The Man Who Died (6 page)

The sun was touching the sea, across the tiny bay stretched the shadow of
the opposite humped headland. Over the shingle, now blue and cold in
shadow, the elderly woman trod heavily, in shadow too, to look at the
fish spread in the flat basket of the old man crouching at the water's
edge: a naked old slave with fat hips and shoulders, on whose soft,
fairish–orange body the last sun twinkled, then died. The old slave
continued cleaning the fish absorbedly, not looking up: as if the lady
were the shadow of twilight falling on him.

Then from the gateway stepped two slave–girls with flat baskets on their
heads, and from one basket the terra–cotta wine–jar and the oil–jar poked
up, leaning slightly. Over the massive shingle, under the wall, came the
girls, and the woman of Isis in her saffron mantle stepped in twilight
after them. Out at sea, the sun still shone. Here was shadow. The mother
with grey head stood at the sea's edge and watched the daughter, all
yellow and white, with dun blonde head, swinging unseeing and unheeding
after the slave–girls, towards the neck of rock of the peninsula; the
daughter, travelling in her absorbed other–world. And not moving from her
place, the elderly mother watched that procession of three file up the
rise of the headland, between the trees, and disappear, shut in by trees.
No slave had lifted a head to look. The grey–haired woman still watched
the trees where her daughter had disappeared. Then she glanced again at
the foot of the tree, where the man who had died was still sitting,
inconspicuous now, for the sun had left him; and only the far blade of
the sea shone bright. It was evening. Patience! Let destiny move!

The mother plodded with a stamping stride up the shingle: not long and
swinging and rapt, like the daughter, but short and determined. Then down
the rocks opposite came two naked slaves trotting with huge bundles of
dark green on their shoulders, so their broad, naked legs twinkled
underneath like insects' legs, and their heads were hidden. They came
trotting across the shingle, heedless and intent on their way, when
suddenly the man, the Roman–looking overseer, addressed them, and they
stopped dead. They stood invisible under their loads, as if they might
disappear altogether, now they were arrested. Then a hand came out and
pointed to the peninsula. Then the two green–heaped slaves trotted on,
towards the temple precincts. The grey–haired woman joined the man, and
slowly the two passed through the door again, from the shingle of the sea
to the property of the villa. Then the old, fat–shouldered slave rose,
pallid in the shadow, with his tray of fish from the sea, and the woman
rose from the pool, dusky and alive, piling the wet linen in a heap on to
the flat baskets, and the slaves who had cleaned the net gathered its
whitish folds together. And the old slave with the fish–basket on his
shoulder, and the women slaves with the heaped baskets of wet linen on
their heads, and the two slaves with the folded net, and the slave with
oars on his shoulders, and the boy with the folded sail on his arm,
gathered in a naked group near the door, and the man who had died heard
the low buzz of their chatter. Then as the wind wafted cold; they began
to pass through the door.

It was the life of the little day, the life of little people. And the man
who had died said to himself: "Unless we encompass it in the greater day,
and set the little life in the circle of the greater life, all is
disaster."

Even the tops of the hills were in shadow. Only the sky was still
upwardly radiant. The sea was a vast milky shadow. The man who had died
rose a little stiffly and turned into the grove.

There was no one at the temple. He went on to his lair in the rock.
There, the slave–men had carried out the old heath of the bedding, swept
the rock floor, and were spreading with nice art the myrtle, then the
rougher heath, then the soft, bushy heath–tips on top, for a bed. Over it
all they put a well–tanned white ox–skin. The maids had laid folded
woollen covers at the head of the cave, and the wine–jar, the oil–jar, a
terra–cotta drinking–cup and a basket containing bread, salt, cheese,
dried figs and eggs stood neatly arranged. There was also a little
brazier of charcoal. The cave was suddenly full, and a dwelling–place.

The woman of Isis stood in the hollow by the tiny spring.

Only one slave at a time could pass. The girl–slaves waited at the
entrance to the narrow place. When the man who had died appeared, the
woman sent the girls away. The men–slaves still arranged the bed, making
the job as long as possible. But the woman of Isis dismissed them too.
And the man who had died came to look at his house.

"Is it well?" the woman asked him.

