by Jack Lindsay
In a world of closed faces.
But in his agitation, flurried by the increasing cries, he hastened more than he realised; and before he had time to stop, he found himself in. a small clearing. A girl, half naked, was fighting with a man, pummelling him, her hair falling over her face. She was trying to call out, panting with her efforts.
The wrestling pair heard Victor. They turned and stared at him, pausing, the man’s arm round the girl’s waist. Victor felt foolish. Probably he’d interrupted a lovers’ quarrel, and they’d both turn on him. Served him right for wanting to help. He had wanted to help.
“Get out!” shouted the man, a heavy-jowled lout, an Egyptian half-breed with negroid hair. All that Victor could see was the yellowish whites of his eyes.
“No, no!” called the girl, finding that Victor was about to retreat. She recommenced struggling.
Victor didn’t know what to do. But he couldn’t run away now. He advanced into the clearing.
“Leave her alone,” he said, without firmness.
The man heard the weakness in his voice.
“I told you once to get out. The second time I shan’t speak. This is my girl here.”
That was the claim Victor had dreaded.
“I’m not,” cried the girl, half sobbing, twisting vainly. “I was bathing, and he stole my clothes.”
The man guffawed, gave the girl’s dress a final rip, and grasped her by the wrist. Tugging her along, he moved towards Victor, shaking his free fist.
“I tell you she’s my girl. I found her. Are you going to get out?”
“You’d better leave her alone,” said Victor, speaking more emphatically in his fear.
The man pushed him in the face. Victor staggered back. The blow enraged him, and he forgot his fear. Or rather, his fear possessed him, turning into fury and yet remaining fear. With tears in his dimmed eyes, he flung himself on the man and tumbled him to the ground with the unexpected onslaught, falling on him and freeing the girl. The man’s breath was knocked from him by the fall, and he lay motion-less. This collapse saved him, for it deprived Victor of his fury. Victor grew afraid; he couldn’t hit a knocked-out man. He wanted to hit him, to tear at his eyes, to grasp his throat; but he was frightened by the sense of death. He couldn’t hit a man down-and-out. At least not while someone else was looking on.
The man recovered his breath, squirmed, and almost threw Victor off. Victor grabbed at him. But the man was the stronger; and if the girl hadn’t joined the fight, Victor would soon have succumbed. His fury had left him, and only a distracting terror was left; he wanted to break away and run, careless of what anyone thought of him. But the girl had picked up a length of wood, a fallen bough; and seeing the man expose his head as he strove to rise, she struck him with all her might on the crown and then on the nape of the neck. Her action gave courage back to Victor. He punched the man in the face, tore at his throat, beat at him with frenzied fists.
Howling, the man writhed away from under Victor, leaped to his feet, and fled out of the thicket, through crackling boughs, blundering against young trees, wrenching through bushes.
Victor rose unsteadily and looked at the girl for the first time. She was quite young, round-faced and dimpled, with fair hair. The first impression was that she was fair like Eros; then he saw that there was a glow of gold about her fairness that Eros lacked; that she had a large smiling mouth unlike the daintily curved mouth of Eros; that her forehead was broader, her blue eyes more alive, gentler and keener. How plumply smooth were her sunburned shoulders.
She flushed. “I was bathing,” she repeated, “and I don’t know what he did with the rest of my clothes.”
Victor stared politely round the clearing, but could see no sign of clothes.
“It doesn’t matter.” She frowned and tossed her head, her slightly curling hair of pale gold. Hair goldenly pale, powdering a dust of light across the shadows, ghosting her body with reflections of its own contours. “I haven’t thanked you yet for saving me. I’ll never be able to thank you. I—I—”
She began crying, without any attempt to hide her tears.
He was distressed. If only she had covered up her face with her hands, he would have felt at ease. He would have gone close, and put his arm round her, and said: “Don’t cry now.” But she went on looking at him, shamelessly crying.
