The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5

Holding her hands, he talked for a while about the sadness of the animals, the poor crops, the falling-off of the weather, the lessening in conception among animals and people.

‘Thank you. And now I shall put on this dress. Tell me to whom I shall return it.’

‘It is my sister’s. She sends it with her friendship.’

‘I shall send one to her in gratitude when I get back to my home.’

He saluted her with a smile, and a gentle kiss on her cheek, and went off. She took off the white wrapper, standing naked, for comfort, among the sunny plants, and then put on the sister’s robe, which was a dark red, shaped as she liked best, close-fitting in the bodice and sleeves, loose in the skirt.

She got back on Yori and rode on towards the northern parts of her kingdom.

Everywhere she stopped her horse, and went to homestead or farm or herdsman’s shelter, to talk and make enquiries, she heard the same news. Either things were worsening fast everywhere, or they were worse here, in the north, where already the chills of an early autumn thickened the air.

She spent only the time she needed to everywhere. She was welcomed with a kindness that had not lessened, though there was not one woman or man or even child who did not speak in the understanding that she had been at fault, and that this new marriage, or mingling, with Zone Four, was to do with this fault or falling-off.

And as she rode through the wilder country of the nothern regions, hilly, many-watered, often precipitous, she remembered — only remembered — the easy, slow-pacing times of the past, for now Ben Ata, Ben Ata, Ben Ata rang in her blood, she could not forget him, and yet every reminder of him was painful and brought a bitter load with it: she knew, she knew better every day and every hour, that she was on the verge of a descent into possibilities of herself she had not believed open to her. And there was nothing she could do to avert it.

Leaving the north, she swung around, with the central massif always at her left, and entered the west. Here it was late summer again, and the sun warm and still. She rode among scenes of plenty and fullness, yet the information was the same, and woman, man, and child greeted her: Al·Ith, Al·Ith, what is wrong? Where have we gone wrong, where have you gone wrong?

The weight of discomfort on her was guilt. Although she did not know it, for she had not known of the possibility of such a state. Recognizing, among the many calamitous and heavy emotions that moved in her, taking so many different shades and weights and colours, this one that returned, and returned, seeming at last to become the ground or inner substance of all the others, she learned its taste and texture. Guilt, she named it. I, Al·Ith, am at fault. Yet whenever this thought came, she started to back away from it in dislike and mistrust. How could she, Al·Ith, be at fault, how could she, only she, be in the wrong … she might be in bondage to Zone Four, but she had not lost the knowledge, which was the base of all knowledges, that everything was entwined and mixed and mingled, all was one, that there was no such thing as an individual in the wrong, nor could there be. If there was a wrong, then this must be the property of everyone, and everybody in every one of the Zones — and doubtless beyond them, too. This thought struck Al·Ith sharply, like a reminder. She had not thought, not for very long, about what went on beyond the Zones … for that matter, she thought very little now about Zones One and Two — and Two lay just there, to the north-west, beyond a horizon that seemed to fold and unfold in blue or purple … She had not looked there for … for … she could not remember. She was on a slight eminence, in the centre of the western regions. She got off the noble Yori, and with her arm flung across his neck for comfort, allowed herself to gaze northwest, into Zone Two. What lay there? She had no idea! She had not thought! She had not wondered! Or had she, a long time ago? She could not remember ever standing as she did now, gazing there, wondering, allowing her eyes to be drawn into those long, blue, deceiving distances … her eyes seemed to be drawn and follow, and become dissolved in blue, blue, blue … a mingling, changing, rippling blue … Al·Ith came to herself after a lapse into the deepest regions of herself, with a knowledge born that she knew would hatch out. Not yet, but soon… . ‘It’s there,’ she was whispering to herself. ‘There … if I could only grasp it … ’ She got back on her horse and rode on always in her wide curve, bending to the left hand, and passed out of the western regions into the south. Her favourite, always her favourite, yes, she had made excuses to come here more often than the other regions … she had been here quite recently, with all her children, and her court and, it seemed, half the population of the plateau. And what a time they had had — festivities, singing — it seemed looking back that they had sung and danced and feasted for all the summer months. And never standing for long pauses in her busy life to rest her eyes in the blue reaches of the Zone which was as much higher than Zone Three as this one was to Zone Four … This idea shook her, shook her as strongly as a conception did—should, if it were a properly designed and orchestrated conception — here was some very strong and urgent need, that she should be attending to, reaching out towards …