"It is very well," the man replied. "But the lady, your mother, and he
who is no doubt the steward, watched while the slaves brought the goods.
Will they not oppose you?"

"I have my own portion! Can I not give of my own? Who is going to oppose
me and the gods?" she said, with a certain soft fury, touched with
exasperation. So that he knew that her mother would oppose her, and that
the spirit of the little life would fight against the spirit of the
greater. And he thought: 'Why did the woman of Isis relinquish her
portion in the daily world? She should have kept her goods fiercely!'

"Will you eat and drink?" she said. "On the ashes are warm eggs. And I
will go up to the meal at the villa. But in the second hour of the night
I shall come down to the temple. 0, then, will you come too to Isis?" She
looked at him, and a queer glow dilated her eyes. This was her dream, and
it was greater than herself. He could not bear to thwart her or hurt her
in the least thing now. She was in the full glow of her woman's mystery.

"Shall I wait at the temple?" he said.

"0, wait at the second hour and I shall come." He heard the humming
supplication in her voice and his fibres quivered. "But the lady, your
mother?" he said gently.

The woman looked at him, startled.

"She will not thwart me!" she said.

So he knew that the mother would thwart the daughter, for the daughter
had left her goods in the hands of her mother, who would hold fast to
this power.

But she went, and the man who had died lay reclining on his couch, and
ate the eggs from the ashes, and dipped his bread in oil, and ate it, for
his flesh was dry: and he mixed wine and water, and drank. And so he lay
still, and the lamp made a small bud of light.

He was absorbed and enmeshed in new sensations. The woman of Isis was
lovely to him, not so much in form as in the wonderful womanly glow of
her. Suns beyond suns had dipped her in mysterious fire, the mysterious
fire of a potent woman, and to touch her was like touching the sun. Best
of all was her tender desire for him, like sunshine, so soft and still.

"She is like sunshine upon me," he said to himself, stretching his limbs.
"I have never before stretched my limbs in such sunshine, as her desire
for me. The greatest of all gods granted me this."

At the same time he was haunted by the fear of the outer world. "If they
can, they will kill us," he said to himself. "But there is a law of the
sun which protects us."

And again he said to himself: "I have risen naked and branded. But if I
am naked enough for this contact, I have not died in vain. Before I was
clogged."

He rose and went out. The night was chill and starry, and of a great
wintry splendour. "There are destinies of splendour," he said to the
night, "after all our doom of littleness and meanness and pain."

So he went up silently to the temple, and waited in darkness against the
inner wall, looking out on a grey darkness, stars, and rims of trees. And
he said again to himself: "There are destinies of splendour, and there is
a greater power."

So at last he saw the light of her silk lanthorn swinging, coming
intermittent between the trees, yet coming swiftly. She was alone, and
near, the light softly swishing on her mantle–hem. And he trembled with
fear and with joy, saying to himself: "I am almost more afraid of this
touch than I was of death. For I am more nakedly exposed to it."

"I am here, Lady of Isis," he said softly out of the dark. "Ah!" she
cried, in fear also, yet in rapture. For she was given to her dream.

She unlocked the door of the shrine, and he followed after her. Then she
latched the door shut again. The air inside was warm and close and
perfumed. The man who had died stood by the closed door and watched the
woman. She had come first to the goddess. And dim–lit, the goddess–statue
stood surging forward, a little fearsome like a great woman–presence
urging.

The priestess did not look at him. She took off her saffron mantle and
laid it on a low couch. In the dim light she was bare–armed, in her
girdled white tunic. But she was still hiding herself away from him. He
stood back in shadow and watched her softly fan the brazier and fling on
incense. Faint clouds of sweet aroma arose on the air. She turned to the
statue in the ritual of approach, softly swaying forward with a slight
lurch, like a moored boat, tipping towards the goddess.

He watched the strange rapt woman, and he said to himself: "I must leave
her alone in her rapture, her female mysteries." So she tipped in her
strange forward–swaying rhythm before the goddess. Then she broke into a
murmur of Greek, which he could not understand. And, as she murmured, her
swaying softly subsided, like a boat on a sea that grows still. And as he
watched her, he saw her soul in its aloneness, and its female difference.
He said to himself: "How different she is from me, how strangely
different! She is afraid of me, and my male difference. She is getting
herself naked and clear of her fear. How sensitive and softly alive she
is, with a life so different from mine! How beautiful with a soft,
strange courage, of life, so different from my courage of death! What a
beautiful thing, like the heart of a rose, like the core of a flame. She
is making herself completely penetrable. Ah! how terrible to fail her,
or to trespass on her!"

