This, then, was peace. A realm at peace. They had all been impressed and encouraged by the changes going on at home — roofs thatched properly at last, houses rebuilding of stone or good brick, fields tilled that had been growing rushes and frogs, or stones and weeds — this, they had been telling themselves, was what peace meant.
They were put, in twos and threes, in great bedrooms where none of them slept at all because of the excitement of examining quilts and pillows and rugs and even the beds themselves, whose elegance and solidity they had not been able to imagine. They were running from room to room across the landings, no less excited than the children with them, and exclaiming, and trying to make sure that what they saw would stay in their minds, until the innkeeper came and most politely asked them to let the other guests sleep.
In the morning, after a breakfast they were not used to and did not know that people needed, they all went to the stables, expecting to be astonished. And came out soberly, sighing and whispering to each other that many of Zone Four’s citizens would be better for living as those horses did.
And very soberly did they ride onwards under the towering snows that seemed, now they were so close, to mock them because of their distance — but were distant in another way. They rode quietly past the people they met, waiting to be greeted, and all the elation and excitement had gone from them. They were moving on slowly, too, because they wanted to see everything they could, and stopped at midday in a little town on the verge of a stony upland where beasts were grazing, since the soil was not being used for agriculture. The animals were well covered, and strong, and none of them had ever been overworked.
The town was made of stone, and built high of tall houses, some of them ten or twelve stories. But they were not regular or uniform, but spread themselves about, with many comers and stretches of roof on which people could be seen sitting and passing the time and looking out over the high lands to the mountains. Squares and oblongs and circles all over the surfaces of the buildings glittered and reflected the sky and even clouds and passing birds — like water caught up and spread and held there … they had marvelled at glass the night before in the other inn — not the fact of it, for there was glass in their own land, but they had not imagined its use like this, to make windows whose setting and proportions gave pleasure, or to make a whole town seem as if sky had been woven and knitted into walls or water was spread over the sides or roofs of towers … they were standing in the leafy little central square gazing up open-mouthed … they were yokels and knew it. Again they made their way to an inn. It was different from last night’s, so much so they would not have known it as one. Covered terraces surrounded a great central room which itself was open, but able to be closed with sheets of glass. People were sitting out at tables arranged on the different levels of these terraces, and eating and drinking at their leisure, and children played around them. The snowy peaks above them were reflected in the glass, as if mountains, snows, and windy skies were part of their own substance. This so ordinary scene, of people at ease, was nevertheless punishing their poor overwhelmed hearts. Taken detail by detail there was nothing in it so remarkable: a man telling a small child how to sit well at the table, a woman smiling at a man — her husband? If a husband, certainly not like one from Zone Four! — but looked at as a whole, it all seemed suffused with a clear fine pale light that spoke to them of the longing that is the inner substance of certain dreams: it was the knowledge of a bitter exile.
They told themselves that they were looking at — pleasure. This is what they saw. Well-being without purpose or pressure or reproof. But the word pleasure had to be dismissed. Dabeeb said to them that Al·Ith had had this air of ease, at least when she first came to them: this is what had struck her, Dabeeb, at first and immediately: Al·Ith’s largeness and freedom of being. But that had not been pleasure, had not been, even, delight: though what Dabeeb had taken back to her own bare little house from that first meeting with Al·Ith had been an awed, even triumphant, conviction that happiness was possible. But Al·Ith’s strengths had stemmed from something — somewhere — else …
What they were looking at, the inwardness of this scene, was not pleasure or happiness, words which — no matter how far they had seemed from them down in Zone Four — now seemed paltry and even contemptible qualities — but something they could not begin to understand.
They were most powerfully and bitterly crushed down. The gap between this and what Zone Four could even hope for was — hundreds of years. Was — time, but time that beat a higher, finer measure. Oh, yes. Zone Four could build tall houses like these, and even lace their sides with glass, if they were shown how. They could learn to make the dishes on their tables speak through designs and patterns that were like a new language. They could clothe their servants in garments that had these languages of pattern woven into them. But as for the real differences, they would have to learn to feed from this other dimension that they had only just begun to think of. For one thing: the easy and casual ways of these serving people here, equals and partners — how long would it take Zone Four to learn this absolute equality, individual to individual, when divisions and classes and rank and respect for these — servility — had been stamped so long into its deepest substance? Even this partial aspect of Zone Three seemed impossibly distant, so that a smiling enquiry from the girl who asked if they would care for this dish or that, seemed to be emanating from a realm far above them.
They left this inn, or, rather, were driven away from it by their own feelings, and rode on and away from the town of lovely glowing stone that had sky and water and snow and light and mountains as part of its fabric, turning their heads continually and lifting up Arusi and the other children so that they would see everything and be impressed and remember — and be the first individuals from Zone Four to have in their inner selves the knowledges of Zone Three.
And at evening they rode into Andaroun, and, having again asked their way, into the small square with its trees and gardens. And stood together on the broad white steps of the palace, asking for Al·Ith.