And yet as she rode among the farms and ranches of the south, greeted by everyone with such kindness and recognition for the good times they had all enjoyed, it was there again, and more than ever — ‘You are at fault. Al·Ith, at fault …’

And she rode on, saying to herself, I am not, I am not, how can I be, if I am queen here, it is because you have chosen me, and you have chosen me because I am you, and you recognize it — I am the best part of you, my people, and I call you mine, as you call me ours, our Al·Ith, and therefore I cannot be at fault any more than you can — the fault is somewhere else, somewhere deeper, somewhere higher? And she kept riding up onto hills covered with the rich vineyards of the south so that she could stand and gaze towards the northwest, into the azure ranges of that other land — or she did until she rounded the central massif and could no longer gaze there, nor could she expect to until she climbed up into the plateau where she intended to ride fast straight across it, only briefly stopping in the capital to greet her children and us all, so as to stand on the very edge there, overlooking the west and the northwest to gaze into the blue hazes, until what she had to remember — and she knew that this was it — came into her mind.

All through the southern Zones she rode up and down and back and forth. Several times she encountered the men who, if things were right, she would have approached to irradiate her with their various and many qualities for the sake of the child which she might have conceived — but had she? And here again was a source of utter self-reproach and self-lack — for it was now nearly a month since she had been with Ben Ata, and she had no idea if she was pregnant or not. For of course one knew it, understood such a fact, through the responses and heightened intuitions of one’s entire being, not because of any purely physical thing. Guilty, oh, guilty … yet she was not, such a thought was in itself a reason for guilt — it was so foolish and self-fixated and self-bounded. And so rode Al·Ith, all seethe and conflict. Her mind was calm, clear, and in balance, while below rioted and writhed and moaned and gibbered emotions she judged as ludicrous.

And as for the rest of her, the higher regions in which she normally dwelt, and on which she relied — those distances in her which she knew to be her own real being — well, they seemed far enough these days. She was a fallen creature, poor Al·Ith, and she knew it.

Meanwhile, Ben Ata, Ben Ata rang in her blood and in the pounding of her horse’s hooves.

When she again reached the road that ran from the borders of Zone Four straight across the plain to the central plateau and its mountains, she turned her horse to her left hand, so as to ride on and up home. But the unmistakable voice spoke suddenly and clearly into her mind: ‘Turn round and go back to Ben Ata … ’ and, as she hesitated, ‘Go now. Al·Ith.’

And she turned her horse and went east. On emerging from Zone Four, in her dance of relief and triumph, she had flung down her shield and been pleased to forget it. She could not ride into Zone Four now without protection. Not knowing what to do, she did nothing: they would know of her predicament and provide.

As she rode she turned around continually to look back at the vast mass of the core of her land with its brilliances, its lights, its shadows … and now there was a thought that had not been there before … she was thinking at the same time of the blue distances beyond. So that this beautiful realm of hers was held in her mind extended, or lengthened: it had been finite, bounded, known utterly and in every detail, self-enclosed … but now it lapped and rippled out and upwards beyond there into hinterlands that were like unknown possibilities in her own mind.

As often as she turned to gaze back, she resolutely made herself look forward and confront what waited for her. Behind, all heights, distances, perspectives: before, Zone Four.

And Ben Ata. She found the thought in her mind that this great lump of a man so newly introduced in her life must balance in some way those far blue heights of Zone Two — but she did not smile. She did not seem now a creature who could laugh. What she did observe in herself, though, was a most unfamiliar impulse towards silliness. Never before in her whole life had she met any being, woman, man, or child, without an opening of her self to them, for the flow of intimacy to start at once — and now arts and tricks she had known nothing of were working in her without her volition, or so she believed. She would meet Ben Ata so, and so, and so — and she was imagining little glances, smiles, evasions, offers of herself. And she was revolted.

