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+{"text":"\n\nTHE AENEID\n\nPUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO was born in 70 BC near Mantua in the north of Italy, where his parents owned a farm. He had a good education and went to perfect it in Rome. There he came under the influence of Epicureanism and later joined an Epicurean colony on the Gulf of Naples where he was based for the rest of his life. In 42 BC he began to write the _Eclogues_ , which he completed in 37 BC, the year in which he accompanied Horace to Brindisi. The _Georgics_ were finished in 29 BC, and he devoted the rest of his life to the composition of the _Aeneid_. In his last year he started on a journey to Greece; meeting Augustus at Athens, he decided to travel back with him but he fell ill at Megara. He died in 19 BC on reaching Brindisi.\n\nDAVID WEST is an Aberdonian, educated at the local grammar school and university and then at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He has taught in the universities of Sheffield and Edinburgh and was Professor of Latin at Newcastle upon Tyne from 1969 to 1992. He notes that no such career would now be possible, since the departments of Classics at Aberdeen and Sheffield are now both defunct. His publications include _Reading Horace_ (1967), _The Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius_ (1969) and _Horace_ : _The Complete Odes and Epodes_ (1997). He has also produced editions with text, translation and commentary of the first three books of Horace's Odes (1995, 1998 and 2002). He is now working on a commentary on Shakespeare's Sonnets.\n\nVIRGIL\n\n# The Aeneid\n\n_Translated and with an Introduction by_  \nDAVID WEST\n\nREVISED EDITION\n\nPENGUIN BOOKS\n\nPENGUIN BOOKS\n\nPublished by the Penguin Group  \nPenguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England  \nPenguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA  \nPenguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia  \nPenguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4v 3B2  \nPenguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi \u2013 110 017, India  \nPenguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand  \nPenguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa\n\nEISBN: 978\u20130\u2013140\u201344932\u20137\n\nPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England\n\nwww.penguin.com\n\nFirst published 1990  \nPublished in Penguin Classics 1991  \nReissued with a revised Introduction and new Further Reading 2003  \n1\n\nTranslation and Introduction copyright \u00a9 David West, 1990, 2003\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nThe moral right of the translator has been asserted\n\nExcept in the United States of America, this book is sold subject   \nto the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,   \nre-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's   \nprior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in   \nwhich it is published and without a similar condition including this   \ncondition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser\n\nEISBN: 978\u20130\u2013140\u201344932\u20137\n\n## Contents\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nIntroduction\n\nFurther Reading\n\nNote on the Translation\n\nTHE AENEID\n\nAppendix I: The Parade of Future Romans in the Underworld (Book 6, lines 756\u2013892)\n\nAppendix II: The Shield of Aeneas (Book 8, lines 626\u2013728)\n\nAppendix III: Genealogical Trees\n\nThe Julian Family\n\nThe House of Priam\n\nThe House of Anchises\n\nMaps, Gazetteer and Select Index\n\nThe Voyages of Aeneas\n\nRome during the Reign of Augustus\n\nGazetteer\n\nSelect Index\n\n## Acknowledgements\n\nThis translation is of course based on such of the vast scholarly literature as I have been able to read. Previous translations have been plundered. Standard commentaries have been consulted, notably R. G. Austin on Books 1, 2, 4 and 6; R. D. Williams on 3 and 5; C. J. Fordyce on 7 and 8. Particularly valuable have been E. Norden on 6, P. T. Eden on 8 and Stephen Harrison on 10. The _Aeneidea_ of James Henry have been an inspiration.\n\nRosemary Burton and E. L. Harrison criticized the whole translation. Stephen Harrison, James Morwood and Nicholas Horsfall commented on whole books or extended passages. Pamela West, Janet Watson and Jane Curran were shrewd and generous consultants. To all of these I owe a debt that cannot be paid, as I do to my wonderful colleagues in the best of all imaginable university departments of Classics.\n\n_To the great dead who will not die_\n\n## Introduction\n\n### A POEM FOR OUR TIME\n\nThe _Aeneid_ is the story of a man who lived three thousand years ago in the city of Troy in the north-west tip of Asia Minor. What has that to do with us?\n\nTroy was besieged and sacked by the Greeks. After a series of disasters Aeneas met and loved a woman, Dido, queen of Carthage, but obeyed the call of duty to his people and his gods and left her to her death. Then, after long years of wandering, he reached Italy, fought a bitter war against the peoples of Latium and in the end formed an alliance with them which enabled him to found his city of Lavinium. From these beginnings, 333 years later, in 753 BC, the city of Rome was to be founded. The Romans had arrived in Italy.\n\nThe _Aeneid_ is still read and still resonates because it is a great poem. Part of its relevance to us is that it is the story of a human being who knew defeat and dispossession, love and the loss of love, whose life was ruled by his sense of duty to his gods, his people and his family, particularly to his beloved son Ascanius. But it was a hard duty and he sometimes wearied of it. He knew about war and hated the waste and ugliness of it, but fought, when he had to fight, with hatred and passion. After three millennia, the world is still full of such people. While we are of them and feel for them we shall find something in the _Aeneid_. The gods have changed, but for human beings there is not much difference:\n\nPitiless Mars was now dealing grief and death to both sides with impartial hand. Victors and vanquished killed and were killed and neither side thought of flight. In the halls of Jupiter the gods pitied the futile anger of the two armies and grieved that men had so much suffering...\n\n10.755\u20139\n\nBut the _Aeneid_ is not simply a contemplation of the general human predicament. It is also full of individual human beings behaving as human beings still do. Take the charm and humour of Dido putting the Trojans at their ease at 1.562\u201378; the grief of Andromache when she meets the Trojan youth who is the same age as her son Astyanax would have been if he had been allowed to live \u2013 we do not need to be told that Astyanax is the name on the second altar at 3.305; the cunning of Acestes and Aeneas as they shame the great old champion back into the ring at 5.389\u2013408; the childish joke of Iulus at 7.116 and its momentous interpretation; the aged hero feasting his eyes on his old friend's son at 8.152 or realizing at 8.560 that he can do nothing now except talk; the native's abuse of the foreigners from 9.598; the lying harridans at the beginning of Book 10 or the death of Mezentius and his horse from 10.858; the growling of Aeneas and the fussing and fumbling of the doctor as he plies his mute, inglorious art from 12.387.\n\nThe _Aeneid_ presents a heroic view of the life of man in all its splendour and anguish, but it is also full of just observation of the details of individual behaviour. It is not yet out of date.\n\n### THE _AENEID_ IN ITS OWN TIME\n\nVirgil was born seventy years before Christ. In 44 BC, after a century of civil war and disorder, Julius Caesar was assassinated by Brutus and Cassius in the name of liberty. His heir was his nineteen-year-old grand-nephew and adopted son, Octavian, astute, ruthless and determined. In 42 BC at Philippi Brutus and Cassius were defeated and the fortunes of Virgil were at their lowest ebb. His family estates at Mantua were confiscated by the victors to provide land for their soldiers to settle on. But he won the patronage of Maecenas, one of the two chief aides of Octavian, and published his pastoral _Eclogues_ in 37 BC. In 29 BC, after Octavian had made himself master of the known world by defeating Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, Virgil finished what John Dryden called 'the best poem of the best poet', the _Georgics_ , on the agriculture of Italy. Throughout the twenties Virgil was at work on his _Aeneid_ , a poem in imitation of Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ and in praise of Augustus, the name Octavian had taken on 16 January 27 BC. Virgil died before finishing it, on his way back from Athens with Augustus in 19 BC. To qualify for membership of the Senate, a Roman had to be extremely wealthy. When Virgil died, he owned property ten times that requirement. He left instructions that the _Aeneid_ was to be burned. These instructions were countermanded by Augustus.\n\nIt is therefore clear that Virgil wrote and wrote acceptably in praise of his patron, the ruler of Rome.