She turned to him, her face glowing from the goddess. "You are Osiris,
aren't you?" she said naively.

"If you will," he said.

"Will you let Isis discover you? Will you not take off your things?"

He looked at the woman, and lost his breath. And his wounds, and
especially the death–wound through his belly, began to cry again.

"It has hurt so much!" he said. "You must forgive me if I am still held
back."

But he took off his cloak and his tunic and went naked towards the idol,
his breast panting with the sudden terror of overwhelming pain, memory of
overwhelming pain, and grief too bitter.

"They did me to death!" he said in excuse of himself, turning his face to
her for a moment.

And she saw the ghost of the death in him as he stood there thin and
stark before her, and suddenly she was terrified, and she felt robbed.
She felt the shadow of the grey, grisly wing of death triumphant.

"Ah, Goddess," he said to the idol in the vernacular. "I would be so glad
to live, if you would give me my clue again."

For her again he felt desperate, faced by the demand of life, and
burdened still by his death.

"Let me anoint you!" the woman said to him softly. "Let me anoint the
scars! Show me, and let me anoint them!"

He forgot his nakedness in this re–evoked old pain. He sat on the edge of
the couch, and she poured a little ointment into the palm of his hand.
And as she chafed his hand, it all came back, the nails, the holes, the
cruelty, the unjust cruelty against him who had offered only kindness.
The agony of injustice and cruelty came over him again, as in his
death–hour. But she chafed the palm, murmuring: "What was torn becomes a
new flesh, what was a wound is full of fresh life; this scar is the eye
of the violet."

And he could not help smiling at her, in her naïve priestess's
absorption. This was her dream, and he was only a dream–object to her.
She would never know or understand what he was. Especially she would
never know the death that was gone before in him. But what did it matter?
She was different. She was woman: her life and her death were different
from him. Only she was good to him.

When she chafed his feet with oil and tender, tender healing, he could
not refrain from saying to her:

"Once a woman washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with her hair,
and poured on precious ointment."

The woman of Isis looked up at him from her earnest work, interrupted
again.

"Were they hurt then?" she said. "Your feet?"

"No, no! It was while they were whole."

"And did you love her?"

"Love had passed in her. She only warned to serve," he replied. "She had
been a prostitute."

"And did you let her serve you?" she asked.

"Yea."

"Did you let her serve you with the corpse of her love?"

"Ay!"

Suddenly it dawned on him: I asked them all to serve me with the corpse
of their love. And in the end I offered them only the corpse of my love.
This is my body—take and eat—my corpse—

A vivid shame went through him. 'After all,' he thought, 'I wanted them
to love with dead bodies. If I had kissed Judas with live love, perhaps
he would never have kissed me with death. Perhaps he loved me in the
flesh, and I willed that he should love me bodilessly, with the corpse of
love—'

There dawned on him the reality of the soft, warm love which is in touch,
and which is full of delight. "And I told them, blessed are they that
mourn," he said to himself. "Alas, if I mourned even this woman here, now
I am in death, I should have to remain dead, and I want so much to live.
Life has brought me to this woman with warm hands. And her touch is more
to me now than all my words. For I want to live—"

"Go then to the goddess!" she said softly, gently pushing him towards
Isis. And as he stood there dazed and naked as an unborn thing, he heard
the woman murmuring to the goddess, murmuring, murmuring with a plaintive
appeal. She was stooping now, looking at the scar in the soft flesh of
the socket of his side, a scar deep and like an eye sore with endless
weeping, just in the soft socket above the hip. It was here that his
blood had left him, and his essential seed. The woman was trembling
softly and murmuring in Greek. And he in the recurring dismay of having
died, and in the anguished perplexity of having tried to force life,
felt his wounds crying aloud, and the deep places of the body howling
again: "I have been murdered, and I lent myself to murder. They murdered
me, but I lent myself to murder—"