At the frontier she saw, as she had expected, a figure on a horse, and it was not Ben Ata, nor was it Jarnti. On a fine chestnut mare was a strong dark-haired powerful woman, with her hair done up in braids like a coronet round her head. Her eyes were straight and honest. But they were wary, and her whole being expressed a need for acceptance that was being kept well in check. Before her, on the heavy saddle that was Zone Four’s indispensable horse furniture, were set two glittering metal oblongs: she had brought a shield for Al·Ith.

‘I am Dabeeb, Jarnti’s wife,’ she said. ‘Ben Ata sent me.’

The two women sat on their horses facing each other, in open and friendly examination.

Dabeeb saw a beautiful slender woman, her hair flowing down her back, with eyes so warm and kind she could have wept.

Al·Ith saw this handsome female who in her own Zone would have been put, at first sight, in positions of the most responsible and taxing kind — and yet here she had on her every mark of the slave.

Her eyes never left Al·Ith’s face, for she was watching for signs of rebuke, or dismissal. Even punishment … yet she was, as it were, tripping over herself in eagerness and liking.

‘Are you wondering why I am here, my lady?’

‘No … oh, please don’t! My name is Al·Ith …’ and this reminder of the ways of this Zone made her whole self sink and shrink.

‘It is hard for us,’ remarked Dabeeb. But she spoke in a small stubborn self-respecting way that made Al·Ith take note of it.

‘I have not heard the name Dabeeb before.’

‘It means something that has been made soft by beating.’

Al·Ith laughed.

‘Yes, that is it.’

‘And who chose that name for you?’

‘It was my mother.’

‘Ah — I understand.’

‘Yes, she liked her little joke, my mother did.’

‘You miss her!’ exclaimed Al·Ith, seeing the tears in Dabeeb’s eyes.

‘Yes. I do. She understood things the way they are, that’s what she was like.’

‘And she made you very strong—the one-who-has-been-made-soft by beating.’

‘Yes. As she was. Always give way and never give in. That’s what she said.’

‘How is it you are here alone? Isn’t it unusual for a woman to travel alone?’

‘It is impossible,’ said Dabeeb. ‘It never happens. But I think Ben Ata wanted to please you … and there is something else. Jarnti had already got ready to come and fetch you … ‘

‘That was kind of him.’

A shrewd flash of a smile. ‘Ben Ata was jealous — ’ with the swiftest of glances to see how this was being taken. And she sat, head slightly lowered, biting her lip.

‘Jealous?’ said Al·Ith. She did not know the word, but then remembered she had read it in old chronicles. Trying to work out what it could mean in this context, she saw that Dabeeb had gone red, and was looking insulted: Dabeeb believed that Al·Ith meant Jarnti was not on her level.

‘I don’t think I have ever been jealous. We do not expect to feel that emotion.’

‘Then you are very different from us, my lady.’

The two women rode together down the pass. They were assessing each other with every sense, visible and invisible, they had.

What Dabeeb felt made her exclaim, after a short distance, ‘Oh, I wish I were like you, if only I could be like you! You are free! Will you let me come with you when you go home again?’

‘If it is permitted.’ And they both sighed, feeling the weight of the Order.

And Al·Ith was thinking that this woman had in her a core of strength, something obdurate, enduring: sufferings and pains that she, Al·Ith, had never imagined, had made her thus. And so she was curious, and eager to learn more. But she did not know how to ask questions, or what to ask.

‘If you, a woman, can ride to meet me, and with Ben Ata’s permission, does that mean that women now will be more at liberty?’

‘Ben Ata permitted it. My husband did not.’ And she gave a short shrewd laugh that Al·Ith already knew was characteristic.

‘So what will he do about it?’

‘Well. I am sure he will find a way to make himself felt.’ And she waited for Al·Ith to join her in a certain kind of laugh.

‘I don’t think I know what you mean.’ But as she saw the humorous patience on Dabeeb’s face, she understood.

‘Have you ever thought of rebelling?’

Dabeeb lowered her voice and said, ‘But it is the Order … is it not?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t?’

‘I find there is a great deal I don’t know that I thought I did. For instance, can you tell when a woman is pregnant?’