At the name they were given curious but not unfriendly glances.
After a long wait a young woman came slowly down towards them.
Dabeeb at least knew at once that this was the sister Al·Ith had spoken of, because she was Al·Ith, but fair-haired and white-skinned.
Dabeeb repressed an impulse — because of this marvellously beautiful palace, its airy heights and breadths, its balconies and colonnades, its delicate bright colours — to go on her knees, or supplicate: my lady! For she knew that these were not the ways of this place.
When she used the name Al·Ith, Murti· nodded and said simply, ‘But she is not here.’
This, it was evident to the women, was a final statement: meaning that they were not going to be given what they had expected.
‘This is her child,’ said Dabeeb, holding out the boy.
Murti· took Arusi, held him a little, in a way which said that her arms were seldom without a child in them, and said, ‘My sister is not here.’
‘Is she not queen here now?’
‘You don’t understand, I think,’ was the reply. ‘I do her work for her now, if that is what you are asking. You will find her there …’ and Murti· pointed away to the northwest.
It seemed that that was all she meant to say.
But, just as they turned to go, she asked, ‘Why are you here?’
And now they were clumsy, and flushed, and were ashamed, because they had been asking that themselves. Murti· was enquiring, as Ben Ata had, if they were here by right.
‘You must ask my sister what to do,’ said Murti·, and with that she handed back the child to Dabeeb, and ran back up the steps into the palace.
The women again found themselves an inn. They were now low in spirits, and even full of forebodings, though no one was anything less than courteous. They were fed and housed for asking, for they had no means to repay what they were being given. And what they were thinking was t
hat they could return home with news of what they were seeing, and even if they were believed, it would do no good, for they could do no more than explain, and say again, that if the fat and the fullness of a land were not continually poured away into war, then everything, but everything, would start to fill, and flower, and grow lovely and lavish with detail. In hands and in minds lived skills and cleverness that had only to be fed and given room … patience.
This building they spent the night in was one that offered gardens and plants to its guests. There was every kind of garden, and set among them were pleasant blocks of rooms. They were all put together in one, and food was brought to them. This evening they did not examine bed covers and door handles, but walked through the gardens. They had believed those arranged among the fountains of Ben Ata’s and Al·Ith’s pavilion were grand and fine, but knew now that they were only a token or a symbol of what could be made.
And so it was for several days. They rode on quietly and observing everything, trying not to be despondent, or self-demeaning, and spent their nights in different kinds of inns, for it seemed to them as if there was no end to the varieties of pleasure and interest this place offered its travellers.
They asked for Al·Ith as they went, and sometimes were even met with blankness. As if Al·Ith had been forgotten. Though generally people replied that ‘it was said that she was somewhere over there.’
And so they went on until they saw a range of mountains that had a gap in them, where blue mists curled.
One evening they came into a small village meaning to ride through it again, but, enquiring for Al·Ith, were told that she could be found in the stables.
And so they did. She was bringing in some horses from fields into their sheds. When she saw them she seemed surprised. But welcomed them. And took her son into her arms with an eagerness and a regret that told them everything.
But they knew now, quite certainly, that they should not be here.
For one thing, to judge events by how they went, well or ill, then that was answer enough: for here they were, with Al·Ith, and there was no place even for them to sleep, for this village was too small for an inn.
She went to the people who on behalf of everyone decided the affairs of this village, and asked if the women might sleep in the orchards, since it was still the end of summer. It was agreed that they should, and also take what fruit they needed.
Thus it came about that the twenty women, and their several little children, and Al·Ith’s son, spent that night in the grasses of the orchards, under a warm sky.
It could be said that this was the first time since the women had left home that they were in surroundings that were familiar — but even that was partially true. For there was nothing in Zone Four like these old rich orchards, and even some of the fruit was new to them.
They talked of the new dispensation in Zone Four, and of Ben Ata, though tactful about what was said of the new queen, with whom after all Ben Ata had spent a long time. They described-how the worst of the land’s poverty was being soothed away, and how the granaries and storehouses were filling. They described how the child Arusi, now asleep on Al·Ith’s lap, had grown and his various ailments and small accidents.
But it took them a long time to talk of Al·Ith herself and ask what she was doing here, an exile from her old life. This was because they knew already, and understood.
If they yearned for this land, for Zone Three, then they believed it natural for Al·Ith to long with all her heart for the higher lovelier place whose entrance they could see simply by lifting their eyes.
Strange it was to these women, to sit there among the low sweet-smelling grasses, and to gaze up, with Al·Ith, as they had done, for so long, at the wonderful peaks of Zone Three. They did not even feel ready and right yet to enter this place — which she had had her fill of, and wanted to leave. All this they knew. Though they would not know the day-by-dayness of it.
This is a scene particularly loved by our artists who embellish it with a vast yellow moon positioned so that it is close to, or behind. Al·Ith’s head. Or there is a delightful crescent set off by a star or two. And they often add a large peacock, whose shimmering tail fills the orchard with reflected lights.