\n\nIt would be easy to despise or dislike the poem for that. But wrong, for the following reasons:\n\n**(1)** Rome had endured a century of violence, discord, corruption and insecurity of life and property. Augustus, after intense effort and suffering, notably in his disastrous campaign in Sicily in 37 BC, by his victory at Actium promised peace, order, prosperity and moral regeneration. He even, according to Suetonius ( _Life of Augustus_ 89), fostered the talents of his generation in every possible way. It was the promise of a Golden Age, and in this euphoria Virgil and his friend Horace, another client of Maecenas and Augustus, wrote their great patriotic poems. At that time it was not foolish to hope and to believe.\n\n**(2)** Although Virgil wrote in praise of Augustus and the ideal of empire, he was no Chauvin. He loved country people and country ways, their traditions and their stubborn independence. He responded to human love, between man and woman, between father and son, between men and their homes (consider only 6.450 ff., 12.435 ff., 10.779 ff.), and he knew that empire had to be bought with the coin of human suffering and deprivation. He also knew the other side \u2013 the hard work and danger, the dedication and sacrifice which empire demanded of those who had made it and who maintained it, notably Augustus. Virgil does not solve the problems inherent in all this. He does not even pose them. The _Aeneid_ is a story. But behind that story we have all the issues which would have moved a contemporary Roman, and may still move us.\n\n**(3)** Praise is one thing. Flattery is another, and the _Aeneid_ is not flattery. The action of the epic is set a thousand years before Augustus and it praises him in two ways: first, by telling the story of his great ancestor, the first founder of Rome, in such a way as resembles the story of Augustus himself, its third founder. The resemblances are not pointed out. The reader is left to observe and ponder them for himself if he wishes. The second mode of praise is direct allusion to Augustus in prophecies and visions, notably near the beginning and end of the poem, in the descent of Aeneas to consult his father in the Underworld at the end of Book 6, and on the great shield of Aeneas at the end of Book 8.\n\nThe _Aeneid_ is, among other things, a search for a vision of peace and order for Rome and for humanity. To see its outlines through the mists of time nothing is more helpful than the family tree of the Julians on page 295. Allusions to these names in the _Aeneid_ are often to be heard as praise of Augustus, the contemporary Julian.\n\n### THE _AENEID_ BOOK BY BOOK\n\n#### Background\n\n_Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, judged Venus to be more beautiful than Juno and Pallas Athene, and claimed his reward, Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. The Greeks gathered an army and sacked the city of Troy after a ten years' siege. Aeneas escaped with his father, Anchises, and his son, Ascanius Iulus. Driven by the jealous hatred of Juno, he wandered across the Mediterranean for six years, trying to found a new city. Atthe opening of the poem, his father has just died in Sicily and Aeneas is sailing for Italy._\n\n### BOOK 1  \nSTORM AND BANQUET\n\n_Juno sends a fearful storm which wrecks the Trojan ships on the coast of Libya, near Carthage. There the Trojans are hospitably received by Dido, queen of Carthage. Venus, mother of Aeneas, anxious for the safety of her son, contrives that Dido should fall in love with him._\n\n#### _Virgil and Homer_\n\nThe poems that set the benchmark for all future epics were Homer's _Iliad_ , the story of Achilles at the siege of Troy, and his _Odyssey_ , the story of Odysseus' wanderings and homecoming from Troy to his native Ithaca. The first words of the _Aeneid_ are 'I sing of arms and of the man...' ( _arma virumque cano_ ). Since the _Iliad_ is the epic of war, and the first word in the _Odyssey_ is 'man', Virgil has begun by announcing that he is writing an epic in the Homeric style. The 'man' is Aeneas, the legendary first founder of Rome, who escaped from the sack of Troy and wandered the seas for six years looking for a place to found a new city. The 'arms' are the battles he fought at the fall of Troy as described in the second book of the _Aeneid_ and also, in the last four books, the war he fought against the Latin peoples as he tried to establish his city in Italy.\n\n#### _Virgil and Augustus_\n\nAeneas was victorious. He founded his city of Lavinium and ruled it for three years. After thirty years his son Ascanius _Iulus_ , moved from Lavinium to Alba Longa, where the Alban kings ruled for three hundred years, until the birth of Romulus and Remus. It was Romulus, son of the priestess _Ilia_ and Mars, who founded the city of Rome and gave it its name in 753 BC, according to the traditional dating. When Virgil was writing the _Aeneid_ in the twenties BC, Rome was ruled by Augustus, the adopted son of _Julius_ Caesar. The _Julian_ family, therefore, still ruled Rome, and in describing how Aeneas, father of the _Julians_ , suffered in founding his city, Virgil is paying tribute to the contemporary Julian in his palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome.\n\n#### _Aeneas and the Gods_\n\nFor six years Aeneas and the remnants of his people were driven across the Mediterranean by the anger of the goddess Juno, and yet as early as the tenth line of the poem we learn that Aeneas had done no wrong, but on the contrary was famous for his piety. This introduces the divine machinery which so enriches the poem. At a lowly level it unfolds the comedy of manners of the divine family. But more seriously, it raises insoluble problems about the relationship between man and god, between Juno, queen of the gods, and Jupiter their king, and between ineluctable Fate and the will of omnipotent Jupiter; and, crucially, about the function of the will of human beings whom the gods seem to control and, when they wish, destroy. 'Can there be so much anger in the hearts of the heavenly gods?' asks Virgil in the eleventh line of the _Aeneid_ , and the poem is, among other things, a meditation on that problem, which, in one formulation or another, is still with us.\n\nWhen the narrative begins after a short preamble, the Trojan ships are caught in a storm and driven ashore on the Syrtes. These were sandbanks on the north coast of Africa, east of the new city of Carthage, just founded by Phoenicians who had come from Sidon on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean. Venus sees this and with tears flooding her eyes pleads with her father, Jupiter, to put an end to her son's suffering and to honour his promise that Aeneas would live to found the Roman race. Jupiter smiles at his daughter and assures her that his will has not changed. Romulus, son of Ilia (and therefore a Julian), will indeed found the city of Rome and give his name to his people, on whom will be imposed no limits of time or space. And in time to come another Julian will conquer the world and give it peace. Praise of Augustus thus appears in a prophecy of the king of the gods, uttered a millennium before Augustus was born.\n\n#### _Aeneas Meets Dido_\n\nVenus descends in disguise, teases her son, wraps him in a mist of invisibility and guides him to Carthage. There he gazes at the new temple of Juno with its representations of the Trojan War including a depiction of himself in the confusion of battle, and weeps to see that all men knew what Troy had suffered. 'Here too,' he says, 'there are tears for suffering and men's hearts are touched by what man has to bear' (462) ( _sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt_ ). Dido then arrives and Aeneas sees the comrades whom he had assumed to be drowned coming to ask her assistance. When she responds graciously, Venus dissolves the cloud in which she has concealed Aeneas, and Dido and Aeneas meet.\n\nThe book ends with a description of the banquet which Dido gives in honour of her Trojan guests. But Venus suspects that Juno, the goddess of Carthage, may do her son some mischief while he is in the city. To protect him she decides to make Dido love him, and effects this by sending her rascally young son Cupid to drive her insane with love. As the men drink their wine, the doomed queen begs Aeneas to tell the story of the fall and sack of his city.\n\n#### _The_ Aeneid _and Carthage_\n\nThe _Aeneid_ tells the tale of a legendary hero, but it also casts a long shadow over a thousand years of Roman history. Rome's greatest danger had been the three Punic Wars fought against Carthage from 264 to 146 BC, in the second of which Hannibal had destroyed Roman armies and overrun the Italian peninsula. The end came in 146 BC when Carthage was razed to the ground and ploughed with salt. The first and fourth books of the _Aeneid_ contain pre-echoes of that traumatic conflict. We sense the dramatic irony as Aeneas describes in such detail the building of Carthage \u2013 ' _Their_ walls are already rising!' he says enviously (437). We know that his Romans were to destroy them. When Aeneas offers Dido his heartfelt gratitude and promises that she will be praised for all time in every land to which he is called, we know that his descendants will destroy, not praise, her descendants. When she prays that her people should always remember the day of the banquet, we know how they will remember it, and as she invokes kindly Juno, the goddess of marriage and of Carthage, we know that the goddess of Carthage will use a false marriage to destroy its queen.