by Gene Wolfe
“Don’t invoke that uncouth nasty mob.”
“The eleven heavens then. Oh Copper, Copper—Did you know?”
“Know what, my baby?”
“She was shown in the city today.”
“The Woman? Gods, yes, I’d forgotten. No wonder half my best lads’ clientele, was absent. Damn it, there was I cursing them. And they too stupid to remind me.”
Leopard shook, but with laughter.
He sat up and gazed into his brother’s exquisite and suprised face.
“Listen, Copper. I applied.”
“You—my own spirit! When?”
“Last Rose Moon.”
“Three months ago? And all this while you never told me—“
“I was afraid I’d be thrown out from the first examination. But I passed them all.”
Copper sank back on the cushions, fanning himself.
“Wait, sweetheart. You go too fast. I’m staggered as an old hag on her last legs.”
Leopard gripped his hand. Glowing with pride, he detailed every contest he had entered, and passed, always well, and often with the brilliant coloured inks of his competency and genius marked on the scroll. There had been reading and writing, in which, though village taught, he had had the luck of erudite masters, and the added learning Copper had later bought for him. There had been philosophy and debating too, humour and drama. There had been the art of painting, and the arts of war—cross-bow, staff, moon-sword and bare fist. Finally he had had to compose a love poem of four lines only, each line containing only four words. Leopard modestly said he did not believe his own work one twelfth as good as others he had seen inscribed on the judges’ parchment, but by then he had also been physically examined by physicians and dentists, some of his skin and hair, his urine, blood and saliva scientifically evaluated. Lastly his semen was checked, having been gathered after the use of a certain drug and a dream, as he had thought, of The Woman herself. Only the finalists of the examinations were ever given this hallucinogen, but after it he could not recall what she had been like, the goddess of his orgasm. Now, naturally, he need not wonder for today he had seen her in person. Her eyes had—surely? unbelievably?—rested on him in turn.
In a restrained tone Copper observed, “And they allowed you to stand close to the road where she travels by in her chair. Only finalists may stand so near. Or the most wealthy, they say, who can afford to buy places. But, Leopard, my sweet one—these contests concerning The Woman occur only once every year—“
“I know. And now you know why I’ve lived in this city for a year, the parasite beneficiary of your bounty, and never a hard word from you though I earned myself not even a single bit of lead.”
“I’ve plenty,” said Copper, “why should I mind—yet Leopard—Leopard—“
Leopard raised his proud young head. “Say nothing to bring down my mood. Nothing. Don’t tell me how many others have almost won her, yet failed the Ultimate Test. Say nothing of that.”
Copper lowered his eyes. The kohl on his long lashes glistened. They might have been wet with tears. “I say only this. One hundred men have died, in only the brief years I was here in the Crimson City, because of The Woman, and the Ultimate Test.”
“I love her,” said Leopard.
When he spoke of love, which was a common enough word and a concept often enough employed, love’s very soul seemed to brush across Copper’s elegant reception chamber.
Copper Coin had been named, at birth, for the copper coin their mother had bribed an itinerant hag to fix in the neck of her womb and stopper her, following the previous birth of Leopard. It was rumoured their mother had told the hag, “I can endure no more. I can bear no more.” But the hag, though a villainess, had nevertheless been also either inept or cunning, and the coin had not saved Mother from conceiving, carrying and ejecting her last son, even if his advent killed her.
Copper had always, though glad to have been given life, felt very sorry for their mother.
Not himself desiring women, which he found a blessing, Copper had space to respect and pity them. Even the old ones—especially they perhaps. And even The Woman, maybe, the demon-goddess, cold and distant as some far off planet, whose surface, if ever one did reach her, smashed men like brittle dragonflies on her rocks of razor and adamant.
* * * *
The sky was green as young-grape wine.
Alone, Leopard stood on the roof of his lodging. Below, his city room, a cell equipped with a pillow, a writing-stand, and the fixtures for elimination and ablution in one corner, had also a ladder which had often led him up here.
