Azazeel (10 page)

On the surface of the water I recalled with delight how I would lie on the hill on which stands the house where I was born, where the doves would land around me. When the sun had declined from
the high point of the sky towards the horizon, I became aware of pangs of hunger. The beach seemed a long way off and near my clothes I noticed someone waving to me with their arms. I felt a sudden
alarm and apprehension. My arms and legs sprang into action to take me back quickly to my clothes. But after moments which seemed an age I realized that I was not making progress towards the beach.
I began to swim faster but I moved no closer to my goal. Suddenly I was exhausted and my right arm almost froze rigid. I let my body float to have a rest for a while but I panicked when I realized
the water was pulling me out to the open sea. I resumed swimming, exhausted, but the pull of the sea was stronger than the constant strokes of my panicked arms. That’s when I understood that
the sea is treacherous.

The person standing on the beach gave up waving at me and disappeared from sight when the waves rose between us. I was completely exhausted and the sea was relentless. When I was sure I was
drowning I shouted out despite myself. Then I suppressed my desire to shout to save what strength I had left for the swim back. The pain in my left arm was excruciating but I kept paddling with it.
To myself I chanted, ‘Jesus Christ, stay with me now and I will vow all my life to You.’ I swam faster and faster, and suffered greatly for the predicament I had brought upon myself.
After a long struggle to overcome the current dragging me out, I found that my strokes were pulling me towards the beach. I was gasping for air but delighted to survive. When I reached the point
near the beach where the waves break and die away my foot touched the ground and I thanked the Lord with a troubled heart.

I stumbled towards my bag and when I found no one else on the sandy beach I thought for a moment the person who waved at me, warning me of the danger of drowning, was not human, but rather an
angel sent by God from heaven to save me from wandering into danger. I said to myself that our Father in heaven is merciful to us and the secrets of his creation never end, and that after this I
would never go close to the sea again.

A gentle laugh rang out from the direction of the nearby rocks and I stood up from where I was lying on my back. I looked towards the sound in alarm and saw a white woman in Alexandrian dress,
with bare breasts and arms. The woman staggered forward, as though she too had just survived drowning in some capricious sea.

‘You’re a proficient swimmer, and lucky too,’ she said.

‘Who are you, my lady?’

‘My lady!’ She laughed. ‘I’m Octavia, the servant of the Sicilian gentleman, the silk merchant,’ she said.

I looked at her askance, as though I were dreaming or had died drowning and come back to life in another age. I looked around me: the seagulls were still flying and the houses in the distance
were still in their place, as they had been. A cold breeze brushed me and I came to my senses. What had brought to this place this servant who did not look like other servants? I could think of no
answer, so I asked her in a stammer and she replied without hesitation.

‘Poseidon sent me, the god of the sea who saved you. I am one of his mermaids.’

She laughed again. ‘Please, don’t joke with me.’

‘Don’t scowl, southerner. I will tell you everything.’

She said her name was Octavia and she came to this place most days when her master was away on business and had taken all his other servants with him, and the only person left with her in the
house was the guard sitting at the gate. She liked to come here, so she said, to tell her cares to the sea, because it kept secrets. Looking towards the waves, she told me people did not frequent
this beach because it was so rocky and the currents so dangerous near the coast.

‘Ah, now I know what happened to me. But how did you know I was a southerner.’

‘From your accent. I also know you are hungry now, from being in the sea so long. Come and have something to eat.’

At the time I did not know how to answer her. I was dying of hunger, and embarrassment. She kindly spared me my blushes, addressing me with a mixture of firmness and coquettishness of a kind I
had never experienced.

‘Bring your bag and come,’ she said.

She walked towards a large crevice between the rocks and I stood where I was, paralysed and enchanted, watching from nearby the flirtatious way she walked. She was in her forties, or her
thirties, I don’t know. Her body tended a little towards the plump side, and very much towards the soft, and she swayed as she walked, like a trail of incense smoke. I wonder if that day she
planned to seduce me, or perhaps that is the way women are in Alexandria.

