all for his gifts of joy. Worshippers had gathered from the cities of
Assyria at this his only shrine, offering their souls for a gift to him
who, in his time and wisdom, granted their desires. But Namu-Sarkkon,
like other gods, was a jealous god, and, because the hearts of mankind
are vain and destined to betrayal, he turned the bodies of his devotees
into rock and kept them pinioned in stone for a hundred years, or for
a thousand years, according to the nature of their desires. Then if the
consummation were worthy and just, the rock became a living fire, the
blood of eternity quickened the limbs, and the god released the body
full of youth and joy. But what god lives for ever? Not Namu-Sarkkon.
He grew old and forgetful; his oracle was defamed. Stronger gods
supplanted him and at last all power departed save only from one of his
eyes. That eye possessed the favour of eternity, but only so faintly
that the worshipper when released from his trap of stone lived at the
longest but a day, some said even but an hour. None could then be found
to exchange the endurances of the world for so brief a happiness. His
worship ceased, Namu-Sarkkon was dead, and the remote shrine being lost
to man’s heart was lost to man’s eyes. Even the tradition of its time
and place had become a mere fantasy, but the whirlwinds of uncounted
years sowing their sands about the shrine had left it blameless and
unperishable, if impotent.
Recollecting this, the soldier gazed long at the dead idol. Its smooth
huge bulk, carved wonderfully, was still without blemish and utterly
cleansed of the sand. The strange squat body with the benign face
stood on stout legs, one advanced as if about to stride forward to the
worshipper, and one arm outstretched offered the sacred symbol. Then in
a moment the Assyrian’s heart leaped within him; he had been staring at
the mild eyes of the god--surely there was a movement in one of the
eyes! He stood erect, trembling, then flung himself prostrate before
Namu-Sarkkon, the living god! He lay long, waiting for his doom to
eclipse him, the flaming swords of the sun scathing his weary limbs,
the sweat from his temples dripping in tiny pools beside his eyes. At
last he moved, he knelt up, and shielding his stricken eyes with one
arm he gazed at the god, and saw now quite clearly a black butterfly
resting on the lid of one of Sarkkon’s eyes, inflecting its wings. He
gave a grunt of comprehension and relief. He got up and went among the
other figures. Close at hand they seemed fashioned of soft material,
like camphor or wax, that was slowly dissolving, leaving them little
more than stooks of clay, rough clod-like shapes of people, all but
one figure which seemed fixed in coloured marble, a woman of beauty so
wondrous to behold that the Assyrian bent his head in praise before
her, though but an image of stone. When he looked again at it the
black butterfly from the eyelid of the god fluttered between them and
settled upon the girl’s delicately carved lips for a moment, and then
away. Amazedly watching it travel back to the idol he heard a movement
and a sigh behind him. He leaped away, with his muscles distended, his
fingers outstretched, and fear bursting in his eyes. The beautiful
figure had moved a step towards him, holding out a caressing hand,
calling him by his name, his name!
“Talakku! Talakku!”
She stood thus almost as if again turned to stone, until his fear left
him and he saw only her beauty, and knew only her living loveliness
in a tunic of the sacred purple fringed with tinkling discs, that
was clipped to her waist with a zone of gold and veiled, even in the
stone, her secret hips and knees. The slender feet were guarded with
pantoffles of crimson hide. Green agates in strings of silver hung
beside her brows, depending from a fillet of gems that crowned and
confined the black locks tightly curled. Buds of amber and coral were
bound to her dusky wrists with threads of copper, and between the
delicacy of her brown breasts an amulet of beryl, like a blue and
gentle star, hung from a necklace made of balls of opal linked with
amethysts.
“Wonder of god! who are you?” whispered the warrior; but while he was
speaking she ran past him sweetly as an antelope to the dark god. He
heard the clicking of her beads and gems as she bent in reverence
kissing the huge stone feet of Sarkkon. He did not dare to approach her
although her presence filled him with rapture; he watched her obeisant
at the shrine and saw that one of her crimson shoes had slipped from
the clinging heel. What was she--girl or goddess, phantom or spirit of
the stone, or just some lunatic of the desert? But whatever she was it
was marvellous, and the marvel of it shocked him; time seemed to seethe
in every channel of his blood. He heard her again call out his name as
if from very far away.
