Дорис Лессинг – The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5 (страница 22)
Ben Ata waited till she had crossed into his Zone, and handed her a shield — he was right in thinking that she was likely again to have forgotten hers. Then he put out his hand to grasp her bridle — but she did not have one — and put his horse forward so that he was side by side with her, she facing into Zone Four, he into Zone Three. His eyes searched her face as if for a hidden crime.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked, irritated.
‘The matter is that I’ve understood something.’
‘And what is that?’ She rode forward, sighing, meaning him to hear it, and he came after her, and rode so close her foot had to be curled in on poor Yori’s side to avoid being crushed.
‘You don’t love me,’ he announced.
Al·Ith did not respond at all.
The words had simply gone past her. She had seen that Ben Ata was in a fine old state about something, and that there was no point at all in expecting any comfort or sustaining from him. She was engaged in strengthening her inner self.
He rode close, casting dramatic looks into her face, and trying to lean forward so that he could see into her eyes.
It was early morning. They were riding down the escarpment, looking into fields where as usual mists were rising, admittedly very pretty in the weak sunlight.
‘You do not love me. Not really,’ he was shouting.
This time Al·Ith heard the word love. She was making a note that the two Zones used it differently.
What had happened to Ben Ata was this.
When she had left him on the frontier, he had been shaken by emotions he had not known existed. If Elys had indicated to him that in the physical realm there were facts that perhaps he might have missed, he now saw that there was a world of emotions that had been kept from him until now. He visited the madam of the whorehouse with this problem who, after a brisk diagnostic exchange, said that it wasn’t Elys he needed — she in fact had gone back to her own town, much congratulated and very pleased with herself — but a serious affair.
He had of course been aware that affairs were what some people had, but not, surely, soldiers!
Seeing Dabeeb brushing down her husband’s uniform, where it hung on a line behind the married officers’ quarters, he speculated on her possibilities. At once appropriate emotions invaded him in swarms, quite amazing him, for he could not imagine where he had got them from.
Dabeeb was disconcerted, of course, and enjoined caution, common sense, and then secrecy. It goes without saying that she was frightened of her husband. Affairs she had had, but not for the purpose of stimulating Jarnti. She was even more afraid of Ben Ata. She had no intention of yielding him her person, but kept him off with a variety of kisses and touches of the hand, all nicely adjusted to holding the situation while she could think what best to do.
Jarnti found his king in a compromising situation with his wife.
Violent scenes. Jealousy. Reproaches. The men fought, decided that the friendship of men outweighed the love of women, clasped hands, drank together for the whole of a night, fell together into a canal at dawn … all according to the book.
Ben Ata was now violently in love with Al·Ith.
Riding together through the golden mists, he ground his teeth and yearned towards her, while she murmured, ‘Is there a dictionary in the pavilion?’
‘What?’
‘It is the word love. We use it differently.’
‘Cold. Cold and heartless.’
‘Cold, I certainly am. I am frozen through.’
Compunction touched him but was inappropriate to the moment.
‘Very well then,
‘I don’t think we do. What it means is being with someone. Taking the responsibility for everything that happens between you. Between the two people in question and of course all the other people involved or who might be involved.’
It occurred to him that during these tumultuous six days he had forgotten what Al·Ith was like.
His elation drained away. He rode apart from her, and with a good distance between them the two horses cantered together up the hill to the gardened pavilions where the drum had been beating since the evening before.
As they let the horses go to find their own way to attendants, they were in a welter of wet, and ran through it to the pavilion, where she fled shaking water everywhere to her rooms. The cupboards were empty again of the dresses from the town, and she dried herself and looked through those she had brought for one that would be right for this dejected mood she found in herself. The bright gold of yesterday was like a bird’s plumage in a wrong season. A brown was too lowering, but she raised that note a little with a tawny-orange, which seemed something she could aspire to, if things went well. Having put her hair up into Zone Four’s matronly braids, she took herself to the central room as Ben Ata came in from the other side. There was not a suggestion of armour about him. His under-tunic looked as if it had been put on with a view as to how it would look to her, and his hair had been brushed close to his handsome head. All this, together with his needy and hostile looks, made her sink down as far away from him as she could get, which was at the table. He, having had no other idea in his head for the last twenty-four hours at least, strode over, and was about to haul her to the couch when it occurred to him that this was exactly what had set off all the turmoil of the last few days which, matched against the appraising reality of Al·Ith, seemed now, to put it mildly, inappropriate.
Swearing vigorously, he sat down opposite her, looking as ever on his side of the little table as if an incautious movement might collapse not only it, but the whole pavilion. He leaned back, sighed, and seemed to return partly to himself.
They were both considering, with fortitude, the uncertain term that they faced during which they would have to sustain their incompatibility.
‘I would like to know,’ said he, ‘all about your arrangements for this sort of thing — in your country.’
Now Al·Ith had already given thought to this problem. She could not imagine that he would accept the proprieties of Zone Three, not on any terms. She tackled the immediate point of his disquiet with: ‘There is absolutely no doubt at all — there
‘I said nothing about that,’ he protested, while his pleased face showed she had been right.
He waited.
Having discovered she needed food, she had thought her requirements, and what had arrived before her was a delicacy of her country made of honey and nuts. She began to crumble bits off it. Without ceremony, he put his finger out, scooped up a fragment, tasted it, rolled up his eyes, and was resigned.
‘It is very good for pregnant women,’ she said.
‘I hope that you are taking proper care of yourself! After all, this child will be the ruler of Zone Four.’
This thought, too, had not been overlooked by her. She contented herself with: ‘If the Providers so decide.’
His checked gesture of rebellion told her what his thoughts were — what his actions might be.
‘I take it,’ said he, positively radiant with sarcasm, ‘that I am only one of your lovers.’
At this she leaned back, held up her two hands, and began counting on her fingers, with a look of pretty self-satisfaction, hesitating on the third finger with a little moue, returning to the second, going back to the third with a nod, then on to the fourth, the fifth — changing hands, with deliberation, six, seven, eight — allowing her counting forefinger to dwell lovingly with a reminiscent smile on the ninth; heard his indrawn and outraged breath, wondered if she dared to count back again, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and did so, rather perfunctorily, fourteen, fifteen, and ended on nineteen with a competent little nod, like a steward who hasn’t forgotten anything.
She looked at him, inviting him to laugh— at her, himself, but he was quite yellow with disastrous thoughts.
‘You know,’ she began, but he finished for her, savagely, ‘“Things are not the same with you as they are with us!” I give thanks for it. Decadent, spoiled, immoral …’
‘It is true I can’t imagine you making much of our ways.’
‘Very well, how many lovers have you had?’
She winced at the word and he noted it. Not without interest, a dispassionate interest. This encouraged her to try and explain, openly — though she had previously decided against any such attempt — with a real intention to persuade him out of his barbarity of perception.
‘First of all, that word means nothing to me. It would mean nothing at all, to any woman in our Zone. Even the worst of us, and of course we have our failures as you do …’ She noted him noting that word as being different in emphasis from any Zone Four might use. ‘Even the worst of us would be incapable of using a word that described a man as some kind of a toy.’
This earned a glance of appreciation. Finding she liked him enough, she continued, and explained the sexual arrangements of Zone Three to him. As she went on, his pose, his fists, tightened until she was almost brought to a stop; then he became absorbed, and listened carefully, missing — she could see — nothing.