‘Yes, of course, can’t you?’

‘Always until now. But not now. Not here.’

Dabeeb instantly understood this, for she nodded, and said, ‘I see. Well, you are not pregnant, I can assure you.’

‘Well, that is something.’

‘You plan not to get pregnant?’ And again her voice was lowered and she gave furtive glances all about her, though they were now at the foot of the escarpment and on the point of starting their ride across the watery fields and there was not a soul in sight.

‘I think we use the word plan differently.’

‘Will you teach me?’ came the whisper just audible over the horses’ thud-thudding on the dirt road.

‘I’ll teach you what I can. What is permitted.’

‘Ah, yes … I know.’ And the sigh she let out then held in it everything Al·Ith needed to know about women in this Zone.

Resignation. Acceptance. Humour. And always a pull and a tug from within these armours of watchfulness, patience, humour, of a terrible need.

Al·Ith pulled up Yori. Dabeeb did the same. Al·Ith put out her hand. After a struggle with her cautions and resistances, Dabeeb did the same. Al·Ith whispered across the space between them: ‘I will tell you everything I can. Help you as I can. I’ll be your friend. As far as I can. I promise you.’ For she had seen that words were necessary. This kind of speech. She had never used them in her own land, had never imagined the need to use them. But now she saw tears fill the handsome black eyes of Dabeeb, and trickle down her ruddy cheeks. The words had been right, and necessary.

‘Thank you. Al·Ith,’ she whispered, her voice broken.

When they reached the place in the road where they could easily see the pavilions on the eminence, Al·Ith said, ‘I would like you to lend me one of your dresses. Ben Ata thinks I am unsuitably dressed.’

Dabeeb looked longingly at the dark red, embroidered dress of Al·Ith and said, ‘That is more beautiful than anything I have ever seen with us. But they would never understand that in a thousand years!’ She spoke with the affectionate indulgence Al·Ith could not imagine offering to anyone other than a small child. And there was, as well, a dreadful contempt in it.

‘You are elegant. Al·Ith, I wish I could know how to be as elegant …’

And she looked in dismissal at her own dress, which was a patterned material, pretty enough, but without the rightness and flair that stamped the garments of Zone Three.

‘You needn’t worry about what you are to wear. Everyone is talking about the clothes Ben Ata has ordered up for you from the town. There are cupboards full of them … though I don’t know what you will make of them, I am sure.’

She rode with Al·Ith up the rise of the hill, to where the gardens and fountains began, then leaned forward and suddenly and emotionally embraced Al·Ith. ‘I will be thinking of you, my lady. We all will, all the women, we are with you, and don’t forget it!’ And she rode off down the hill, and her tears scattered back on the wind like rain.

Al·Ith rode gently across the end of the gardens, dismounted, told Yori to find his way to the corrals, and walked back through the gardens, looking at the pavilion and waiting for the moment Ben Ata would show himself. She noted in herself the most remarkable constellation of unfamiliar emotions, which, regarded as a whole, amounted to a sort of antagonism that was quite unfamiliar. There was a sort of mocking, amused, intention there: ‘I’m going to show you!’ and, ‘You think you are going to get the better of me!’

It went not with dislike of Ben Ata, but a quite pleasant challenge and combativeness.

She even looked forward to seeing him, so that this new exchange could begin. There were no tears on this horizon, certainly not!

She was full of confidence, and calm, all her powers reined in and held.

There was also in her an inner core of unassailability which she recognized because she had been sensing and assessing just this quality in Dabeeb, all across the plain.

It was in this state of mind that she waited for the encounter with Ben Ata.

Who was lounging against the central pillar, arms folded, in a pose that mirrored her own mood. He smiled, hard and mocking.

‘Did you like your escort?’ he enquired, reminding her he was supposed to be jealous.

‘Very much. Not as much of course as I would have enjoyed the handsome Jarnti!’

With which he came forward fast, eyes momentarily aglitter, and she saw that he could easily have struck her. But instead he smiled in a way which told her she would pay for it later, and held out his two hands. She took them and swung on them lightly, from side to side, smiling and mocking.

‘That is a pretty dress,’ said he, for he had determined to be complimentary about it.