\n\n### BOOK 2  \nTHE FALL OF TROY\n\n_This book takes the form of a flashback, as Aeneas tells the banqueters the story of the fall of Troy. The Greeks had erected a huge wooden horse and persuaded the Trojans to drag it into the city. In the dead of night Greek soldiers pour from the horse and open the gates to their comrades. The Trojans put up a fierce but hopeless resistance, and Aeneas escapes from the city with his father and his son._\n\n#### _The Deception of the Trojans_\n\nAfter ten years of hard fighting around Troy, the Greeks act as though they are giving up the siege. They build a huge wooden horse outside the walls, fill it with their best soldiers and sail away, pretending that it is an offering for their safe return to Greece. But they go only as far as the offshore island of Tenedos and leave Sinon behind to persuade the Trojans to take the horse into the city. Laocoon, the priest of Neptune, warns the Trojans not to trust the Greeks. 'I am afraid of Greeks,' he says, 'even when they bear gifts' (49). But Sinon appears and the Trojans are persuaded. This speech of Sinon's is at once an expos\u00e9 of the decadence of contemporary Greeks in Roman eyes, and a satire on the corruption of ancient rhetoric, a satire sharpened by several interjections by a naive and gullible audience. (The nearest thing in English is Antony's funeral oration in Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_ with the inane interjections of the crowd.) Once again Laocoon protests, but the gods are against the Trojans. Two serpents come out of the sea and kill the priest of Neptune and his two sons. The Trojans breach their walls and drag in the horse.\n\n#### _The Courage of Aeneas_\n\nIn all of this book Virgil has a difficulty. His hero is the leading Trojan warrior and he has survived the sack of his city. Since Aeneas himself is speaking, he cannot blatantly advertise his own courage, but at every point in his speech Virgil is careful to give him words which leave no possibility that he could be thought guilty of cowardice or even of misjudgement. The first example of this is that Aeneas is not said to be one of the Trojans who ignored the warnings of Laocoon or were duped by Sinon. He does not enter the stage until a third of the way through the book, when Hector, appearing to him as he sleeps, tells him that Troy is doomed and orders him, as only Hector could, to abandon Troy and carry its gods to a new city across the sea. Ignoring these orders, Aeneas plunges into a hopeless battle where the only safety for the defeated is to hope for none. A few Trojans gather around him and they try the stratagem of carrying Greek shields emblazoned with Greek insignia. But although this wins them their only moment of success, the leader in this dubious tactic is not Aeneas, not even a Trojan, but Coroebus, who had arrived in Troy only a few days before. Inevitably their ruse is detected and they are overwhelmed. Aeneas is swept by the tide of battle to the palace of King Priam, the last centre of resistance. Here he joins the few surviving Trojans on the roof in levering down a tower, and rolling beams and gilded ceilings down on the heads of the Greeks. From there he sees Priam's wounded son, Polites, come rushing into the palace pursued by Pyrrhus and die at his father's feet. Aged as he is, Priam challenges Pyrrhus and is killed. Here we might have asked why Aeneas saw this and lived to tell the tale. We might have asked why Aeneas did not come down off the roof and try to avenge his king. Virgil has forestalled that thinking by the very next words of Aeneas: 'There came into my mind the image of my own dear father, as I looked at the king who was his equal in age breathing out his life with that cruel wound. There came into my mind also my wife Creusa...and the fate of young Iulus' (560\u201363). His divine mother now strips the mortal mist from his eyes and shows him a fearful vision of the Olympian gods tearing his city apart. Resistance now would be absurd. Venus escorts him to his home and he asks his father to leave Troy with him. Anchises refuses. In despair, Aeneas puts on his armour again and is rushing out to die in battle when fire is suddenly seen playing around Iulus' head. As _paterfamilias_ , father and priest of the family, Anchises prays to the gods for confirmation of the portent, and they see a star falling from the sky and ploughing its fiery path on Mount Ida. Anchises accepts the will of the gods and agrees to leave the city.\n\nAt this moment, the beginning of the history of Rome, Aeneas lifts his father up on his shoulders, takes his son in his left hand and his sword in his right, and with Creusa walking behind he passes through the burning city, starting at every breath of wind. When they gather with a few other fugitives outside the walls there comes what for Aeneas was the cruellest thing he saw in all the sack of the city. Creusa is lost. He girds on his armour and rushes back into the captured city calling out her name at the top of his voice. Creusa appears to him and assures him that it is not the will of the gods that she should stay with him. She has no part to play in the great future that lies before him. Aeneas is to go with her blessing and never fail in his love for their son.\n\nAeneas has done all that a man could do. He goes back to the tattered remains of the people of Troy, hoists his father on to his shoulders and leads the way into the mountains.\n\n### BOOK 3  \nTHE WANDERINGS\n\n_The flashback continues as Aeneas now gives an account of the wanderings of the Trojans after the fall of their city. After six years of hardship and failure, guided and misguided by prophecies and dreams, they arrive at Epirus in north-west Greece and are welcomed by another group of Trojan refugees, the priest-king Helenus and his wife, Andromache, once the wife of Hector. They had built a small-scale replica of Troy, but that was never going to be the solution for Aeneas, whosedestiny was to found a great new city. Aeneas and his little fleet set sail again, and as they approach Sicily they follow the directions of Helenus and veer away south to circumnavigate it rather than go through the strait guarded by Scylla and Charybdis. At last they put in at Drepanum on the north-west tip of the island, where Anchises dies. So, at the banquet given by Dido, Aeneas ends his story of the fall of Troy._\n\n### BOOK 4  \nDIDO\n\n_Dido now loves Aeneas and Juno arranges a kind of marriage in order to keep him with Dido and prevent him from founding the city which was fated to destroy her beloved Carthage. Jupiter reminds Aeneas of his destiny and orders him to leave Dido. She senses that he is going to abandon her and builds a great pyre, ostensibly to cure herself of love by burning the relics of Aeneas' stay. She curses Aeneas, calls upon her Carthaginians to wage eternal war against his people and dies in the flames._\n\n#### _Dido's Guilt?_\n\nThis book has gripped the imagination of readers for two millennia as a love story and as such it needs little comment. Part of its power may come from the eternal questions it raises and does not answer: the suffering of the innocent and the deceived, the conflict between love and duty, and the relationship between free will and irresistible fate.\n\nThe case against Dido could not be put more harshly than she puts it herself in her first speech and at line 552. When her husband died, she swore an oath that she would never love another man, and broke it to love Aeneas. Against that self-condemnation a substantial defence could be erected. Would it not be inhuman to hold a wife to such an oath taken in the moment of bereavement? It would certainly be harsh to condemn her to death for breaking it. Would any widow be condemned for marrying again? Certainly not in Virgil's Rome. This case can be supported by the personal and political arguments in favour of marriage put so persuasively by Dido's own sister.\n\nBut the clinching consideration is probably the unscrupulous cynicism of the two goddesses who engineer Dido's destruction for their own ends. To protect her son Aeneas, Venus has already driven Dido into madness. Now, to block his destiny to found a city, Juno proposes that Aeneas should settle in Carthage as Dido's husband. Venus, the daughter of Jupiter, has already been told by Jupiter himself that all this is totally contrary to his will, but she dissembles and urges Juno, the wife of Jupiter, to go and put this proposal to her husband. The two shrews play out their charade, each pursuing her own ends. Juno sets up a false marriage with herself as matron of honour, nymphs howling the wedding hymn and the fires of heaven's lightning instead of marriage torches. The powerless human being is crushed between two goddesses.