But it is on the whole a realistic depiction, and I am saying this because it is the last of the truthful scenes. For now there is something in the tale of Al·Ith that goes beyond popular taste. What we are dealing with here is the account of a great and loved queen who — but no, she does not turn her back on her realm. She does not repudiate it. Easier, more dramatic, if she did. But it is as if she is already living, at least with part of herself, somewhere else. And this is a bleak truth. Arid. Even insulting, since it is hard to believe that everyday warmths and satisfactions are not being despised altogether by this person who, seen from outside and by the uninstructed view, does not give much evidence of the change and growth within — any more than the growth and ferment inside a chrysalis is suspected by the ignorant. No, it is necessary, it is forgivable, in us, the songsters and the Chroniclers and the portrayers, when we soften certain facts.
For instance — her horse Yori. The fact is that Al·Ith did not return to Zone Four. Never again did the drum beat for her. For a long time she waited for it, expected it — or half expected it, being at the same time fearful — believed all kinds of things, such as that she had made a mistake in being here on these higher borders, had fallen away from responsibilities. But she was, after all, so she comforted herself, always ready to leave. And she still longed, with what was left of her heart, for her husband. But all these conflicting hopes and wants came to nothing at all, for what actually did happen — and much later, after certain vicissitudes — was that her son came for long visits to Zone Three. But his visits to us were really to spend time with Murti·. So did events cheat her expectations … or half expectations … or none, for she felt more and more that she was due nothing.
One of the most popular pictures of Al·Ith is of her riding down into Zone Four with the boy, aged about six, in front of her. Ben Ata, smiling and amenable, is behind and below her, so that she dominates the picture. These are heading a troop of Zone Four’s children, returning after an educational visit. They are portrayed as little savages willingly tamed. The horse Al·Ith rides is Yori. No, not exactly, for the artists are careful to make small differences, in case they are challenged. It can be said that Yori never died: there are deaths that are not accepted in the imaginations of the ordinary people. And of course horses by the thousand are named after him.
Another figure that has never achieved realism is Dabeeb, who is shown most often as a singer, as if this was her profession.
In the early morning, when most of the women had fallen asleep, and Al·Ith was dozing, curled in the grasses, Dabeeb, who was too sad to sleep, was singing quietly to herself:
‘I shall ride my heart thundering across the plain.
Outdistance you all and leave myself behind —
Who am I on this high proud beast
Who knows where I should ride better than I do?
Oh, I do not like to look back at myself there,
Little among the stay-at-homes, the restabeds.
No, sting my self-contents to hunger
Till up I ride my heart to the high lands
Leaving myself behind.
Teach me to love my hunger,
Send me bard winds off the sands …’
‘What are you singing?’ said Al·Ith, sitting straight up.
‘It’s a new song.’
‘Yes, I know. I haven’t heard it. Where is it from?’
‘It is from the desert. From Zone Five,’ said Dabeeb, apologetic.
‘From there …’ Al·Ith was kneeling, leaning forward, hands gripped together in front of her. And Dabeeb could not help smiling.
‘Oh, you have changed so much. Al·Ith!’
For she could not stop herself remembering Al·Ith as she had been when she first came down to them — as if this memor
y had a claim over the present.
As if the smilingness and charm of that queen had the power to condemn Al·Ith as she was now, kneeling in the grasses, the snow peaks behind her all flushed red and wild, a worn thin woman who seemed as if she was being burnt through and through by invisible flames.
‘Sing it all!’ begged Al·Ith.
‘But Al·Ith, they don’t have songs the same way we do. You know our Zone Four songs — they have different words at different times but we know what those words are. And some we teach to our children, word by word. And some are only for our daughters and we tell them they will get a good hiding if they get the words wrong by a syllable. Yes, that is our way. But down there, so they tell us, the songs are made up as they go along. They ride across those sands of theirs — and that’s a terrible place, so they say, dry and not enough water and hot enough to bake you brown — we shouldn’t complain in Zone Four, not really, though we do. Down there it is lizard country, and there’s a snake under every stone and you can shake scorpions out of your skirts. Yes, I am sorry, the song, I am coming to it … about their songs, a whole troop of horsemen go out riding together and one will sing out a line, and then another take it up and add a line, and so they go on, making it up as they go, sometimes all day or night. And when they have feasts, there are prizes for those who can best make up songs as they stand there. Someone will throw out a line, I don’t know what, let’s say, “Here we sit in the middle of the orchard,” well, no, it wouldn’t be orchards for those poor things, more likely sandstorms. This song came our way when Ben Ata’s bodyguard came back into the villages. It became popular. We all sing it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if down there they hadn’t forgotten it altogether. They’d be on to something new by now, I should expect.’
‘That it should come from there,’ Al·Ith was whispering, ‘there.’
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five Page 27