I shall stop writing now, for the memories are teeming inside me. My head and my hand are heavy. I shall make do with what I have recorded tonight and resume writing in the morning, if I wake
up. Anyway this piece of parchment is full up and tomorrow I will need a new piece on which to record another endless whirl of memories.

SCROLL FOUR

I
have long loved the things which take place only inside me. It comforts me to weave events in my imagination and live the details of them for a
moment in time and then bring them to an end when I choose. This has been my way of protecting myself from temptation to sin, and staying safe. But what happened on the rocky sandy beach in eastern
Alexandria was different. It was real, and it troubled me for a long time to come.

The air turned cold when I stepped out of the sea after surviving the treacherous currents, and I was alone with the woman called Octavia. I was not in charge of events. She organized everything
because, as she told me on the third day, she was expecting the fulfilment of a prophecy which an old woman priest at the demolished temple had foretold for her. I will tell the story of what
happened between us.

When Octavia left me with my clothes and walked flirtatiously towards the rocky crevice, I stood paralysed, with my eyes fixed on her. Before her firm and shapely buttocks disappeared between
the rocks she looked towards me with a look that made my head turn, and pointed with her left hand to below my stomach. ‘Are you going to stay standing like that forever,’ she said.
‘Put on your gown to hide the state you are in and follow me quickly.’

I panicked when I noticed that my little devil was erect under my pants, which were soaked in salty water. I quickly turned towards my bag and grabbed my gown from on top of it, and threw it on.
I picked up my bag and walked to the stony cave nearby into which she had vanished before my astounded eyes. I wanted to apologize to her for everything and thank her, then ask leave of her and
walk away, dragging my failure and my indecency behind me like a tail.

I stood in front of her, embarrassed, at the entrance to the small rocky cave where she was sitting in the middle. She was taking things out of a small box of the type that peasants make for
their masters out of strips of palm branch. From where I was, and from the way she was sitting, I could see the firmness of her breasts. Before that I had seen the breasts of women suckling their
babies but what I saw that day was different. God made the breasts of women for them to suckle, so for what other reason did he create these breasts?

Octavia was busy with what she was doing. She spread a large cloth on the ground and carefully put at the four corners pieces of the marine flint which was scattered around the surface of the
cave. Then she started to arrange the food on the cloth: boiled eggs, loaves of white bread, white cheese, another cheese that was even whiter, water or wine in a white earthenware bottle.
Everything on the big white cloth was white, and her diaphanous dress was white too. Her ample breasts, white. Her skin, everything, white. I was quite astonished.

‘Sit here,’ she said.

I sat down submissively, bewitched. I yielded to her and she induced in me a pleasant torpor. She did what no one had ever done to me before, even in my childhood, or has done since. She began
to put food in my mouth and smiled at me until I swallowed each piece, then put in the next. I resisted at first, but then I began to enjoy it and I ate from her hand happily, like an infant at the
breast.

I was so full I thought I could never be hungry again. When I closed my lips tight to decline the last morsel, she brought it back to my mouth until I opened it. Her right hand reached out
gently for the bottle, and with charming tenderness she stretched out her left hand towards my left shoulder and pulled me down gently towards her breasts.

I was shocked and I shouted at her in alarm, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’ll give you a drink of the sweetest Alexandrian wine, my way,’ she said.

Her way was that I rest my right cheek on her left breast, until half my face was flat against the softness of her ample breasts. I resisted her a little and then gave in. Close to her I did not
sense any danger of sin, but rather I felt that I was diving into her and forgetting everything else. When she put her left arm around my shoulders I felt she had enfolded me for ever and that my
separate existence had ebbed away until it vanished in her warm embrace. With her right palm she started to bring the bottle to my lips and tease my mouth with the mouth of the bottle. Then she
poured into me sips of her heavenly wine. I had never tasted the equal of this wine and since those days of mine with Octavia I have not tasted any wine at all. When I had drunk my fill, I shut my
eyes. I felt a drowsiness permeate my senses, taking me up to seventh heaven. I did not open my eyes until I heard her say, ‘Drink some more. Wine is good for you, my love.’