\n\nThis is to read the interview between them as a comedy of manners, a family squabble in Olympus. But the divine machinery allows us to hold in our minds a different view of Dido's motivation. The quarrel between the goddesses could be seen as a dramatization of her emotions, the internal turmoil between love for Aeneas, longing for marriage, loyalty to her dead husband and duty to the city of which she is queen.\n\nBe that as it may, the case against her is not strong. We are left bewildered and Virgil means us to be. At line 172 he says explicitly that she is guilty, she 'called it marriage, using the word to cover her guilt'. On the other hand Juno, showing consideration at last, cuts short Dido's death agony because her death is undeserved. Virgil knows better than to propose solutions to problems that can never be solved.\n\n#### _Aeneas' Love_\n\nAeneas loved Dido. We have this from Virgil after each of her first two appeals to him. But when Jupiter sends his messenger, Aeneas instantly decides to leave her. Once again the divine machinery provides double motivation. We have heard the voice of Jupiter in all his majesty and seen the brilliant flight of Mercury. At another level we could sense this as a dramatization of a sudden victory of duty over desire in Aeneas' heart. Modern susceptibilities are offended, not least by his decision not to tell Dido \u2013 yet. This is a shrewd observation by Virgil of the sort of thing men do, and may well increase our sympathy for Dido. Aeneas is condemned also for the cold formality of his response to Dido's appeals. On this count, however, it is more difficult to fault him. Her speeches are passionate, yet full of tight logic. At their first meeting after Dido divines that he is going to leave her, she hurls argument after argument. Given that he has taken an irreversible decision to leave her, he answers the points to which answer is possible in the best imaginable way. It all comes down to his statement that it is not by his will that he goes to Italy. Modern views of his behaviour tend to be severe. But it does not make sense that Aeneas, founder of the Roman race and ancestor of Augustus, should behave contemptibly in this Roman epic written by Virgil in praise of his patron. True, Aeneas' decision not to tell Dido the truth immediately, shows him in a moment of weakness, and his replies to her are cold and feeble. But Aeneas is the hero of the poem, and his weakness and misery in this book are a measure of Virgil's human understanding, not a demolition of the character of the hero of his epic.\n\nThese are the problems that linger after a reading of this book. The _Aeneid_ would be a weaker poem if they could be solved. Dido's fault, if fault there was, did not merit the punishment she received. Why then did she receive it? Aeneas put duty before love at the behest of the gods, and Dido and others have despised him for it. Was he then despicable? The goddesses are spiteful and heartless, but can we not imagine that Dido would have behaved as she did in a godless world, and that Aeneas would have left her even if Mercury had never swooped down from Mount Atlas to a roof in Carthage? All these questions are set in the context of Roman history. In one of Dido's last speeches, for instance, she prophesies the Punic Wars and Hannibal's invasion of Italy although she could not know the name of the avenger who would arise from her dead bones (622\u20139). These Roman questions touch upon human life in any era.\n\n### BOOK 5  \nFUNERAL GAMES\n\n_On their way to Italy the Trojans are caught in another storm and run before the winds back to Sicily where Anchises had died precisely one year before. Aeneas celebrates rites in his honour and holds funeral games. Weary with their wanderings, the Trojan women fire the ships, and Aeneas decides to leave the women, children and old men in Sicily in a city ruled by Acestes, the Trojan who had been their host in Sicily. Aeneas' steersman Palinurus is lost overboard on the voyage to Italy_.\n\n#### _Roman Religion_\n\nThe tragedy of Book 4 is followed by the games of Book 5, but first Aeneas looks back at Carthage and sees the flames rising from the pyre on which Dido is dying. None of the Trojans knows what is causing the fire but their hearts are filled with foreboding, soon to be fulfilled by the storm which forces them to return to the place where Anchises had died. Here the piety of Aeneas shows in the scrupulous care with which he performs, for the first time in history, the rites of the _Parentalia_ , the Roman festival of the dead, in honour of his father, who now becomes a god. The _Aeneid_ is authenticating contemporary Roman religious practice by attributing its origins to the founder of the Julian family, and at the same time authenticating the stress upon the revitalization of Roman religion so dear to the heart of the contemporary Julian, Augustus.\n\n#### _Aeneas the Leader_\n\nThere are tears at the heart of things, _sunt lacrimae rerum_ , and for the Victorians Virgil was often seen as a sad presence brooding on the griefs of humanity. On the other hand, throughout these funeral games Aeneas is cheerful, inspiriting, active, efficient, statesmanlike, and a sensitive leader of his men. He sets up the branch on an island to mark the turning point for the boat-race. He gives munificent prizes to every competitor, even to Sergestus when his ship limps home last. He is amused by the effrontery of Nisus and skilfully defuses a nasty situation when Nisus and Salius squabble over the prizes. He tries with a joke to tempt a challenger into the ring with the formidable Dares. When this fails, he conspires with Acestes to tempt the old champion Entellus to put on his gloves again, and when Entellus is on the rampage in this great boxing match, it is Aeneas who saves the life of Dares and shows supreme tact in consoling him for his defeat. He shows his statesman-like vision in acknowledging the blessing of the gods on his Trojan host, Acestes. When the competitive events are over he allows no gap. He has seen to everything. All he has to do to set in motion the grand cavalry display of the Trojan boys is to whisper a word in the ear of a young friend of Ascanius. Throughout, Father Aeneas cares like a father for his people, grieving when he is persuaded that it is the the will of the gods and the wisest course that he should leave the women and children in Sicily in the new city of Segesta he founds for them under Acestes. Once again, the _Aeneid_ looks forward from the legendary past to more recent events. (In the Punic Wars Segesta was to side with Rome.)\n\nThroughout the poem Aeneas is said to be _pius_. But Roman _pietas_ is not the same as our piety. It is not simply a matter of respecting the gods. Pietas requires that a man should do what is due and right not only by his gods, but also for his city, his family, his friends and his enemies. Apart from his lapse in Book 4, Aeneas is its embodiment, and it shows vividly here. Perhaps this is part of the explanation of Montaigne's view that the fifth book of the _Aeneid_ seems to be the most perfect ('le cinquiesme livre de l'Aeneide me semble le plus parfaict', _Essays_ 2.10).\n\n### BOOK 6  \nTHE UNDERWORLD\n\n_Aeneas arrives in Italy at last, landing at Cumae just north of the Bay of Naples. There he consults the Sibyl, begging her to allow him to go down to the Underworld to see his father Anchises. She agrees to escort him on condition that he finds a golden branch in a dark tree and buries the body of Misenus, a comrade who has been drowned. These tasks he achieves andin the Underworld they meet, in reverse order of their deaths, Palinurus, Dido and heroes who had died at Troy. They proceed to the place of eternal torture of the damned and to the Fields of the Blessed where they find Anchises, who explains the creation of the universe and the origin of life, and takes them to see a parade of great Romans of the future marching up family by family towards the light of life._\n\n#### _Why the Underworld?_\n\nWhy did Virgil send his hero down into the Underworld? In Virgil there is often more than one answer to a question. The simple explanation is that this allows him the emotional intensity of the scenes where Aeneas meets dead friends and enemies \u2013 his pilot Palinurus drowned in the crossing to Cumae, Dido ignoring his tears and words of love, Trojans who had died at the sack of the city, Greeks fleeing at his approach. This episode is also a watershed in the plot. In the Underworld Aeneas faces his memories and is given a view of the future. From this time forth he is looking towards the destiny of Rome. Another factor in Virgil's decision must have been the Homeric model. Virgil is writing a Latin epic to stand beside the great epics of the Greeks. Odysseus had conversed with the shades over a trench filled with blood; Aeneas, too, will converse with the dead. The resemblances are obvious, but the differences are profound. There are two eloquent silences in classical epic. In the _Odyssey_ Ajax, the great rival of Odysseus, stood aloof and would not speak, but went to join the other souls of the dead in Erebus. In the _Aeneid_ Dido refuses to speak to Aeneas, but rushes off into a dark wood to rejoin Sychaeus who had been her husband. Virgil plunders Homer, and refashions what he takes.