He watched evening stars like molten silver burst from the greenness. So love was. So it seared forth from the dusk of life.
Leopard had dimly heard of The Woman in the Crimson City since the age of six. But at sixteen he heard with more than his ears. Thereafter he had had only one goal, which he kept secret from all who knew him closely, until this day.
Now Copper had been informed. And now Leopard had beheld, in flesh, not two arm’s length away in front of him, The Woman.
Oh, to win her, to retain her—which must be impossible.
Yet to see, to have, and then to lose her—also impossible.
In the balance of the gods of balances, his weighted hopes and dreads must lie level tonight.
He had visited various temples about the city, sometimes passing other finalists he recognized, or they him, each man nodding politely, heart hidden yet well understood. He had travelled the white streets for miles, and made his offerings lavish, financed by Copper’s generosity. And Copper had said nothing more. And yet, at their parting, Copper’s perfect eyes truly had been full of tears, like diamond pearls. Such beauty.
If only Leopard had loved men, as Copper did.
But no. Leopard loved women—loved The Woman.
Nothing else would do.
Even if so many other hundred thousand men had perished, Leopard believed he alone would prevail. He would pass the Ultimate Test, have her and keep her. Him she would love. But too, of course, he knew such a thing could never be. He could only become one more shell smashed upon her steely beach. One more dead, useless man.
2 - The Lover
Unlike the dusk, the dawn was a peach. The moisture of it put out the blazing stars yet lit the lioness of the sun, who leapt up high above the city.
“Oh, Sun Lady, give me my dream...”
Leopard climbed the three hundred marble steps to the Palace. He did this alone. For no finalist of the examinations ever made his final journey in company with any others.
Leopard noticed, despite the haze which seemed to envelope him, and the burning turmoil inside him, how the huge vistas of the city fell away and away. Long avenues and dwellings with roofs of carmine, purple or jade-green tiles; squares where fountains restfully played and gold and amber fish swam in pools among the lotuses; gardens of scent trees or sculpted pines and cedars...the world of the city, flawless and mathematical, grew less significant, nearly of no importance. So death must be, decided Leopard, strong enough he did not need to pause on the great stair for breath, only now and then to glance back and downward. For death too would be to leave the colourful world of life, ascending to some heavenly plain—or otherwise falling, of course, into some abysmal hell.
His reflections then were quite appropriate.
Who climbed this stair to the Palace of The Woman would indeed afterwards enter a heaven, or a hell.
At the vast doors guards were absent. Servants drew him in like a welcome guest.
For many hours he was prepared, bathed and massaged, dressed in costly robes, given to eat and drink light and ethereal foods of great nourishment and strange pale wines.
Leopard grew calm through these ministrations, but in the way of one deeply shocked by some colossal calamity or happiness. Even though such an event still lay before him.
Of the other finalists there was never any sign, and no mention. This day, this night, were unique to Leopard, as to
each finalist there was given always one such passage of hours in light and darkness.
During which he would undergo the Ultimate Test, and win or lose The Woman, and his life.
In the last recent years, a hundred dead, Copper had told him. Leopard had been amazed there were so few. None had ever won her. None.
In the afternoon, flocks of pink birds flew round and round the upper arches of the Palace where Leopard was now standing. He did not see them.
Before him lay a door of bronze inlaid with gold.
It opened after only half an hour.
No one remained on the gallery save Leopard, and in the room beyond the door, there would be only one. She.
He seemed to move through air, weightless as a ghost. He crossed the threshold. The door drew slowly shut at his back.
* * * *
The Woman sat on a golden chair, with her feet on a footstool shaped like a crouching elephant.
Her hands rested on her knees. Every finger had a ring of silver or gold and assorted jewels. She wore also a wig of indigo hair, plaited with blue gems.
She seemed neither pleased or dismayed at the sight of Leopard. He found he could not fathom her expression. But then he was stunned by her wonderfulness, by her female aura and her sexual glory.
