‘But I don’t believe it, Ben Ata!’
‘It is so. Those are the laws.’
‘If I had to live down here I don’t think I would be able to take my eyes away. Look, look … ’ and she flung her arms wide and exulted at the vast panoramas of light, of colour, that filled all the western skies. “Clouds!” she sang out. ‘Those are not clouds, that’s our country, it is what we are.’
‘We have times for looking up there. Definite times. Festivals. Once every ten years. Otherwise people caught spending too much time looking up there are punished.’
‘And how do you punish them?’
‘We put heavy weights on their heads so that they cannot look up.’
‘Ben Ata, that is wicked.’
‘I did not make the law. It has always been our law.’
‘Always, always, always … how do you know?’
‘I do not think that any one of us has ever questioned it. You are the first.’
She sank down beside him. Close. Again there was the small shrinking from her that he could not control. This exultation of hers, this rapture, was abhorrent to him. He could hardly bear to see her enhanced smiling face. Though on the other hand he did feel the beginnings of relief that she was not always so pale and serious. Her face, now illumined by the rosy light from those far peaks, was as pretty a pink as any girl’s he could remember, and her heavy hair, still pearled from the mists, was in wisps around her face.
But: ‘You must not stare like that. It is against our laws. While you are here, you must obey our laws.’
‘Yes, that is proper,’ she whispered, and turned her eyes away.
‘When you are in your own country, you can of course do as you like.’ He sounded to her like her brother, who had been steward of her household for many years before he had asked to be transferred to the post of Keeper of the Memories.
‘But in our country that is what we are, Ben Ata.’
Suddenly, and like light striking into her brain, she was dazzled. ‘Ben Ata, I’ve just had a … ’ but it had gone. She put her hands over her face and rocked back and forth, trying to remember what had just fled past her.
‘Are you ill?’
‘No, I am not. But I almost understood something.’
‘Well, let me know when you have.’
At this the soldier got to his feet, and — just for a moment — took a glance at the glories of the mountainous paradise in the skies. Muttering to himself, ‘Quite right, of course people shouldn’t waste their time on that —’ he resolutely turned his head and marched off towards the pavilions. Al·Ith came behind, slowly, along the narrow pool, passing the jets, one, two, three — she, too, took one last look at her own country, and as resolutely averted her eyes, and looked instead at how the seven jets blurred the gleaming surface of the pool which was trying to reflect the heavy grey skies.
Inside the pavilion, everything awaited them. The large, silent, airy, white-gleaming room, with its delicate embroideries, and its bright paint patterns. The deep couch, hardly rumpled from their encounter. Through the arches at the other side could be seen nothing but grey. It was raining, and the gardened hillside that sloped to the camps was blotted out.
Ben Ata stood in the middle of the room by the pillar, looking at her, in the most comically disconcerted way in the world. And she stood similarly looking at him.
They felt for each other at that moment friendship. Comradeship. If they were nothing else, these two, they were representatives and embodiments of their respective countries. Concern for their realms was what they were. This concern, in him, took the shape of obedience. Duty. In her these tight compulsions were lightened to responsiveness to events, situations, but they were of the same kind, nevertheless. Their people were what they were, their thoughts were. Their lives could be nothing else, or less … yet now both were aware, and deeply, so that they were shocked and stirred to their depths, that all this concern and this duty of theirs had not prevented them from going very wrong… . They were looking at each other, not shrinking from each other’s gaze at all, but both trying to enter in behind the sober, thoughtfulness of his grey eyes, the soft gleam of her black eyes, so that they could reach something deeper, and other.
‘What are we going to do, Ben Ata?’ she whispered.
This time it was he who extended his hand, just a little, and she went to him, and took it in both of hers. ‘We have to think,’ she said. ‘We must try and find out …’
Now he put his great arms lightly about her, almost as if afraid the size and weight of him might crush her, and as if he were attempting, or trying out, entirely new and not altogether welcome sensations and, avoiding the bruise beside her mouth, he gazed into that face of hers which seemed to him as if it were made of a substance or a light that he could never hope to, or even want to, encompass. He kissed her, as clumsily as a boy. He felt that her mouth was coming alive and responding in ways that could still only alarm him. Quick light kisses, the subtle tastes and touches of a smiling and easy companionship, the teasing and the response on response on response — all this was too much of an imposition, and after a few moments, he again carried her to the couch. He did not miss that, as he held her still so that he could enter her, she shrank from him and tightened as if everything in her and of her repudiated him. He felt this and contrasted it with the beginnings of the sensuous exchange which he had cut short. Her ways seemed too difficult for him, or at least unfamiliar, or out of his reach just then. And his were striking him as crude … he could only complete the entry and the possession by taking a furtive glance at the bruise he had inflicted, and this itself now shamed him so that as he spurted he groaned and then lay still. He was filled, amazingly, with grief.
She was quite still, and a look at her face showed her eyes open and desolate.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I know you think I am a boor.’
‘You have very bad habits in your country,’ she remarked at last, and it was cold. Though he believed there was at least the possibility of a revival of her friendliness.
He jumped up, pulling the cloak all around him, and covering her legs with the blue dress.
‘You know what I’m going to do,’ he positively hissed at her, ‘I’m going to order you up some dresses from the town.’
At this she began to laugh. Weakly, her head turned to one side, and her hand at her mouth, but she laughed. He smiled, in relief, though he knew this laugh of hers might just as well be weeping.
‘It’s time we both ate, anyway,’ he said. And he sounded even more like her brother the steward, so that now she laughed harder, and then turned over, put her head under her arms and called out to him, ‘Get out of here, get out, and leave me alone.’
He went, marching briskly, into the rooms set aside for him, on the right of this central pavilion.
There he bathed, and changed his garments. He put on a tunic used for ceremonies and special occasions, because there was nothing else in his cupboards that seemed suitable for this tryst, or wedding breakfast.
Then he went back into the central room. She was in her rooms. He sat at the little table in the window against the arches where grey rain was sweeping in front of a pouring wind, and almost at once put his chin in his hand and fell to thinking of their dilemmas as rulers. There she found him later, so deep in thought he did not hear her.
She had found in her cupboards a light white linen wrapper that had been left there by one of the maids who had swept and tidied the pavilion. She had left her dark blue garment behind and had come in to him dressed in what he recognized as a maid’s overall — so he saw when at last he did realize she was there.
He said nothing, however. He thought that the fresh white became her. He thought that she was quite pretty, he could suppose, if only she was able to make her face more ready to meet his needs. But she was serious again, and this matched his real mood.
Between their two chairs was a small square table, inlaid with coloured woods and carved. This, too, had been exactly specified by the Order.
Now he said, ‘What do you want to eat?’
As she seemed about to answer, he clapped his hands, and there appeared before her fruit, bread, a hot aromatic drink.
‘Very frugal,’ said he, and clapped his hands again. Before him appeared cold meats and the hard biscuit they used on their campaigns.
‘Very frugal,’ said she.
‘You aren’t impressed at my little trick?’ he enquired, brisk and as it were brotherly-sarcastic.
‘Very, but I suppose it is part of the furnishings of the Order.’
‘Yes, it is. Do you have anything like it?’
‘Never.’
‘Well, we just think of it and it arrives.’ And she could see from the boyish pleasure he was showing that he was about to cause something else to materialize.
‘No, don’t,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t abuse it.’
‘You are right. Naturally.’ And he began eating, in efficient and large mouthfuls.