\n\nThe descent to the Underworld has also a philosophical dimension. Virgil puts on the lips of Anchises an explanation of the creation of the world and of the nature of life and death. Just as Plato ends _The Republic_ with the Myth of Er, who tells how he died in battle and saw the souls of the dead waiting to rise again to rebirth, so Anchises shows to Aeneas the procession of his descendants moving up towards the light of life. The end of Book 6 is philosophy in epic.\n\nIt is also politics. Almost nine-tenths of the heroes represented in this parade are members of the Julian family. In a Roman funeral the masks of the ancestors were carried through the streets to their tombs while fathers would retail to their sons the achievements of their forefathers. In Virgil's pageant of the heroes, the dead go in procession by families, not to their tombs along the Appian Way, but up to glorious rebirth while Anchises predicts their great achievements to his son. This book therefore ends with a funeral in reverse, culminating in a eulogy of the Julian family of Augustus and an obituary of his nephew, son-inlaw and heir designate, young Marcellus; it is so powerful that Marcellus' mother swooned when she heard Virgil speak it. The _Aeneid_ is a poem set in the distant heroic past. To make it a political poem relevant to his own times, one of Virgil's strategies is to include praise of Augustus in prophecies like the great speeches of Jupiter near the beginning and end of the poem, the history of the wars of Rome depicted on the prophetic shield of Aeneas at the end of Book 8 and here in the Parade of Future Romans, the prophecy which Anchises delivers to embolden his son with this vision of the destiny which lies before his family.\n\nThis is all fiction. The pageant is invented by Virgil. We do not know what Virgil's beliefs were about the creation of the world or the transmigration of souls. Just as Plato's myths are not meant to be taken as the literal truth but as stories resembling truth, so, after what started as a narrative of a journey and ends as a dream, Aeneas leaves the Underworld not by the Gate of Horn, the gate of true shades, but by the Gate of Ivory which sends up false dreams towards the heavens. At the beginning of the first century BC Meleager, in introducing the epigrams included in his _Garland_ , had given Plato a golden branch to carry as his emblem. Perhaps the Golden Bough and the Gate of Ivory in the _Aeneid_ are there to give us notice that the philosophy at the end of this book and the Parade of Future Romans are, like the Platonic myths, falsehoods resembling the truth.\n\nFor an explanation of the details in the Parade of Future Romans in the underworld, see Appendix I.\n\n### BOOK 7  \nWAR IN LATIUM\n\n_Aeneas and his fleet sail into the mouth of the River Tiber and build a camp on its banks. Latinus, the king of Latium, welcomes them and offers Aeneas his daughter, Lavinia, in marriage. Seeing this, Juno sends down her agent Allecto to stir up resentment against Aeneas. She persuades Queen Amata to oppose Aeneas' marriage and whips up Turnus, a neighbouring Latin prince, to go to war against the Trojans. She then engineers a skirmish between the local people of Latium and a Trojan hunting party led by Ascanius. War has begun_.\n\n#### _Turnus and Allecto_\n\nTurnus, prince of Ardea, had hopes of marriage to Latinus' daughter and succession to his throne, and Queen Amata supported him. But when Allecto, disguised as an aged priestess, visited him in his sleep and urged him to war, he rebuffed her: 'Leave peace and war to men. War is the business of men' (444). Enraged, she threw a burning torch into his heart, and he woke sweating with terror and roaring for his armour. So much for the mythical narrative. At another level this could be read as an account of how a man's rational assessment was overturned in the small hours by patriotic passion and rankling sexual jealousy. The narrative has treble power: as a vision of the supernatural, as an account of an emotional experience and as a dramatic scene between an old woman (who is more than a woman) and a tactless, passionate and impressionable young man.\n\n#### _The Catalogue of Italian Allies_\n\nJust as Homer provides in the second book of the _Iliad_ a catalogue of the Greek ships that sailed against Troy, so here Virgil supplies a catalogue of the Italians who fought against the Trojans. To us it may read as an arid, largely alphabetical list of anthropological curiosities and meaningless place names: Caeculus, found as a baby on a burning hearth at Praeneste, Abellans with their boomerangs, a snake-charming priest from Marruvium, etc. But this list would have struck Virgil's audience quite differently. Many Romans had ties with the country districts of Italy, and would have been moved by this as a celebration of their local cultures, their links with Greece, the myths of Italy, local dress styles, armour, religion, even landscape, as in the twins of Tibur\/Tivoli like Centaurs plunging down a steep forest in Greece, which is not unlike the tree-clad cliff on which their city of Tibur stands.\n\nItaly was a crucial part of Augustus' power base, and at 8.678 Virgil visualizes Augustus leading the men of Italy against the forces of the East under Antony and Cleopatra. 'Of its own free will,' claims the Julian Augustus himself in his official obituary ( _Res Gestae_ 25), 'the whole of Italy swore allegiance to me and demanded me as leader for the war in which I was victorious at Actium.' Although the Italians go to war against the Julian Aeneas, they are never slighted in the _Aeneid_. At the end the stock of Rome is to be 'made mighty by the manly courage of Italy' (12.821\u20137). At a political level this catalogue of the peoples of Italy is a hymn to the indigenous peoples of Italy, and it accords with the stated policy of Augustus.\n\n### BOOK 8  \nAENEAS IN ROME\n\n_With the blessing of the god of the River Tiber, Aeneas goes to the village of Pallanteum, on what is later known as the Palatine, one of the seven hills of Rome. Here King Evander describes how Hercules had saved them from the ravages of the monster Cacus and tells the story of Mezentius, a brutal Etruscan despot who has been dethroned by his subjects and is being harboured by Turnus. Evander tells Aeneas of a prophecy which forbids the Etruscans to be led by an Italian, and advises him to go with a detachment of cavalry led by his son Pallas, to claim leadership of all the armies opposed to the Latins. Venus, concerned for her son's safety against these formidable enemies, persuades Vulcan to make new armour for Aeneas, including a prophetic shield depicting the future wars of Rome._\n\n#### _The Politics_\n\nThis is not a book of intense dramatic incidents or heroic deeds, but it is vital to the argument of the _Aeneid_. On the face of it the Trojans are invaders in a foreign country, seizing land and power from the rightful inhabitants. But these aggressors are the ancestors of the Romans, and their leader Aeneas is the founder of the Julian family. A vital part of Augustus' policy was his claim to be the beneficent leader of Italians as well as Romans against the barbarian East, and yet here at the dawn of Roman history his ancestor Aeneas is leading Orientals, that is the Trojans, against the native peoples of Italy. Book 8 tackles this difficulty and provides justification not only for Aeneas but also for Augustus' rule over Italy.\n\nThe Romans loved their river, and Virgil's first step is to show Father Tiber welcoming Aeneas to Latium. The opening of the book makes it clear, on the evidence of the god of the river, that Latium, in the centre of Italy, is the home decreed by the gods for Aeneas and his people. The second step is to provide historical warrant for the presence of the Trojans on Italian soil. This is achieved when Aeneas visits the future site of Rome, Pallanteum, a settlement of Greeks from Arcadia, and points out to its king, Evander, that Dardanus, father of the Trojan people, had been born in Italy, and that Evander and himself were both descended from the god Atlas. Evander in turn recognizes Aeneas as the son of Anchises whom he had known and admired in his youth, and explains that the two families are therefore linked by the sacred tie of guest-friendship. Hence the lengthy genealogical discussions when Aeneas first meets Evander (pp. 296\u2013).\n\nWe have seen that Virgil expresses contemporary issues in his legendary tale by means of prophecies and visions, but there is another subtler technique at work in this book. Hercules had saved the settlement of Pallanteum from the ravages of the monster Cacus and had deigned to accept Evander's hospitality. Now, on the very day of Hercules' festival, arrives Aeneas who has also saved his people, will also stoop to enter that same little hut and will go on to found a city which will move to Pallanteum and become the city of Rome. There is a third saviour involved in this story. Rome was again saved, in Virgil's day, by Augustus, who returned to Rome after the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium on 12 August 29 BC, the first day of the Festival of Hercules, and who now lives simply and modestly in his house in what was Pallanteum and is now the Palatine Hill. 