“Of course not,” he mumbled. “I only did what I had to do. I— I—” It was his turn now to stammer, but not to cry. Instead he stared back at her, forcing himself to meet her grey-blue eyes. They seemed to be blaming him for something.
If he didn’t keep looking into her eyes, he’d look at her breasts, and then what would he do? He was too worried to know more than that he was staring into her eyes, rudely watching her tears.
“Let’s find your clothes,” he continued with an effort.
She came up to him, holding out her hands. He took her hands and felt their soft strong pressure. He was growing flustered by the incessant staring, but didn’t like to look away first.
“Thank you,” she said in a low voice, alarmingly sweet and tender. She had spoken before in a clear, almost ringing voice.
He felt his cheeks burn and pulled his hands away.
“No. I didn’t do anything. Let’s find your clothes.”
He glanced covertly. She had only a thin shift on, torn down the front and one side, the left shoulder-piece all loose. He could see one breast entire, youthfully firm, her full supple thighs, her faintly golden flesh.
She was beautiful.
The knowledge was a blow between the eyes. Not as when Eros discussed the court girls and said “She’s lovely,” or “She’s a done-up thing.” Not as with side-looks and wandering comparisons. She was beautiful.
This girl, no other.
“I love swimming,” she said, as if she read his glance. “I’m sunburnt a little, but not much. Uncle said I’d freckle, but I don’t. I wouldn’t care if I did, but I don’t. The sun has hardly any effect on me. Most girls with fair hair can’t stand the sun.”
She seemed quite unconcerned in talking about herself.
Victor wanted to take her in his arms. So tremendously he wanted it that he felt he had never before even remotely wanted anything. But he was a slave, and she was clearly a free-born girl, probably from a villa nearby. Yet even that wouldn’t have mattered so much if she hadn’t been so unconcerned. And how could he make love to her after the way that the ruffian had been treating her?
“I shouldn’t have come alone,” she went on, as if excusing his silence. “But I don’t enjoy it unless I’m alone. I haven’t many friends—” She stopped, and then asked him, her head on one side, “Don’t you love swimming alone?”
“I would.” His voice was dry and toneless. He couldn’t bear the way she seemed to be trying to make things easy for him, though desperately he was glad. “I’m sure I would. I’ve never had a chance.” He had to say it, he couldn’t pretend any longer, be had to say the words that he wanted to say the least in the world. Slowly they came. “I’m a slave.”
As soon as he’d said it, he repented. There had been no need to hurry the disclosure. Now everything was ended. He hated the girl for making him say what he’d said. He was degraded, and she the cause; it wasn’t his servitude, but his admission of it, that had degraded him. O end it all.
“I saw that.” She looked at his braided tunic, the purple fringe. “But in the Palace...that’s different, isn’t it?”
He resented her consoling tones. “No. And I was an ordinary slave before that. With a merchant in Antioch.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she said it so quietly, so sincerely, that it robbed him of his self-pity.
He looked into her eyes again. “It’s all nonsense we’re talking. I’ve had a far better time than hundreds of thousands of free men. I don’t regret it.”
“Are you Greek?” she asked. He spoke the language so well; his accent might be no more than an effect of dialect; he was obviously wel
l educated. It was education that mattered. And kind eyes, and nice mouth.
“I don’t know,” he answered angrily. “I don’t remember any parents. My mother came from Gaul, I was told.”
He detested her; he wished that he hadn’t come to her rescue. Nothing would have pleased him more than to watch the ruffian taking her, to be himself the ruffian. He raised half-clenched hands. He wouldn’t have her pity. What did she mean by asking questions? He wasn’t for sale at the moment. Was she rich enough to buy him up in the market if he were?
He tried to nerve himself to the act of catching her in his arms. It was the only way he could retort to her pity. Let her howl.
“I must find my clothes,” she said, abruptly cast into abject misery. “I won’t be able to go home till I do.” Her teeth chattered. “I’m so frightened.”