He greeted her ritually, and musically spoke aloud for her his four line poem, then knelt on the patterned floor to await her commands.
Silence snowed heavy as old blossoms.
He smelled incense and perfume from his clothing.
Partly afraid to go on gazing at her, he stared at the floor and the painted animals there began to waver before his eyes.
“Oh, get up,” she barked suddenly in a hoarse high little voice. “Rise from your knees before you faint. So many of you do. How I dislike this fainting. Get up!”
Unsteadily yet quite gracefully Leopard obeyed her.
“Your poem’s thought clever,” she said. “That use of the one word see three times, then a fourth time but altered. How admirable. I suppose. Well,” she said. She reached her small plump hand towards a silver side-dish and selected a sugared plum. She ate it slowly, looking at him.
And her cold-sheened eyes slid over him. They were entirely expressionless, like pieces of opaque black slate. Over and over him the slate eyes slid.
How wondrous she was.
Oh gods, he could hardly bear it—and already in a kind of desolation, fearful she did not like him, even so his sex was upright and ready, the most potent weapon of love.
“Come here then,” she said. “Since you must.”
He went to her, stood there, standing once again in every sense.
“Well,” she said, her shrill voice rather more dull, “take off your garments. Let me see what you are, you—what do they call you?—Leopard?” And at this, his name, she laughed, more shrilly, like a flute warped by rain.
And yet he laughed as well, vibrantly, loving her mockery even, loving her, and burning.
Naked, Leopard was a man like a perfect statue, made of satiny tawny wood polished smooth as glass. Wide-shouldered, slim, every muscle well-developed yet lean. He shone in the icon of his body, which had the form of both fighter and dancer. On his chest the two jewels of his nipples, themselves erect, were the colour of the purest beer. At his groin the short black pelt resembled, in its silkenness, the thick silk hair upon his head. And from his groin also rose his succulent phallus, blushing and firm as the most edible fruit. He had no flaw. And his face too was a marvel. Where his brother Copper was transcendently lovely, Leopard was incandescently handsome. And while his parted lips—he was breathless with terror and lust—revealed the whiteness of his teeth, his large dark eyes revealed the flames of longing, and perhaps some aspect of his soul.
The woman regarded him with care. Then she pushed herself off her seat and puttered all around him. She observed him front, sidelong and back, scarcely blinking. Were her own eyes pitiless? Like a reptiles? Surely merely a trick of westering light.
She was not tall, The Woman.
The top of her blue-wigged head was level only with Leopard’s ribcage.
Behind him still, she grunted.
He was afraid to turn, in case this sound of hers indicated some annoyance—or disappointment—dismissal. He trembled.
Out of one of his luminous eyes a single tear dropped like silvery jasper. Yet even now his eloquent phallic erection stood its ground. His brain and heart might quake; this rose-gold warrior, primed with battle-juice, was too forthright and too wise yet to surrender.
Perhaps—could it be?—its instinct, if not the man’s, had picked up from the short round woman who patrolled the vicinity of Leopard’s splendour, some secret scent of answering desire...
“Oh,” eventually said The Woman, at Leopard’s back, “very well, then. Over there. The room behind the lacquer doors.”
“Lady—do you mean—“
“I mean we’ll go to the couch and do what’s to be done.”
And then The Woman turned and waddled away, and Leopard, dipped in fires, followed her.
* * * *
Among his self-educations, which as an adult had come to include singing, fighting, drama and philosophy. Leopard had not neglected to add the arts of love. He had learned these, as with the others, from the best teachers, who taught him everything at one remove. And he had then practiced all alone, over and over. “Beware,” they had told him. “If ever you should enact these things with a real subject—that is with a woman—it will be as it is also when you fight. For in love too your lover, male or female, is unwittingly your opponent, striving to overthrow you. But you must subdue your ardour and yourself remain the master. And, whereas in battle you must kill with force and pain, in sex you must kill with delight. That death’s a very different matter.”