“Talakku!”
He hastened to lift her from the pavement, and conquering his tremors
he grasped and lifted her roughly, as a victor might hale a captive.
“Pretty antelope, who are you?”
She turned her eyes slowly upon his--this was no captive, no
phantom--his intrepid arms fell back weakly to his sides.
“You will not know me, O brave Assyrian captain,” said the girl
gravely. “I was a weaver in the city of Eridu....”
“Eridu!” It was an ancient city heard of only in the old poems of his
country, as fabulous as snow in Canaan.
“Ai ... it is long since riven into dust. I was a slave in Eridu, not
... not a slave in spirit....”
“Beauty so rare is nobility enough,” he said shyly.
“I worshipped god Namu-Sarkkon--behold his shrine. Who loves
Namu-Sarkkon becomes what he wishes to become, gains what he wishes to
gain.”
“I have heard of these things,” exclaimed the Assyrian. “What did you
gain, what did you wish to become?”
“I worshipped here desiring in my heart to be loved by the King of the
World.”
“Who is he?”
She dropped her proud glances to the earth before him.
“Who was this King of the World?”
Still she made no reply nor lifted her eyes.
“Who are these figures that stand with us here?” he asked.
“Dead, all dead,” she sighed, “their destinies have closed. Only I
renew the destiny.”
She took his hand and led him among the wasting images.
“Merchants and poets, dead; princesses and slaves, dead; soldiers and
kings, they look on us with eyes of dust, dead, all dead. I alone of
Sarkkon’s worshippers live on enduringly; I desired only love. I feed
my spirit with new desire. I am the beam of his eye.”
“Come,” said the Assyrian suddenly, “I will carry you to Shinar; set
but my foot to that lost track ... will you?”
She shook her head gravely; “All roads lead to Sarkkon.”
“Why do we tarry here? Come.”
“Talakku, there is no way hence, no way for you, no way for me. We have
wandered into the boundless. What star returns from the sky, what drop
from the deep?”
Talakku looked at her with wonder, until the longing in his heart
lightened the shadow of his doom.
“Tell me what I must do,” he said.
She turned her eyes towards the dark god. “He knows,” she cried,
seizing his hands and drawing him towards the idol, “Come, Talakku.”
“No, no!” he said in awe, “I cannot worship there. Who can deny the
gods of his home and escape vengeance? In Shinar, beloved land, goes
not one bee unhived nor a bird without a bower. Shall I slip my
allegiance at every gust of the desert?”
For a moment a look of anguish appeared in her eyes.
“But if you will not leave this place,” he continued gently, “suffer me
to stay.”
“Talakku, in a while I must sink again into the stone.”
“By all the gods I will keep you till I die,” he said. “One day at
least I will walk in Paradise.”
“Talakku, not a day, not an hour; moments, moments, there are but
moments now.”
“Then, I am but dead,” he cried, “for in that stone your sleeping heart
will never dream of me.”
“O, you whip me with rods of lilies. Quick, Talakku.” He knew in her
urgent voice the divining hope with which she wooed him. Alas for the
Assyrian, he was but a man whose dying lips are slaked with wise honey.
He embraced her as in a dream under the knees of towering Sarkkon.
Her kisses, wrapt in the delicate veils of love, not the harsh brief
glister of passion, were more lulling than a thousand songs of lost
Shinar, but the time’s sweet swiftness pursued them. Her momentary life
had flown like a rushing star, swift and delighting but doomed. From
the heel of the god a beetle of green lustre began to creep towards
them.
“Farewell, Talakku,” cried the girl. She stood again in her place
before Namu-Sarkkon. “Have no fear, Talakku, prince of my heart. I will
lock up in your breast all my soft unsundering years. Like the bird of
fire they will surely spring again.”
He waited, dumb, beside her, and suddenly her limbs compacted into
stone once more. At the touch of his awed fingers her breast burned
with the heat of the sun instead of the wooing blood. Then the vast
silence of the world returned upon him; he looked in trembling
loneliness at the stark sky, the unending desert, at the black god
whose eye seemed to flicker balefully at him. Talakku turned to the
lovely girl, but once more amazement gathered in all his veins. No
longer stood her figure there--in its place he beheld only a stone
image of himself.