She dropped down on the grass and huddled herself under her torn shift, crying again, but this time in the hopeless way that Victor had wanted. But now he didn’t want it; he couldn’t put his arms round her. He felt antagonistic, withdrawn into self-commiseration. He’d like to take her by force, but her tears baffled him. Whatever she did baffled him; for he’d never take her by force. But that knowledge didn’t stop him from wanting.
“We’ll find your clothes,” he said half-heartedly.
Her hair was over her face, a tousled mass of pale gold. He saw only her quivering chin, smaller than he’d noticed, the tears running down it and dripping on to her uncovered breast, the nipple unsuckled. Salt tears, not milk of the lotus. Even in her huddled despair her body was proud and intact, virginal, free. He hated her.
He began searching among the bushes, but was halted by her voice, once more clear and ringing. A voice of command.
“I see something under that bush over there. Find what it is.”
His hatred grew intense, creeping hotly over his skin. She had ordered him to look, treated him as a slave indeed, considered him as the trash he was. That was unforgiveable. He’d find her clothes, throw them in her face, and walk off.
Without a word he went to the bush. Her clothes were there, a shawl and dress of patterned wool, some ribbons, and sandals.
“Everything’s here,” he said coldly, preparing himself. What words would be sufficiently insulting?
“O I’m so glad.” She rose and ran over. “I didn’t dare to go and look myself, for fear I’d be disappointed.” She leaned over him as he dragged the things out, her hand resting on his shoulder.
He straightened up, trying not to feel too happy.
“Look away,” she said nervously, taking the clothes. “I’d rather be quite naked than watched while I’m dressing. Can’t you understand?”
His face burned again, and he moved off. Her last words had been spoken sharply, meant to hurt; to tell him that he was a slave and would be a slave always. He stood brooding savagely, his back turned to the girl. But though he tried not to listen, tried only to think of her as a cold little fool, he could not help his pulse from stirring at the slight sounds that she made in dressing. The rustling. The quick breath taken in impatience. Something had gone wrong, what was it? what could it be? She ought to ask him to help her. It was ridiculous to hide now, when he had seen all that there was to see, without confusion on her part. Pale gold all over. Pale gold breasts and nipples of browned rose, hardly formed, yet tilted upwards. The soft crisp noises of her hair. Surely it was her hair, not the wind in the leaves. Always he would hear her hair when the wind sighed. Would see the strength of her young arched back in the shapes that the wind sought to make in resisting trees.
Perhaps she would vanish, slip away, cheating. He wanted to turn, but dared not. Isis, if he never saw her again. She was sealed on his eyes.
“Can I turn?”
“Almost...nearly...not quite...in a moment.”
She seemed to have something in her mouth, perhaps the end of a ribbon; a kiss. He warmed with pleasure. She was still there, not meditating flight. It would be best if she were there always, dressing behind the stir of his pricked senses. He wouldn’t be a slave for ever. Antonius was so good-natured, an appeal would almost certainly succeed. It all depended on choosing the right moment. But Victor felt that he couldn’t tell the girl this hope. Anger hardened his heart. (Besides, to speak of the hope would be to endanger it, to bring on it the evil-eye; to plead with the girl too obviously and ask for a rebuff.) She had treated him as a slave, the slave he was.
“You can turn now,” she said gaily, and he turned
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t what he saw. Her hair was neatly parted in the middle and drawn back, looped behind with the fillet in a little bunching cascade of curls; a blue fillet with silver edge pressed on the glistening hair that hid her rounding skull, over the small ears. The blue dress fell lightly and gracefully to her feet, with slightly puffed sleeves; pulled out over the girdle to the faintly increased extent demanded by the fashion of the year. Her feet were enclosed in flat sandals of soft leather picked with silver thread; and there was a dark-blue design on the sleeves and the lower part of the blouse. The shawl was set loosely on her shoulders, lying forwards in equal halves.
But it wasn’t the clothes that surprised him; it was the girl inside them. A different girl. If he had felt separated before, he now felt himself cut off utterly into a different world from the modest young Greek girl standing before him with her fingers entwined. The clothes seemed a cage that had tamed her, a hiding-place from whatever part of her indulged in such impulses as that of bathing alone. He didn’t even know her name, would never know it, refused to know it.
