason: Earlier she had, with great subtlety, attempted to bring up the matter left pending from an earlier tea, the matter of how I had saved John the Baptist’s virginity. She had said, “Oh, I should have worn a veil today, the sun is brazen,” and later, “Look how beautifully the bougainvillea veils that wall, in sev —” She stopped herself. “— in several layers.” When, still later, she passed a puffy cake to me, she had said, “This is a beautiful silver platter, isn’t it?” As much as I adore her, I was resolute in my determination not to return to the pending matter until she asked me directly to clarify the event she had claimed, with such assertive agitation, was not possible.
So I went on, quickly gaining her full attention to my memories of Troy.
Cassandra continued as we slowed our walk, enjoying each other’s company: “Trojan and Greek blood will spill, all because of my brother Paris’s little secret.”
“You know?” I refused to believe that even she could have discovered the intimate secret Paris had confided only to me.
“Of course.” She waved at her brother.
“Cassandra! Helen!” He waved back, knowing he looked startling against the azure of the Hellespont, his torso bared to reveal his broad shoulders and to exhibit the tight ridges on his stomach, his tunic lowered in a slant on his hips to display a glimpse of golden hairs.
Cassandra sniffed the clear air of the day. “It will all be so romanticized, dear Helen, that your glorious face will be said to have launched a thousand warships.”
I laughed at such a gross exaggeration, although it was true that I was beautiful.
The day was much too clear, much too splendid to portend such horrors as those she had implied. After all, even Cassandra might be capable — mightn’t she? — of being playful. Nor could I take offense at her dismissing my affair with Paris as trivial.
When Paris had first arrived in Greece from Troy — a short time ago — my husband, Menelaus, had received him gladly in our palace. Menelaus was unattractive, much older than I, and he wore me like a jewel to enhance his image. In bed, his goal was penetration. I was fifteen, longing for adventure and romance. Paris had a magnificent physique, a manly beautiful face with perfect cheekbones, shiny eyes adorned with long lashes; often he chose the glow of candles that would elongate them even more.
He had heard of my own legendary beauty. Certainly to uphold his reputation as the most beautiful of men he must conquer the most beautiful of women. I would be his defining conquest. His reputation for romance was such that women often astonished their husbands by admitting — no, announcing proudly in the company of others, at dinner — that they had been intimate with the greatest lover. Indeed, those men, feeling that their wives’ returning to them reflected on their own prowess, did not object nor refute. “My reputation enhances theirs,” Paris once told me, “and it will increase Menelaus’s, I promise you.”
Perhaps I loved him, perhaps I was infatuated. He might have loved me similarly. In truth, I believe he cared most for reflections of himself, and for his admirers. Once, he held my hair tightly against my face, and kissed me. I suspected he had seen me as a reversed image of himself. Still, he was sweet, with a boyish charm. He ran like a colt along the Greek beach, always dressed only in a brief tunic, which extended noticeably long between his legs. Often, when he rested in his jogging, he would let his hand slide slowly from his waist until it rested at his tunic’s lowest point, an impressive length. He flirted outrageously with everyone, men, women, girls, boys.
Menelaus was fascinated by him. I could see him stealing secret looks at him at banquets. Paris was an expert at locating admiration, and that gave him permission to court me openly. Once when he detected Menelaus hiding in a corridor to watch him pass by with me, Paris coaxed me into pretending that the strap of my white dress had fallen, without my help, revealing one delicious breast, which he kissed briefly but loudly.
“Think of it, Helen,” he said, “they’re all hiding behind the columns, watching us, the most beautiful woman in the world — you! — and the most beautiful man in the world — me! Perhaps they’re even masturbating,” he predicted.
A prediction affirmed when I heard Menelaus’s familiar puny moan.
Yet Paris made no move to seduce me. I was too young to think anything about that — and too repelled by Menelaus’s fumblings, which I defined as sex. One night, I sat with Paris on some steps of the palace. The moon silhouetted us in silver. “Do you ever, Helen, feel the weight of your beauty?” His words astonished me; they contained a note of honest rue. I agreed that I, too, felt the burden of beauty at times. He held my hand and kissed it. He walked me to the rooms he occupied as Menelaus’s guest in the palace.
Feeling free, warmly sleepy, I let my tunic slide easily off my body. I lay on a satin bed. My skin was smooth and fair after a bath of goat’s milk. I stretched naked, curling one leg over the other so that wisps of the puff between my legs glistened like sequins i
n the moonlight. Paris lay beside me, contrasting my fairness with his bronzed body, covered only with a golden tunic, which dipped amply between his legs.
He kissed me. The warmth between his legs connected to the warmth between mine. He stood up.
“Paris?”
“I’m not large!” he gasped.
“What?”
“I’m not large, here,” he said, and pointed to the huge bulge under his loincloth.
“But it’s —”
“— stuffed,” he said.
I laughed.
“Please!”
My laughter was not in ridicule. It was simply that the matter seemed unimportant, did not affect me. I told him that. “And certainly none of the hundreds of women you’ve seduced have cared,” I reminded.
“They make it up, in order not to be the one I haven’t been with. I uphold their stories. And the matter isn’t unimportant.” He was a pleading child: “Don’t you see? I’m the symbol of male beauty, and yet —”
“You’ve kept this to yourself, entirely?” I was moved by this stunning man.
“Yes. I’m a virgin.” He faced away from me. “You’re the only one I’ve ever told, because you’re beautiful and will understand what that demands.”
“Oh, I understand,” I said.
“And it really doesn’t matter?”
“Not at all,” I said.
He removed the loincloth.
“How small was he, Lady?” Madame blurted, in an untypical manner.
“Madame!”
I tried not to look between his legs, that time together, but I thought it best for him if I did. It was true he wasn’t large, but he wasn’t terribly small. He was . . . average. “You have no reason to be embarrassed,” I told him.
Deliriously, he thrust himself on me.
We made love, very good love, Paris and I, so different from how it was with Menelaus, who would push himself into me and then topple over, and so in a sense it was a first time for me, too. I came five times, and he came three, and he was thrilled.
Afterwards, he said, “Now we’ll have to be a couple, and you’ll tell everyone that I’m —” He parted his hands, measuring at least a foot’s length.