And Leopard, his goal—her—had fully learned and then practiced with total dedication.
Now therefore, even as he saw The Woman take off her clothes, even her wig so her hair fell forth, he kept the confidence of a great mage, whose power sweeps in on him at his instruction. The more mighty the odds against self-control, the more mightily controlled now might Leopard be.
So at last, assured, he went to her, and leaning over her, measured and gaged her with his learned hands and fiery eyes.
* * * *
Three hours was the time Copper had quoted for his companion, Prince Nine.
But Leopard and The Woman entered a timeless zone. Which in fact lasted the rest of the day, all one night, and some space of the subsequent morning.
Leopard coaxed and seduced and adored and magnified The Woman. With acts not words he laved her body with caresses, used on her a musician’s hands, a poet’s mouth like velvet, a tongue like streams and feathers and bees, a sexual organ like a magician’s tireless and world-ordering wand. Again and again he brought her to the prolongued spasm of ecstasy. Sometimes even she might emit a squeak of pleasure, though generally she was noiseless in culmination, only the ripples of her loins and belly giving evidence of achievement. How he loved her.
Her fat, barrel-shaped form with its sallow, coarse, slightly blotchy carapace of skin. Her shapeless breasts. The thin hair that meagrely clad both her head and the heavenly, wide gate between her short legs. He loved her spatulate hands and ridged nails, and the nails of her toes from which the paint had worn, leaving them like ten square and striated rocks. He loved her teeth, which were so charmingly discoloured, and her sugar-sour breath. The ordinary non-profundity of her face. Her arrogance and indifference he loved too, though they lashed him with tragic fear of failure. And her gelid eyes. Even these—though they condemned him, surely.
Ah gods, even in victory over the reluctant, grudging climaxes of her body, Leopard at last heard the lament of approaching defeat.
Long before the night wore out, the red dawn—no longer peach but bloodied wine—he knew in his heart’s heart he had not won her. And never could. None could.
None.
3 - The Reject
All that day-night-day, Copper paced his apartment.
It comprised three rooms and a private courtyard on the roof. He went from one area to another, climbing up, descending, walking, turning. Now and then he touched something. A small statue of a dancing lion, a cup of black onyx, a little dagger of twisted wood Leopard had carved and given him when Copper was only five years old.
Copper wept. Chided himself and blotted up his tears. Cursed Fate and The Woman, cursed life and the world. Flung himself in a chair, wrote down his thoughts without coherence, got up and paced again, wept again, chided and blotted and cursed—again. Again.
Gods knew, if only Leopard had loved only men. There were male men who did so. Some of Copper’s nicest ‘lads’ were like that, and those like Copper, if not pretty enough to make their way, came to such gallants for solace. One indeed had married a male man from Copper’s wine-house, and they had lived happy now three whole years.
But Leopard was only Man.
So many men, despite dalliances with their own gender, were only—Men.
And so: The Woman of the Crimson City.
Copper knew, despite his hopes and wishes, and Leopard’s glamour and virtue, that The Woman would not want him for long. She had never wanted any of the ones who devoted their dreams to her and then passed all the required examinations but one. For to meet and make love with The Woman was the Ultimate Test. No man had ever passed it. Evidently. Or she would not be there still, hung like an over-ripe yellow fruit, cruel and evil with her thorns, on the tree of human longing.
How the gods must hate mankind, to do this to them.
The hours ground away under Copper’s pacing, weeping and cursing.
About sunfall, the man he had sent to watch the Palace’s Lower Gate, bounded up Copper’s stair and beat on the door.
“What’s happened, Heron?”
But Heron was crying. His tears spoke loudly, in an uncouth bellow.
“So then,” said Copper, gripping in his own emotion, “did he emerge from the Gate?”
“Yes, oh yes—oh gods, I’ve seen old gentlemen whose white beards brushed the earth, whose backs were humped with age like a camel’s—and they walked more sprightly than your brother, lovely Leopard.”