'You...must have the courage to despise wealth,' says Evander as he invites Aeneas to enter his simple little hut. 'You must mould yourself to be worthy of the god' (364\u20135). The god is Hercules. Aeneas himself will become a god. But now Augustus, famed for the simplicity of his daily life and another saviour of Rome, is dwelling on that same spot, and he, too, will be a god.\n\nAn important part of the story of Rome is the long series of wars by which she subdued the peoples of Italy, culminating in the fierce and bloody Social War of 90\u201388 BC. Just as the defeat of Cacus is a pre-enactment of the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, and the arrival of Aeneas at Pallanteum is a pre-enactment of the return of Augustus, so the war in Italy in the second half of the _Aeneid_ is a pre-enactment of the Social War. This is why the Latins who confront Aeneas are presented as courageous and virtuous peoples, eventually defeated but never disgraced. This why they are put in the wrong not for any vices of their own, but by the malice of Juno and the fact that Turnus, prince of the Latin city of Ardea, is harbouring Mezentius, a tyrant whose vices would attract adverse comment even in our own day. The other Etruscans are baying for his blood, but they are waiting for a leader and a prophecy has said that they must not be led by any man of Italy. So the scene is set. Aeneas has an ancestor who came from Italy; he has a guest-friend and relative in Evander to justify his presence in Italy; he has allies in Etruria who have just cause to go to war and need a leader. Aeneas' presence and position in Italy are therefore legitimated. This has implications for the whole Julian family, and in particular for its contemporary representative who rules Italy and the whole known world from his house on the hill which had been Pallanteum.\n\n#### _The Humanity_\n\nThis discussion has moved into the politics of the epic, but the first thing to grasp about the _Aeneid_ is its humanity. In this part of the poem we may be struck by two recurring motifs: the beauty of youth and the depth of the love between parent and child. Pallas, son of Evander, is an important figure. We meet him for the first time when the masts of Aeneas' ships are seen gliding through the trees on the banks of the Tiber, and we can gauge his ardour and courage as he leaps up to confront these formidable strangers. Evander in his young days had known Anchises, and the joy with which he recognizes his old friend's son testifies to the warmth of his admiration. Then later, when he explains that he is too old to go to war, and gives Aeneas charge of young Pallas on his first campaign, we are left in no doubt of the intensity of Evander's love for his son and the solemnity of the responsibility he lays upon Aeneas.\n\nThere is another very different manifestation of parental affection, when Venus, alarmed by the formidable Italians whom Aeneas is about to confront in battle, persuades her husband Vulcan, the god of fire, to make a shield for the son she bore to her mortal lover Anchises. When Venus persuades, she seduces. Vulcan then sleeps and rises early to go to work in his foundry, and his rising is compared to the early rising of a virtuous peasant woman who goes to work in order to keep chaste her husband's bed and bring her young sons to manhood. It is impossible to feel secure about the tone of this astonishing episode. It is probably a contribution to the comedy of the divine in the _Aeneid_ , but it certainly is also a demonstration of Venus' motherly concern for her son, and a tribute to the courage and prowess of the people of Italy, and therefore a part of the politics of the _Aeneid_.\n\n#### _Art Described in Epic_\n\nThere never was such a shield as Virgil describes, but he does his best to make us believe in it. There are repeated references to colours, like the silver geese in the golden portico and the golden torques on the milk-white (does that suggest ivory?) necks of the Gauls scaling the Capitol in their striped cloaks. There are suggestions of texture in the she-wolf bending back her neck to lick the twin babies into shape, in matrons in cushioned carriages, in blood dripping from bramble bushes or reddening the furrows of Neptune's fields. There are vivid scenes: the rape of the Sabine women, Augustus at Actium with the Julian Star shining over his head, the River Araxes furious at being bridged. There are sound effects, as so often in descriptions of works of art in classical epic: when we hear at the Battle of Actium the barking of the dog-headed god Anubis; the cracking of the bloody whip of Bellona; the babel of all the tongues of the earth in the triumphal procession in Rome. There is also serial narration depicting successive episodes of a narrative all within the same frame, as when Cleopatra's fleet advances, Apollo draws his bow, Cleopatra pays out the sail ropes for flight, runs before the wind for Egypt, and at the last the Nile, with grief in every lineament of his body, beckons his defeated people into his blue-grey breast and secret waters.\n\nThis is a vivid description of an imaginary work of art. It is also praise of Augustus. Three-fifths of this depiction of 'the story of Italy and the triumphs of the Romans' (626) are devoted to Augustus' defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium, and in line with Augustan propaganda the name of Antony is never mentioned. Civil war is presented as though it were a conflict between the barbarian East and the civilized world of the West. Augustus also received a shield, the Shield of Valour, presented to him by the Senate and People of Rome to honour his courage, clemency, justice and piety.\n\nFor an explanation of the details of the Shield of Aeneas, see Appendix II.\n\n### BOOK 9  \nNISUS AND EURYALUS\n\n_When Aeneas and Pallas are on their mission to the Etruscans, the Trojan camp is attacked by Turnus and his Rutulians. In accordance with the strict instructions given by Aeneas, theTrojans close the gates and decline battle. Nisus and Euryalus die on a night foray and Ascanius kills Numanus. The siege continues and Turnus breaks into the Trojan camp. In his fury and folly he slaughters Trojans instead of opening the gates, and eventually is forced to withdraw and swim the Tiber fully armed to return to his men._\n\n#### _Nisus and Euryalus_\n\nVirgil was moved by the glory and the grief of the deaths of the young in battle. His story of Nisus and Euryalus is also a delicate portrayal of the passionate love between two young men. Less obviously, it is a negative example. By their blunders and their impetuosity, by their neglect of the disciplines of war and above all by their failure to show respect to the gods, they are standing exemplars of what Aeneas is not.\n\nThe crucial mistake by Nisus is to take young Euryalus with him on this perilous mission. In a similar situation in Homer's _Iliad_ , Diomede chose as his companion Odysseus, the cleverest of the Greeks\u2013'the skill of his mind is with out equal'\u2013and Odysseus justified the choice. Here Nisus does not want Euryalus to go with him, but allows the younger man to take the crucial decision. It is Euryalus who wakes sentries to keep guard for Nisus and himself when they go to tell the council of their plan.\n\nThe council of chosen Trojan warriors is also at fault. The original plan suggested by Nisus was to take a message to Aeneas, but now the young heroes propose to set an ambush, kill large numbers of the enemy and come back laden with booty. Aletes, though 'heavy with years and mature in judgement' (246), approves this madcap scheme, and young Ascanius enthusiastically welcomes it, promising all manner of extravagant rewards, including the horse of Turnus, the enemy leader.\n\nThey set out, enter the Rutulian camp and slaughter their sleeping enemies where they lie. Nisus eventually realizes that daylight is coming and checks Euryalus, but still allows him to put on armour he had plundered from the dead \u2013 medallions, a gold-studded belt, a helmet with gorgeous plumes. The helmet is their undoing. A passing detachment of three hundred cavalry catches sight of it glinting in the moonlight. Nisus escapes but Euryalus is captured, hampered by the booty he is carrying. Nisus sees him being carried off by the enemy and breaks cover in a hopeless attempt at rescue. Whenever Aeneas begins an undertaking, he prays to the great gods, to Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Mars or to his mother. But here Ascanius swears by his own head, and Nisus by chance, Vesta, his household gods, the sky and the stars. At the end, when his beloved Euryalus is in mortal danger, Nisus prays at last, but prays only to Diana, the moon goddess, who had just betrayed them.