She came up to him with short maidenly steps, and then, with a quick smile, took his face between her hands and kissed him on the mouth.
The next moment she had fled out of the thicket, and he, collecting his wits, ran after her.
*
He caught her up a few hundred yards further on, his face on flame. If they had been sheltered, he would have embraced her; but there was a house overlooking the track. And she diverted the conversation from personalities by pointing to a barge of revellers and then complaining that she was hungry. But she didn’t want to buy anything; she’d seen apples on a tree down the road and wanted to steal some; and Victor, delighted at the laughter in her eyes, ceased wondering if she thought he was penniless as well as a slave. They found the tree, and he held her up in his arms while she reached down half-a-dozen apples; and no one saw them, though Victor was too worried at the felony to enjoy properly the nearness of her body. He had grasped her round the knees and swung her up. She was heavier than he’d thought, but he didn’t mind that. He pressed his cheek against her hip, and kissed the cloth of her skirt without attracting her notice. At least she said nothing. She was too busy plucking at the apples, her supple body moving against him. Every time she reached up and pulled down an apple with a wrench, he held her tighter, pleased at the excuse, praying that the stalks would need a long wrench. But he was afraid all the while that someone would come, afraid because he was a slave and would show himself abashed and feeble, disgraced before the fearless girl, who wasn’t a slave. Everything she did proved the gap between them. But sweeter than the sweet of apples was her nearness.
Then they hurried on, the apples hidden under her shawl, and sat on a pier that seemed to belong to no one, their legs dangling over. They took off their sandals and splashed at the water, and ate the apples warm from her hands under the shawl. Sweetest of apples. He was still afraid that someone would come and order them off the pier, and ate hastily, to destroy the evidence of theft, and then feared that she’d think he had no manners. But after a while he forgot his fears, forgot everything, talking.
Daphne was her name. She was the daughter of a professor at the Museion, named Nicias; and she’d kept house for him ever since her aunt died, and her aunt had kept house before that ever since Daphne’s mother died, and her mother who was named Callirhoe had died five years ago, when Daphne was eleven. (So she was six
teen now, one year and a bit younger than Victor.) And she wasn’t at all rich and had only one old slave, Simon, to help her, though Simon did everything or she wouldn’t be able to go out on her own. (She wanted to show she wasn’t proud, but Victor was too happy to be hurt any more by attempts at sympathy.) And she had hardly any friends. She didn’t like girls much.
Then she dropped her last apple in the water, and was inclined to swim for it, and blushed. So Victor found a forked stick and reached for the apple, and the apple bobbed about and wouldn’t be caught; and Daphne was frightened he’d fall in, particularly after she learned that he couldn’t swim. But she held his hand while he reached out, and clung to one of the piles. So safety was assured, and the apple was retrieved at last—some water-nymph sending a little wave from heaven-knew-where: which made them both cry out with excitement. And Daphne was ever so pleased to get her apple back, though she’d been saying a moment before that she didn’t really want it; and she polished it on her shawl and admired the gloss and said she was dying to eat it; and they both laughed so long that she forgot about eating and made him promise to let her teach him how to swim.
Then they were silent for a while, and she began to munch the apple. Neither knew what arrangements could be made for meeting again, or how she was going to teach him to swim, especially after having kissed him. Neither could speak first. And they both remembered the kiss, and were shy.
He began tentatively to put his arm round behind her, hoping that she’d lean back and rest against it; but didn’t quite dare to place it round her waist. He tried to imagine embracing her, and then he had another fear: that he would fail as lover. Whenever he imagined the touch, he felt himself becoming numbed, his desire sinking back limply into his overwrought body. She leaned forward, away from his arm, her chin on her cupped hand, her elbow on her knee. A twig was floating past. She tried to hit it with the core of the apple, and missed; and he, drawing his arm back, threw a pebble and hit the twig.