‘You like red then?’

‘I think I like you,’ said he, in spite of himself grabbing at her — for he did not, he liked her even less than before, for while his senses in fact were informing him that this girl in a red, provokingly fitted dress could easily be to his taste, he had in fact forgotten the independence of her, which informed every smile, look, gesture.

She evaded him and slid away into the room, with a mocking backward look over her shoulder which quite astounded her — she did not know she had it in her! And he, to tease, did not follow, but stood his ground, a pillar of a man, in his short green belted tunic, and bare head, arms folded. She, then, smiling ‘enigmatically’ — though feeling this smile on her lips she was amazed at it — put two hands around the slender central pillar and swung there lightly, in a way that was bound to set him all aflame. And it did, but he was not going to budge.

He stood grinning, while she swung and smiled …

When Al·Ith had left him that evening all those weeks ago, he had returned, reluctant, at midnight, having refreshed himself among his soldiers, and found her gone. Furious, he understood there must have been a summons she had obeyed, and then he felt in all of himself a lack and a need and a disability that he in no way knew how to diagnose or to feed. It was not Al·Ith he was missing, he was sure of that.

He was nothing if not a painstaking man.

He had understood that in certain practices he was quite lacking in understanding and indeed in any sort of knowledge.

He despised men who went into the stews of the town, as self-indulgent. But that is where he went now. Having made methodical enquiries of Jarnti and others of his officers, he went to a certain establishment, and demanded an interview with its madam. She understood exactly what he wanted and had done so from the moment the rumours entered her house that he was about to visit them. But she sat smiling through his rather clumsy, but determined explanations.

She sent him into a room that was already furnished with a girl who had been given all kinds of detailed instructions. For the capacities and lacks of Ben Ata had of course been discussed up and down the land from woman to woman. After all, so many campaigns, so many army exercises, so many sacks and rapes and loots had given plenty of opportunity for ravished or disappointed girls to spread their news.

Ben Ata found himself bedded with an expert young woman, who had quite surprised him. It could not be said that he found such prolonged dedication to pleasure entirely to his tastes, for he persisted in regarding all this as hardly the occupation for a real man.

But the fact was that Ben Ata had been pleasured, the only word for it, during the month that Al·Ith had been riding around her realm making investigations. He had been taught, as in a school, a large variety of lessons, to do with the anatomy, the capacities, the potentialities of the body, male and female. He was not a particularly apt pupil. But on the other hand he was certainly not a sluggard, for once he had decided on a certain course of duty, nothing much was likely to deflect him.

This courtesan, for she was no common whore, having been chosen among very many by the most expert madam of the whorehouse, and even brought here from another town because of her reputation, had taught him everything she could.

What Elys had achieved in a month of pretty hard work was to adjust Ben Ata’s mind to the notion that pleasure could be multi-functional. This was at least a basis.

He had believed that he now knew everything there was to know.

But the moment Al·Ith had sauntered so charmingly and mockingly into the pavilion, he had remembered something entirely blotted from his mind during that enervating month. The light, glancing, inflaming kisses that he had not known how to answer, had gone from his mind. The invitation, the answer and question, the mutual response and counter-response — none of this had been within the provision of the courtesan Elys, since she had never in her life enjoyed an equal relation with anyone, man or woman.

As Al·Ith swung there, lightly, and delightfully, on her pillar, smiling, and waiting, he understood that he was now to start again. There was no help for it. He could not refuse, for his month as apprentice, and a willing one, had already said yes to what was to come.

As he challenged and antagonized, an equal — at the same time his look at Al·Ith told her all this. And so she left her pillar, and came to him, and began to teach him how to be equal and ready in love.

It was quite shocking for him, because it laid him open to pleasures he had certainly not imagined with Elys. There was no possible comparison between the heavy sensualities of that, and the changes and answerings of these rhythms. He was laid open not only to physical responses he had not imagined, but worse, to emotions he had no desire at all to feel. He was engulfed in tenderness, in passion, in the wildest intensities that he did not know whether to call pain or delight … and this on and on, while she, completely at ease, at home in her country, took him further and further every moment, a determined, but disquieted companion.