“Philippis was the second of the nine to fight hand to hand with the unbeatable Heracles.”
“Prothoe was the third.”
“It’s a long time now since Valasca was queen. She cut off the thumbs and pulled out the right eye of all her prisoners, to make them useless in battle—”
Philo interrupted, “Filthy tricksters. Tell it like it is. They’re filthy tricksters!”
They responded to his cry with silence, shaking their heads in disagreement and sighing.
“Oh, Philo,” Acusilaus said wearily. He was the only one to speak.
Then another broke the silence with a change of subject. “They hunt by night, using nets and other contraptions. Sometimes in groups, sometimes alone. They take dogs with them.”
“The dogs here are vicious.”
“They sure scare me.”
“They train them, the way they do their horses.”
“They’ve got the finest horses. Only horses from Nore-rathea, the best of the best. Branded with a triangle on the side of the head.”
“It’s the breed that went down to drink at Lake Neyef.”
“And get one thing clear, Cleopatra: they don’t hate men.”
“Well, not exactly,” said the rascally old man perched on my litter.
“If that’s detesting, the prettiest of them can come and detest me!”
“It’d be hard to pick the prettiest. They are all stunning. And they don’t show their age, Cleopatra. The years don’t seem to leave a mark on them.”
The poets gabbled on, interrupting each other. I caught a phrase here and there, but I was forming my own notions of these remarkable women.
I asked them, “And everyone who comes to the Isle of Evening stays here?”
“Evening? What are you talking about?”
“This isn’t the Isle of Evening, Cleopatra. We are west of Alexandria, on the mainland, not far from from the border with Cyrenaica.”
“We don’t all stay here. Almost: all, but not all. Tigelius. .”
“The Sardian.”
“He was a rum one!”
“If he got it into his head, he couldn’t stop humming the song of Bacchus, from the highest chord to the lowest, from the beginning of a meal right to the end. He’d do this in our palaces, but when the Amazons asked him to sing, he wouldn’t utter a peep!”
“Definitely a weird fellow! Sometimes he’d run around as if an enemy were chasing him, then at other times he’d walk so slow and solemn you’d think he was carrying the layettes of Juno.”
“He’d be awake all night right until daybreak and then he’d sleep through the day, like a dormouse.”
“There was no predicting his mood, any more than the wind.”
“We threw him out. With the permission of the Amazons. And not just with their permission. With their full agreement.”
“We did the right thing. There was no living with him.”
Suddenly the earth rumbled. It quaked. The unseen sinews of rock and fire that hold shut the jaws of earth so that they don’t open and devour us, started to creak. They threatened to open wide. We were suddenly surrounded by an impressive number of Amazons.
“Relax, Cleopatra. It is a fold in time, one more that Chronos is bringing you. Wait a moment.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the quaking stopped. The powerful army of Amazons around us melted away. Quietly, I stayed on my litter and the poets resumed their heated conversation.
A single Amazon appeared and interrupted our group, singing in koine, a language she pronounced with the same accent as her queen.
Now is the hour to retire
And give fond welcome to desire.
Here burns the Amazonian fire.
Earth, air, and water all aspire. .
I did not catch all her words. She was clapping her hands and each time she brought them together, a tongue of fire seemed to blaze between them.
The old men got up, taking away the trays of the food we had been nibbling. The Amazons would let the men write whatever they chose and reward them with palaces and treasures, but effectively they were the Amazons’ servants. The poets bade me a friendly goodbye.
“Will I see you all again?” I asked somewhat anxiously. With them, I felt on familiar ground. I couldn’t say the same for the Amazons.
“Perhaps,” said Philo.
“Count on it!” corrected Acusilaus. “Tomorrow. At least in a few days.” He took Philo by the arm and dragged him off, at the same time using him as a support. He rebuked him as they went, “You always have to look on the black side, Philo. Maybe your pessimism is the source of your first-rate stories, but it makes you hard to get along with. You see the negative in everything, always what’s wrong. Of course we’re going to see Cleopatra again! Were you joking? What kind of dark clouds fill your head? What were you thinking about?”
The orangey sun was still there, as if rooted to the spot, as if leaning on the horizon were the only position it knew.
With the poets had departed most of the musicians, along with the slaves that carried their instruments. The Amazons waited until the males were out of sight before they began their preparations. Only three interpreters remained behind and they were blind. I realized this when they approached my litter. Two had no eyes at all. The eyes of the third were covered with whitish scales. What were the Amazons planning to do that couldn’t be seen by men’s eyes? To tell you the truth, I was scared of these women. They removed my cloak and robe, they washed away the salt from my body with a water perfumed with petals, and, laying me down once again on the litter, covered my breasts, belly, and pubic hair with a reddish, oily paste, thick and transparent, that they called “Aphrodite’s cream.” On my hair, which they left loose, they spread another, earthier paste. They fixed again the curl on my forehead with the ointment of Aphrodite, rapidly bandaged my body and head, even my eyes, with long, broad strips of linen, raised up the litter on their shoulders, and set off walking, accompanied by musicians, who went off at a faster pace than we, their music disappearing into the distance. Everyone was singing this chant:
Prepare me to be raped by gods of lust,
Display my limbs to men no one can trust,
Who pass their aching nights with open eyes.
Let slaves sing out the beauty of my thighs.
Let boys beat drums and ring out chiming bells
And touch my woman’s body where it swells,
Desiring to consume me with their lips—
But let them know for gods alone my hips
And thighs are meant, for them alone.
So let men weep and make their fruitless moan!
They walked for a long stretch, carrying me on their shoulders, still singing. A good part of the way I had to lean back, because we were going uphill. Then they halted and stopped singing. The music was long gone. They uncovered my eyes and removed the bandages from the rest of my body. They lowered my feet to the ground on what appeared to be the final section of a steep, muddy road. Stars were blinking bright as if extremely close to my face, hurting my eyes with their brightness. The dusk that had been prolonged since the bull ran off with me had finally ended. The sun’s disc had been swallowed by the earth. Once again I closed my eyes, afraid that my stare might fix them immovably in place, but I had to open them again when the Amazons whispered to me to walk at their pace.
The air, full of cool dampness, was pleasant to my skin. It was night and I had no clothes on, but I wasn’t cold. The air smelled of greenery, as if thick vegetation were nearby. It wrapped me round with its strong smell. I was dressed in green air, my naked skin clad in airy greenness.