I looked at the stranger.
But he paid me no attention.
He must not tell that I had been near the wall. He must not let her know that I had, of my own will, kissed him, perhaps once or twice.
I looked at the two women with Aynur. They were Tima and Tana, her assistants. Those names are extremely common on this world, for women such as we. There must be thousands with such names. Both had doubtless, over time, in their sojourn in the collar, had many names. Even I, who had not been so long on this world, had had various names. We learn to answer quickly enough to whatever name is put on us. We do not have names in our own right, of course, given what we are, no more than, say, tarsk and sleen. Both Tima and Tana were large women. Either alone might have overpowered me easily. Tana looked at me and smiled. I looked down, frightened. At her right hip, over the belly cord, hung a pair of bracelets, small, sturdy, pretty bracelets. They were joined together with three links of steel.
“What have you to say for yourself?” demanded Aynur, angrily, of the stranger.
Her behavior, her attitude, her demeanor, her apparent indignation, her virulence, her rage, was I have suggested, puzzled me. I did not understand it, at all. Too, of course, it frightened me, terribly. What could it mean? What could be the explanation for these things? It was almost as though she might have been somehow, personally, insulated or betrayed.
“Well!” she demanded.
“Have you received permission to speak?” he inquired, quietly.
Tima, on Aynur’s right, gasped. Tana, on Aynur’s left, made a tiny noise, of fear.
His eyes regarded Tima and she flung herself to her knees in the grass, head down to the grass, palms of her hands on it, in obeisance, as I had been earlier. As his eyes fell then on Tana she, losing no time, assumed the same position. The two small, sturdy, pretty bracelets, hanging at her right hip, made a tiny noise, striking together, as she assumed the position. They then hung from the cord a little before her right hip. Both Tima and Tana were large women, but before such a man, and before others, even less than he, they were small.
His eyes then fell upon Aynur. He regarded her, evenly. For the briefest moment, as though in futility and rage, she met his eyes. Then, shaken, uttering a cry of misery, and rage, her eyes brimming with tears, she removed her eyes from his. Then she was before him, as the others, her head down to the grass, her palms upon it, too, in obeisance. The golden fillet, with its ruby, was at the grass. Beside her right hand, discarded, was her dreaded leather switch. I trusted that she had not dallied too long in her obedience. Men such as he tend not to be patient with such as we.
He looked down at me, and I looked away, clutching the silk about myself.
“May I speak?” begged Aynur.
“All three, position!” snapped he.
The three women, instantly, assumed the common position, kneeling, back on heels, back straight, knees wide, palms of hands down on the thighs.
“You may raise your heads,” he said.
They might now regard him. It had been permitted to them. It pleased me, of course, to see them thusly, as any of us, even they, might be before one such as he. But then I looked down. They had been knelt before a man in a common posture of submission. Given their position in the garden, and the considerable authority they held here, over me, and the others, I did not think it would be wise for me to permit myself to be detected remarking this in any obvious manner. Too, of course, I could be immediately put in the same posture.
“May I speak?” begged Aynur, in tears, in rage.
“No,” he said.
Tears of frustration ran down her cheeks.
He then looked down at me, and I looked down.
I did not fully understand that look. It was not simply a look at a girl he had used, a bemused glance at an instrument, now unimportant, which had served his purpose.
I was not special, I told myself. I was not different from thousands of others.
I made as though to draw my wet silk hastily over my body.
“You have not received permission to silk yourself,” he said.
Quickly I put down the silk. I was still kneeling.
“Tunic,” he said, handing it to me.
I stood obediently, and shook out the tunic, and kissed it, as one is trained to do. I then helped him into it.
“Belt and wallet,” he said.
These, too, I kissed, and, putting my arms about him, trying to touch him as little as possible, for the others were watching, affixed the belt, with wallet, in place.
But the nearness to him made me tremble, he a man, and one of this world.
He pointed to the grass, to one side, and I knelt there, one such as I at the feet of one such as he.
He kicked his sandals to one side, a few feet away. Then he regarded Aynur. She looked at him, almost in protest, disbelievingly. He then pointed to the sandals, and snapped his fingers.
Aynur dropped to all fours and crawled to the first sandal, picked it up in her teeth, and brought it to him, and dropped it at his feet. She then fetched the second sandal, in the same manner. She then looked up at him, but he merely indicated, with a gesture, that she should return to her place, which she did, kneeling between Tima and Tana.
Aynur, she who was first amongst us, Aynur, in her rich silk, and ornaments, Aynur, in her golden talmit, and the affixed ruby, had fetched sandals, and before such as Tima and Tana, not to mention before one such as my lowly self! One this world hierarchy exists, and status, and rank, and distance. Such things, always real, are not here concealed. Here they are in the open. The people of this world do not deign to conceal that each is not the same as every other, and not merely is this true of those such as I. Such articulations, of course, so healthy with respect to maintaining social stability, constitute an institutional counterpart to the richnesses of difference in an articulated ordered, holistic nature. On this world, for better or for worse, order seems most often preferred to chaos, and truth to fiction.