“This is the hour, O beauteous one!” murmured the Assyrian, and,
turning again towards the giant, he knelt in humility. His body
wavered, faltered, suddenly stiffened, and then dissolved into a little
heap of sand.
The same wind that unsealed Namu-Sarkkon and his shrine returning again
at eve covered anew the idol and its figures, and the dust of the
Assyrian captain became part of the desert for evermore.
* * * * *
ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME
* * * * *
ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME
... and in the whole of his days, vividly at the end of the
afternoon--he repeated it again and again to himself--the kind country
spaces had _never_ absorbed _quite_ so rich a glamour of light, so
miraculous a bloom of clarity. He could feel streaming in his own mind,
in his bones, the same crystalline brightness that lay upon the land.
Thoughts and images went flowing through him as easily and amiably as
fish swim in their pools; and as idly, too, for one of his speculations
took up the theme of his family name. There was such an agreeable
oddness about it, just as there was about all the luminous sky today,
that it touched him as just a little remarkable. What _did_ such a name
connote, signify, or symbolize? It was a rann of a name, but it had
euphony! Then again, like the fish, his ambulating fancy flashed into
other shallows, and he giggled as he paused, peering at the buds in the
brake. Turning back towards his house again he could see, beyond its
roofs, the spire of the Church tinctured richly as the vane: all round
him was a new grandeur upon the grass of the fields, and the spare
trees had shadows below that seemed to support them in the manner of a
plinth, more real than themselves, and the dykes and any chance heave
of the level fields were underlined, as if for special emphasis, with
long shades of mysterious blackness.
With a little drift of emotion that had at other times assailed him in
the wonder and ecstasy of pure light, Jaffa Codling pushed through the
slit in the back hedge and stood within his own garden. The gardener
was at work. He could hear the voices of the children about the lawn
at the other side of the house. He was very happy, and the place was
beautiful, a fine white many-windowed house rising from a lawn bowered
with plots of mould, turretted with shrubs, and overset with a vast
walnut tree. This house had deep clean eaves, a roof of faint coloured
slates that, after rain, glowed dully, like onyx or jade, under the
red chimneys, and half-way up at one end was a balcony set with black
balusters. He went to a French window that stood open and stepped into
the dining room. There was no-one within, and, on that lonely instant,
a strange feeling of emptiness dropped upon him. The clock ticked
almost as if it had been caught in some indecent act; the air was dim
and troubled after that glory outside. Well, now, he would go up at
once to his study and write down for his new book the ideas and images
he had accumulated--beautiful rich thoughts they were--during that
wonderful afternoon. He went to mount the stairs and he was passed by
one of the maids; humming a silly song she brushed past him rudely, but
he was an easy-going man--maids were unteachably tiresome--and reaching
the landing he sauntered towards his room. The door stood slightly
open and he could hear voices within. He put his hand upon the door
... it would not open any further. What the devil ... he pushed--like
the bear in the tale--and he pushed, and he pushed--was there something
against it on the other side? He put his shoulder to it ... some
wedge must be there, and _that_ was extraordinary. Then his whole
apprehension was swept up and whirled as by an avalanche--Mildred, his
wife, was in there; he could hear her speaking to a man in fair soft
tones and the rich phrases that could be used only by a woman yielding
a deep affection to him. Codling kept still. Her words burned on his
mind and thrilled him as if spoken to himself. There was a movement in
the room, then utter silence. He again thrust savagely at the partly
open door, but he could not stir it. The silence within continued. He
beat upon the door with his fists, crying; “Mildred, Mildred!” There
was no response, but he could hear the rocking arm chair commence to
swing to and fro. Pushing his hand round the edge of the door he tried
to thrust his head between the opening. There was not space for this,
but he could just peer into the corner of a mirror hung near, and this
is what he saw: the chair at one end of its swing, a man sitting in
it, and upon one arm of it Mildred, the beloved woman, with her lips
upon the man’s face, caressing him with her hands. Codling made another
effort to get into the room--as vain as it was violent. “Do you hear
me, Mildred?” he shouted. Apparently neither of them heard him; they
rocked to and fro while he gazed stupefied. What, in the name of God,
... What this ... was she bewitched ... were there such things after
all as magic, devilry!