\n\nThere are no doubts about their ardour or their courage or their love, and Virgil steps out of his role as anonymous narrator to salute them and rejoice in their immortality, but he has already made it plain that the weaknesses of youth, lack of judgement, of discipline and of piety are not the stuff of which Roman leaders are made. Aeneas is a different kind of man.\n\n#### _Ascanius Kills Numanus_\n\nBefore his return Ascanius will have had his baptism of fire. A young Latin warrior, husband of the sister of Turnus, Numanus Remulus speaks up for the Latins against these effeminate incomers from the East. The Latins are a race of hardy sons of toil, and these 'Phrygians' from Troy are effete, with their saffron and purple robes and their sleeved and beribboned bonnets. They are women, not men, playing tambourines and flutes in their dubious women's rites on Mount Ida. This is the case against the Trojans and it has to be answered because the Trojans are the ancestors of the Romans. Ascanius gives the only possible answer, and Apollo instantly withdraws him from the battle, but not before prophesying the glory of his descendants. 'This is the way,' he tells Iulus, 'that leads to the stars. You are born of the gods and will live to be the father of gods' (642), and Virgil's audience would have taken the point. At Caesar's funeral games a comet appeared, which was hailed by the common people as proof that Caesar had been received among the gods. We have already had sightings of this Julian Star at critical moments in Julian history, at 2.694 when Anchises consents to leave Troy and at 8.681 on Octavian's helmet at Actium. It was also generally understood in the twenties BC that Augustus, his adoptive son, would be deified. Finally, the peace which Apollo proceeds to prophesy is the _Pax Augusta_ , the peace which Augustus was promising to bring to the whole Roman world, coming not from Troy, but from a much greater city. As Apollo says, 'Troy is not large enough for you' (644). The honour of the Julians is thus vindicated by Ascanius Iulus, and his descendants are cleared of the imputations levelled by Numanus.\n\n### BOOK 10  \nPALLAS AND MEZENTIUS\n\n_Aeneas returns at the head of the Etruscan armies. Turnus kills Pallas and tears the belt off his dead body. As Aeneas slaughters the Latins in an orgy of revenge, Juno saves Turnus from his fury by spiriting him from the battlefield. Mezentius takes his place, and in battle with Aeneas his life is saved by the intervention of his young son Lausus. Aeneas kills Lausus, and the wounded Mezentius challenges him and dies in single combat._\n\n#### _The Council of the Gods_\n\nJupiter opens the debate of the council of the gods by asking why Italians are at war with Trojans against his express will. Strange. After all he is omniscient \u2013 he knows the answer to all questions, and he is omnipotent \u2013 his will is the unalterable decree of fate. That is the theology, but in epic theology does not always apply. Sometimes Jupiter is not the all-powerful lord of the universe, but the father of a rowdy family where there is constant trouble between jealous wife and unruly daughter. The gods in epic sweep the action to the heights, as at the beginning and end of his episode. They also pull it down to the level of domestic comedy, as when Venus and Juno wrangle in council like a pair of rhetorically trained fishwives.\n\nVenus complains that after all these years her son is still homeless and his people are under siege again, this time on Italian soil; Juno says that if they are suffering, it is by their own choice. Venus pretends to believe that the destiny of empire pronounced by Jupiter at the beginning of the epic is being altered; Juno's reply is that the Trojans are not fulfilling their destiny, but obeying the prophecies of a madwoman, Priam's daughter Cassandra. Venus objects to the storm Juno raised against Aeneas in Book 1; Juno wilfully misunderstands and says that Aeneas' voyage back from Etruria is none of her doing. In Venus' view Turnus is swollen with his success in war; for Juno he is taking his stand in defence of his native land. Venus grumbles because she is at risk from the violence of mere mortals; Juno's reply sketches Turnus' descent from the gods of Italy. Venus tries to rouse pity for the Trojans because of the absence of Aeneas; Juno advises him to stay away. It is an established device of ancient oratory to appeal for clemency by bringing in the children of the defendant at the end of a speech. Venus brings in Ascanius, and begs to be allowed, if all else is lost, to take him to safety in one of her beautiful sanctuaries in Amathus, Paphos, Cythera or Idalium; Juno taunts her by telling her to be content with Paphos, Idalium and Cythera and to keep away from these rough Italians. Point by point Juno has stripped down Venus' arguments, offering two lies for every one by Venus and adding half-a-dozen new ones of her own.\n\nThe speeches of Sinon in Book 2 were a satirical attack upon Roman rhetoric, the technical study of the arts of persuasion on which Roman education was based. This clash between Venus and Juno is the _coup de gr\u00e2ce_. Why should Virgil launch these attacks upon the false values of Roman rhetoric? An obvious approach to this question would be to connect it with the political conditions of the day. In the first century BC the Roman republic was torn apart by the rivalries of ambitious men, fought out not only on battlefields but also in political debates in the Senate and in political trials in the courts. In both arenas, lies, calumny, melodrama, confrontational debate, all the vices of rhetoric, had been common coin. The Augustan settlement took the power from these arenas and lodged it with the _princeps_ , and the style of government changed. Augustus had no love for the liberties which had destroyed the republic and had no intention of allowing them to weaken his own position. We may remember that Anchises in the Underworld started his litany of the areas in which Greeks would surpass Romans by saying 'Others will plead cases better' (6.849), a calculated obliteration of the memory of Rome's greatest orator. Augustus had connived at the killing of Cicero in 43 BC. He would also have enjoyed Virgil's demolition of rhetoric.\n\n#### _The Death of Mezentius_\n\nAccording to an ancient commentator the _Aeneid_ is written to imitate Homer and to praise Augustus with respect to his family. But panegyric is raised to poetry by Virgil's deep sense that victory has its price. The Latin warriors, we have seen, are courageous and upright, and they and their women suffer the cruelty of war. Dido is a noble queen who died a death she did not deserve, and Virgil so told her story that for over two millennia men have grieved for her. Turnus is the great enemy of the hero of the epic, but by the end of it he has claims to our admiration and pity. Mezentius is a villain through and through, a monster of cruelty to his subjects and a scorner of the gods, but when he stands alone against all his enemies we begin to admire him. When he refuses to cut down Orodes from the rear and manoeuvres to meet him face to face, we know we are in the presence of a hero. The most revealing moment comes with his answer to Orodes' dying taunt: 'Die now. As for me, that will be a matter for the Father of the Gods and the King of Men' (743\u20134). The scorner of the gods is now admitting and accepting the supremacy of Jupiter. It is almost as though Virgil had not the heart to let the villain die a villain. When the balance of Mezentius' life is about to swing from wickedness to tragedy, Virgil's sympathies reach out towards him.\n\nSoon Mezentius is wounded by Aeneas, and would have been killed had not his son Lausus so loved his father, that, lightly armed as he was, he threw himself between the combatants. Aeneas kills him, and when he sees his dying face and features, the face 'strangely white', he is reminded of his love for his own father (821\u20132) and we too are reminded of it when Virgil here refers to Aeneas by his patronymic, _Anchisiades_ , son of Anchises. Our sympathies are divided. Then, while Mezentius is trying to recover from his wound on the banks of the Tiber, he hears the wailing in the distance and knows the truth, and bursts into a paroxysm of grief and self-hate. Before Mezentius goes to fight his last battle, like Achilles in the _Iliad_ , he addresses his horse, and each man's utterance is a testimony to human and animal courage and the obstinacy of affection. Nothing in Mezentius' life becomes him like the leaving it.\n\nCrude panegyric is unrelieved, direct praise with no regard for truth. The panegyric of the _Aeneid_ praises Augustus, intermittently and often obliquely, and it is always based upon a genuine and intelligent response by the poet to the contemporary political situation. It also takes in a great sweep of human experience. While saluting the victor and acclaiming his victories, Virgil records the sufferings of the defeated and of the innocent. He also acknowledges the cost to the victors in the persons of Aeneas and Augustus.