‘“Your love”, how can you say that?’

‘Don’t ask, and don’t argue with mermaids. Shut your eyes so you feel me more,’ she said.

The sun was preparing to set, and the silence around us was total, except for the sound of the waves. I shut my eyes in spite of myself and could not resist her overwhelming Alexandrian
presence. It seemed to me that she was right, and when I shut my eyes on her breasts, I did feel her more, and when she ran her right hand gently across my neck, I went into a trance. She began to
caress my shoulder blades and run her fingertips over my hard bony chest. I felt her left hand kneading my flesh and the aromatic breath of her sighs brushed my face. Her right hand found its way
into my pants, which were still soaked with salty water and semen that had leaked out. Her hand was plunging down, invading my terrain, and I surrendered completely, from the tips of my toes to the
parts of me that were huddled in her embrace. When the palm of her hand touched my right knee and she pulled me forcefully towards her, I lost control completely. I was Adam when he was about to
leave the Garden of Eden because he was about to enter Paradise and eat again from the tree. Driven by this forbidden lust, replete with magical allure, I was about to take her right then and
there.

‘Easy, my love. Your body is wet with seawater. Your body, my love, is firm as a tree in autumn. How I love how that tree is firm!’

At that time I was not myself. I felt as though the firmament above had stopped turning and the Nile far away had ceased to flow, and there were no humans left on the face of the earth and the
angels had vanished from heaven. I ejaculated inadvertently, and she laughed. I wanted to wrap my arms around her but she resisted. Coquettishly she pushed my hand off her shoulder, then pulled it
towards her mouth and kissed the tips of my fingers. She prolonged the kiss, and when I felt her tongue touch the fingertips, I came close to fainting.

‘The sun has set, my love. It will turn cold. Come to the house. It’s nearby and no one is there but the goodly doorman.’

I sat up straight, and she nimbly gathered off the ground everything she had unloaded from her basket – the white cloth, the empty wine bottle, and the silver bracelets she had taken off
while she was putting food in my mouth. When she stood up like a spreading holm oak, and I like a stiff palm, she explained to me in a whisper (though there was no need to whisper, since we were
alone) that I should follow close behind her and she would lure the house guard away from the gate.

I walked not too far behind her and saw her say something to the elderly guard. Then the man disappeared from sight behind the silent houses, followed by his emaciated sheep, which had looked
towards me in the same way as dogs look. I stepped forward towards the big house and she was waiting for me with a smile at the gate. The guard’s room was attached to the outer wall and
behind the wall there was a large garden and then in the centre an elegant two-storey building raised on sturdy pillars. She quietly shut behind us the gate of the neat garden, full of colourful
bushes and flowers which in the light of the sunset took on a pink hue that enhanced their splendour. I looked around, wondering to myself: ‘Could Paradise be more beautiful than this
place?’

It was like a wonderful dream from which I did not want to awake. Octavia opened the house door with a brass key which she took out of the light palmwood box and gestured to me to enter. Kingdom
of heaven!

In a whisper I said to her, ‘What’s all this luxury?’

She smiled and took my arm to her bosom. She clutched my hand with one of hers and with the other she picked up a lamp which gave light without smoke. On our way from the vast hall to the upper
floor I saw beauty all around me. As Octavia walked along with her lamp my eyes would fall upon a niche of decorative marble or an extraordinary statue of one of the pagans’ false gods, or
fine silk coverings skilfully embroidered. The stairway linking the two floors was all of white marble and each step was carved with a different design, with decorative touches using coloured
marble inlaid into the white. Each step had its own motifs, different from those of the other steps. How much money and time, effort, artistry and craftsmanship went into making this stairway! Even
the remains of the amazing temples spread along the Nile valley, which the long-living ancients built over many years,
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do not show such precision or
craftsmanship. I asked myself at the time, ‘Will our religion give to future generations beauty such as that which the pagan times have offered us?’ This question continues to nag me
after all these years and remains without an answer. Oh Octavia, oh the memory of your enticements, and your time which is passed.