‘We sing that at the women’s festivals — you know, when women are together.’
Seeing that Al·Ith was smiling and pleased, she said, obviously daring and delighted with herself — and even looking at Ben Ata and allowing herself a half-humorous shudder at the black rage on his face — ‘There is another version, but of course it isn’t fit for your ears, my lady.’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Ben Ata. ‘Don’t run away with that idea. If you knew what they get up to in that Zone of theirs …’
Dabeeb had winked at Al·Ith, then blushed at her audacity, and had begun the song.
‘Come husband! Smooth out my — cushion … ’
‘You are not to sing that,’ said Ben Ata. He was now sustained by a calm, moral loftiness.
‘Perhaps the lady Al·Ith would like to know the worst of us as well as the best, my lord,’ said Dabeeb, in a cosy comfortable voice, motherlike. As Ben Ata did not persist, but merely strode about, snorting, she began again:
‘Come husband, smooth out my — cushion. Quick, get a push-on …’
Dabeeb interrupted herself, and drummed rapidly on the table’s edge.
‘I’m hungry as — winter.
No sin to …’
She drummed again:
‘Warm me up Fill my cup …’
She drummed.
‘Now—go. Quick. Slow.’
She drummed. She winked at Al·Ith again and, animated with the song, winked at Ben Ata, too, who could not suppress a brief appreciative smile.
‘Hard as a board this Good old bed is …’
She drummed.
‘One two three four One two three four …’
She drummed, smiling, alive with challenge and invitation.
‘That’s how we do it. That’s how we do it.
That is our way. That is our way.’
A long sustained drumming, while all her white teeth showed.
‘A fine idea you’ll have of us, my lady.’
Ben Ata was standing with arms folded, feet planted, smiling. As a result of this song, the current was running strong between him and Dabeeb, whose looks at him were confident, inviting.
Al·Ith watched with interest. Rather as she would have done the mating approaches of a couple of horses.
‘There’s a song we have …’ she began casually, and Dabeeb allowed the tension between her and Ben Ata to slacken, and she became attentive to Al·Ith.
Who was thinking that this lie she was telling would not have been possible in Zone Three at all. Occasions for lies did not arise.
Now she was saying: ‘There’s a song we have …’ when they did not, nor anything like it.
‘How shall we reach where the light is. Come where delight is …’
‘Oh, no,’ Dabeeb broke in, ‘we have nothing like that. We don’t go in for that kind of thing.’ She was obviously afraid.
‘You don’t think it might be a good idea if you had a song festival here?’ said Al·Ith.
‘Oh, a very good idea. A very good idea indeed,’ said Dabeeb enthusiastically. And her eyes pleaded with Al·Ith.
‘Perhaps we’ll talk about it, Ben Ata,’ said Al·Ith, and at once went on, speaking to him. ‘Dabeeb was kind enough to agree to give me one of her dresses. I’d like to give her one of mine.’
‘But she has dozens of dresses. She had all those that weren’t good enough for you. What did you do with them, Dabeeb? Flog them?’
‘I sold some of them, my lord. They didn’t all fit me.’ And to Al·Ith, ‘I’d be so grateful. If we could — I mean, I could, have one of your dresses …’
‘Then come with me,’ said Al·Ith, on her way to her rooms.
‘My lady, if I could have the one you have on now? I’ve never seen anything like it …’
The two women went into Al·Ith’s rooms and Ben Ata bounded across and leaned to listen. He could hear the two women, talking about clothes, weaving, sewing. Al·Ith was taking off her dress and Dabeeb was exclaiming over it.
‘Oh, this is too fine for me, oh, it is so beautiful, oh, oh, what a beautiful …’
‘When you make dresses for ordinary wear, do you always make copies for special occasions?’
A brief pause.
‘Nearly always. Al·Ith.’
‘It must be nice wearing a plain dress and thinking of the one that you’ll wear on a special occasion.’
‘Yes, it is. But, of course, we don’t have all that many special occasions. We are poor people here.’
Oh, we are, are we? Ben Ata was thinking. And he returned rapidly to sit down at the table, where Dabeeb had been. He was tapping out rhythms on the table. He had not been fooled. He did not know what was going on, though he knew something was. He would get it all out of Dabeeb. If he had not got it out of Al·Ith by then.
The two women returned to find him sitting and smiling, the picture of good nature.
He was stung into admiration by both of them. Dabeeb’s swarthy and energetic beauty was well accommodated by the tawny silky dress Al·Ith had just taken off. Al·Ith had on her bright yellow dress that seemed to take in all the light there was in the great softly lit room — and to give it out again. Her loose black hair shone, her eyes shone, she was full of mischief and gaiety. Ben Ata was thinking, frankly, to himself, of the pleasures there would be in having them both at once — a possibility that had not entered his head until recent instructions with Elys. He remembered Al·Ith’s scorn of the word have. He sat head slightly lowered, looking up from under his brows at the two — and his mind was full of a painful struggle suddenly, as if it were trying to enlarge beyond its boundaries. He was having a flash of understanding —into the way Al·Ith scorned him for using the language he did. But it did not last. A gloomy suspicion came back, while he watched Al·Ith go with Dabeeb to the arch, and Dabeeb wrap herself tightly in the old dark cloak, and then with a smile at him and something intimate and quick with Al·Ith, run off to be enclosed in the pelting grey of the rain.
Al·Ith watched her go, and smiled. And turned to him, and smiled. In her sunny yellow, she was lovelier than he believed — at that moment—he deserved. He could see that she was a quick, volatile, flamelike thing, and understood how he subdued and dimmed her. But jealousy was undoing him.
She was inviting him. Everything about her, as she stood smiling, enticed him. He got up clumsily and heavily and rushed at her. She evaded him, not out of coquetry, but from real dismay. ‘No, no, Ben Ata, don’t spoil it …’ And she was trying to meet him lightly, and gaily, as they had not long ago, during hours which now to Ben Ata seemed so far above anything he had thought and been since that he would not believe in them, any more than he was able easily to lift his gaze to the vast mountainous region that filled all the western skies. He grabbed her, and she withheld him. ‘Wait, wait, Ben Ata. Don’t you want to be as we were then?’ Oh, yes, he did, he did very much, desperately, he was all inflamed with wanting just that and nothing else — but he could not help it, or himself, or her — he had to be, just then, all grab and grind, and he extinguished all the possibilities of sweetness and the playfulness, and the slow mounting of the exchanges. He had her. And then, all the light gone out of her, she had him. It was not a new experience for him, since Elys, but all the time he was remembering that other time and he made this one obstinate and heavy because, simply, that other time had gone and was not here. This time Al·Ith did not weep, or allow herself to be pulverized into submission. She gave as good as she got, words which she chose, carefully, out of many, and handed to him, with a smiling air of indifference, scorn even.