He drew back and held himself quite steadily. The chair stopped
swaying, and the room grew awfully still. The sharp ticking of
the clock in the hall rose upon the house like the tongue of some
perfunctory mocker. Couldn’t they hear the clock? ... Couldn’t they
hear his heart? He had to put his hand upon his heart, for, surely,
in that great silence inside there, they would hear its beat, growing
so loud now that it seemed almost to stun him! Then in a queer way
he found himself reflecting, observing, analysing his own actions
and intentions. He found some of them to be just a little spurious,
counterfeit. He felt it would be easy, so perfectly easy to flash in
one blast of anger and annihilate the two. He would do nothing of
the kind. There was no occasion for it. People didn’t really do that
sort of thing, or, at least, not with a genuine passion. There was
no need for anger. His curiosity was satisfied, quite satisfied, he
was certain, he had not the remotest interest in the man. A welter of
unexpected thoughts swept upon his mind as he stood there. As a writer
of books he was often stimulated by the emotions and impulses of other
people, and now his own surprise was beginning to intrigue him, leaving
him, O, quite unstirred emotionally, but interesting him profoundly.
He heard the maid come stepping up the stairway again, humming her
silly song. He did not want a scene, or to be caught eavesdropping,
and so turned quickly to another door. It was locked. He sprang to
one beyond it; the handle would not turn. “Bah! what’s _up_ with ’em?”
But the girl was now upon him, carrying a tray of coffee things. “O,
Mary!” he exclaimed casually, “I....” To his astonishment the girl
stepped past him as if she did not hear or see him, tapped upon the
door of his study, entered, and closed the door behind her. Jaffa
Codling then got really angry. “Hell! were the blasted servants in it!”
He dashed to the door again and tore at the handle. It would not even
turn, and, though he wrenched with fury at it, the room was utterly
sealed against him. He went away for a chair with which to smash the
effrontery of that door. No, he wasn’t angry, either with his wife or
this fellow--Gilbert, she had called him--who had a strangely familiar
aspect as far as he had been able to take it in; but when one’s
servants ... faugh!
The door opened and Mary came forth smiling demurely. He was a few
yards further along the corridor at that moment. “Mary!” he shouted,
“leave the door open!” Mary carefully closed it and turned her back on
him. He sprang after her with bad words bursting from him as she went
towards the stairs and flitted lightly down, humming all the way as
if in derision. He leaped downwards after her three steps at a time,
but she trotted with amazing swiftness into the kitchen and slammed
the door in his face. Codling stood, but kept his hands carefully away
from the door, kept them behind him. “No, no,” he whispered cunningly,
“there’s something fiendish about door handles today, I’ll go and get a
bar, or a butt of timber,” and, jumping out into the garden for some
such thing, the miracle happened to him. For it was nothing else than
a miracle, the unbelievable, the impossible, simple and laughable if
you will, but having as much validity as any miracle can ever invoke.
It was simple and laughable because by all the known physical laws
he should have collided with his gardener, who happened to pass the
window with his wheelbarrow as Codling jumped out on to the path. And
it was unbelievable that they should not, and impossible that they
_did_ not collide; and it was miraculous, because Codling stood for
a brief moment in the garden path and the wheelbarrow of Bond, its
contents, and Bond himself passed apparently through the figure of
Codling as if he were so much air, as if he were not a living breathing
man but just a common ghost. There was no impact, just a momentary
breathlessness. Codling stood and looked at the retreating figure going
on utterly unaware of him. It is interesting to record that Codling’s
first feelings were mirthful. He giggled. He was jocular. He ran along
in front of the gardener, and let him pass through him once more;
then after him again; he scrambled into the man’s barrow, and was
wheeled about by this incomprehensible thick-headed gardener who was
dead to all his master’s efforts to engage his attention. Presently
he dropped the wheelbarrow and went away, leaving Codling to cogitate
upon the occurrence. There was no room for doubt, some essential part
of him had become detached from the obviously not less vital part. He
felt he was essential because he was responding to the experience,
he was re-acting in the normal way to normal stimuli, although he
happened for the time being to be invisible to his fellows and unable
to communicate with them. How had it come about--this queer thing? How
could he discover what part of him had cut loose, as it were? There
was no question of this being death; death wasn’t funny, it wasn’t
a joke; he had still all his human instincts. You didn’t get angry
with a faithless wife or joke with a fool of a gardener if you were
dead, certainly not! He had realized enough of himself to know he was
the usual man of instincts, desires, and prohibitions, complex and
contradictory; his family history for a million or two years would have
denoted that, not explicitly--obviously impossible--but suggestively.
He had found himself doing things he had no desire to do, doing things
he had a desire not to do, thinking thoughts that had no contiguous
meanings, no meanings that could be related to his general experience.
At odd times he had been chilled--aye, and even agreeably surprised--at
the immense potential evil in himself. But still, this was no mere
Jekyl and Hyde affair, that a man and his own ghost should separately
inhabit the same world was a horse of quite another colour. The other
part of him was alive and active somewhere ... as alive ... as alive
... yes, as _he_ was, but dashed if he knew where! What a lark when
they got back to each other and compared notes! In his tales he had
brooded over so many imagined personalities, followed in the track of
so many psychological enigmas that he _had_ felt at times a stranger
to himself. What if, after all, that brooding had given him the faculty
of projecting this figment of himself into the world of men. Or was he
some unrealized latent element of being without its natural integument,
doomed now to drift over the ridge of the world for ever. Was it his
personality, his spirit? Then how was the dashed thing working? Here
was he with the most wonderful happening in human experience, and he
couldn’t differentiate or disinter things. He was like a new Adam flung
into some old Eden.
There was Bond tinkering about with some plants a dozen yards in front
of him. Suddenly his three children came round from the other side of
the house, the youngest boy leading them, carrying in his hand a small
sword which was made, not of steel, but of some more brightly shining
material; indeed it seemed at one moment to be of gold, and then again
of flame, transmuting everything in its neighbourhood into the likeness
of flame, the hair of the little girl Eve, a part of Adam’s tunic; and
the fingers of the boy Gabriel as he held the sword were like pale
tongues of fire. Gabriel, the youngest boy, went up to the gardener
and gave the sword into his hands, saying: “Bond, is this sword any
good?” Codling saw the gardener take the weapon and examine it with
a careful sort of smile; his great gnarled hands became immediately
transparent, the blood could be seen moving diligently about the veins.
Codling was so interested in the sight that he did not gather in the
gardener’s reply. The little boy was dissatisfied and repeated his
question, “No, but Bond, _is_ this sword any good?” Codling rose, and
stood by invisible. The three beautiful children were grouped about the
great angular figure of the gardener in his soiled clothes, looking
up now into his face, and now at the sword, with anxiety in all their
puckered eyes. “Well, Marse Gabriel,” Codling could hear him reply, “as
far as a sword goes, it may be a good un, or it may be a bad un, but,
good as it is, it can never be anything but a bad thing.” He then gave
it back to them; the boy Adam held the haft of it, and the girl Eve
rubbed the blade with curious fingers. The younger boy stood looking
up at the gardener with unsatisfied gaze. “But, Bond, _can’t_ you say
if this sword’s any _good_?” Bond turned to his spade and trowels.
“Mebbe the shape of it’s wrong, Marse Gabriel, though it seems a pretty
handy size.” Saying this he moved off across the lawn. Gabriel turned
to his brother and sister and took the sword from them; they all
followed after the gardener and once more Gabriel made enquiry: “Bond,
is this sword any _good_?” The gardener again took it and made a few
passes in the air like a valiant soldier at exercise. Turning then, he
lifted a bright curl from the head of Eve and cut it off with a sweep
of the weapon. He held it up to look at it critically and then let it
fall to the ground. Codling sneaked behind him and, picking it up,
stood stupidly looking at it. “Mebbe, Marse Gabriel,” the gardener was
saying, “it ud be better made of steel, but it has a smartish edge on
it.” He went to pick up the barrow but Gabriel seized it with a spasm
of anger, and cried out: “No, no, Bond, will you say, just yes or no,
Bond, is this sword any _good_?” The gardener stood still, and looked
down at the little boy, who repeated his question--“just yes or no,
Bond!” “No, Marse Gabriel!” “Thank you, Bond!” replied the child with
dignity, “that’s all we wanted to know,” and, calling to his mates to
follow him, he ran away to the other side of the house.