\n\n### BOOK 11  \nDRANCES AND CAMILLA\n\n_Pallas is mourned and his funeral rites conducted. The Latins send an embassy to Aeneas to beg a truce in order to gather up their dead. He consents and makes it clear that the war was not of his choosing. Turnus could have met him in single combat and only one man would have died. The Latins engage in fierce debate, Drances abusing Turnus and pleading for an end to the war, Turnus returning the abuse and offering to meet Aeneas in single combat. Despite that, when news comes that Aeneas is approaching the city, Turnus immediately rouses his forces for battle. The maiden Camilla volunteers to confront the enemy cavalry while Turnus waits in ambush for Aeneas in a pass in the hills. Camilla is killed, and Turnus gives up his ambush. A moment later Aeneas enters the pass, and both armies move towards the city of Latinus within sight and sound of each other._\n\nThis book, like all the books of the _Aeneid_ , can be divided into three sections; here, the funerals, the debate, the cavalry engagement. In each of these the dice are weighted against Turnus and to the credit of Aeneas. In the first Aeneas' great grief at Pallas' death was partly because he had failed to protect the young man in his first battle, but Latinus insists that Aeneas is in no way to be blamed for his son's death. In his dealings with the Latins (100\u201321), Aeneas behaves with clemency and consideration. At the debate in the Latin assembly a report is received by an embassy which had been sent to ask help from Diomede, whom Aeneas had called the 'bravest of the Greeks' (1.96). Diomede had refused: 'We have faced each other, spear against deadly spear, and closed in battle. Believe me, for I have known it, how huge he rises behind his shield' (282\u20134). At the end of the assembly King Latinus blamed himself for the war by his failure to give full support to Aeneas. And in the cavalry engagement, a question may hang over Turnus' military judgement in granting such an important battle role to Camilla, and in his own impotence in sitting in ambush far from the battlefield and leaving the position at precisely the wrong moment: 'this is what the implacable will of Jupiter decreed' (901).\n\n### BOOK 12  \nTRUCE AND DUEL\n\n_Turnus now demands to meet Aeneas in battle, and Aeneas and Latinus strike a treaty agreeing that the victor will receive Lavinia in marriage, and that if Aeneas is defeated, the Trojans will withdraw peacefully and settle with Evander in Pallanteum. But Juno suborns Turnus' divine sister Juturna to engineer a violation of the treaty. In the m\u00eal\u00e9e which follows Aeneas is wounded by an arrow shot by an unknown assailant. He is healed by the intervention of Venus and returns to battle. Once again Turnus is rescued from the wrath of Aeneas \u2013 this time by Juturna \u2013 but when Aeneas attacks the city of Latinus, Turnus realizes his responsibilities and returns to the field. Jupiter and Juno are reconciled, and Juno gives up her opposition to the destiny of Rome. Aeneas wounds Turnus and kills him as he begs for mercy._\n\n#### _The Death of Turnus_\n\n'I sing of arms and of the man' is how Virgil began his epic, and nowhere does he sing more intensely of Aeneas than in the last book. It opens with bold words from Turnus as he steels himself for battle, taunting Aeneas and issuing a ringing challenge: 'Let the Trojan and Rutulian armies be at peace. His blood, or mine, shall decide this war' (78\u20139). While he dons his splendid armour and girds on his sword (the wrong one, as shall emerge), roaring like a bull and lashing himself into a fury, Aeneas, too, is rousing himself to anger, but is also reassuring his allies, comforting his son, accepting the challenge and laying down the terms of the peace that will follow the duel.\n\nThe steadiness and maturity of Aeneas are thus shown by means of a contrast with the wildness of Turnus. This technique of tacit contrast is also used by Virgil when the armies meet to ratify the treaty. Day has dawned with the most glorious epic sunrise, and the first witness Aeneas then calls upon is the Sun, a courteous compliment to Latinus since the Sun is his grandfather, but that address is followed immediately by an invocation of the great Olympians, Jupiter, Juno and Mars: Jupiter, since the golden rule is always to begin with him; Juno, because Aeneas is remembering the instructions he received from the god Tiber at the beginning of Book 8; and Mars, as god of battle and later to be the father of Romulus. This is theologically correct, and a striking contrast to the ragbag of divinities addressed by Latinus, ending, contrary to the golden rule, with Jupiter. The contrast demonstrates Aeneas' piety towards the gods.\n\nThe next display of character by tacit contrast comes after the Rutulians, egged on by Juturna, have violated the treaty in the very moment of its ratification. In the battle which follows, Aeneas, unhelmeted, tries to control his allies, insisting that a treaty has been made and that by its terms no one is allowed to fight except Turnus and himself. But when the arrow comes whirring from an unknown hand and Aeneas is led wounded from the field, Turnus seizes his opportunity. Clapping on his armour he launches into a fierce and bloodthirsty attack upon the Trojan forces. The contrast demonstrates Aeneas' sense of justice.\n\nSome readers have found Aeneas an unsympathetic character, cold and inhibited. This notion is nowhere more thoroughly refuted than in the episode which follows. As he is taken back to the camp bleeding from his wound, he is in a fury of impatience, tugging at the broken arrowhead and ordering his comrades to hack it out of his flesh. There he stands in the camp growling savagely while the doctor plies his mute, inglorious art, and the enemy are heard fighting their way nearer and nearer to the camp. No sooner has Venus healed the wound than he is throwing on his armour and storming back to battle. But first he takes his leave of Ascanius, whom he loves. Those who do not admire Aeneas are amazed that he does not take off his helmet to kiss his son. Others will listen to his words and see in Aeneas a heroic ideal in the Roman mould.\n\nTurnus had cut a swathe of slaughter through the Trojan ranks, but when Aeneas now routs the Rutulians he ignores the fugitives. He is stalking Turnus, and only Turnus, and he would certainly have caught him, had not Juturna seized the reins of Turnus' chariot and driven him off to kill stragglers in remote parts of the battlefield.\n\nBetrayed, wounded and now thwarted, Aeneas erupts in an orgy of killing. Here we notice no difference between Aeneas and Turnus: in the heat of battle neither is a 'verray parfit gentil knight'. Each is driven by uncontrollable passions of hatred, contempt, rivalry and revenge, and each taunts his wounded enemies and kills his suppliants. This is not a diminution of the individuals, but a fact of war, and part of the power of these last books is that Virgil does not flinch from fact. Until the mid twenties BC when Virgil was in his mid-forties, Rome had been in a continual state of war. He did not romanticize it. He knew as well as his contemporaries, and as well as John Hampden, quoted by Macaulay, that 'the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility'.\n\nAeneas' attempt to end the war by single combat has failed. Turnus is not to be seen and full-scale battle is raging. At this desperate point Aeneas orders his men to break off the fighting and follow him to attack Latinus' undefended city. His sole purpose is to smoke out Turnus, to bring him to combat, but even so, this is scarcely an act of high chivalry. At this point we see Virgil's determination to preserve the character of his hero. The plan to attack an undefended city is not in origin his own: 'At that moment Aeneas' mother, loveliest of the goddesses, put it into his mind...to lead his army' (554\u20135) against the walls of the city. We have already seen double motivation in action, for example when Dido fell in love as a woman, while at the same time Venus and Cupid manoeuvred her into the madness of love. There the double motivation made the event more complex and more profound. Here it is put to ingenious use. When the hero thinks of a course of action which does him little credit, any stain on his character is lessened by a narrative which attributes the motive force to a god, who by definition cannot be resisted.\n\nThe ruse works. Turnus hears the sounds of despair from the city and realizes that his sister has misled him. In a speech of great nobility he accepts the truth and resolves to return and confront Aeneas. The moment Aeneas hears the name of Turnus he abandons his attack on the city. The armies part to clear a space. The gods leave the field and what we see at the last is two men fighting. Turnus is wounded and begs for mercy for the sake of his father. At this Aeneas wavers, no doubt remembering his own father and also how he suffered when he killed Lausus, but then he catches sight of the belt which Turnus had plundered from the dead body of Pallas, the boy who had been given into his charge, and in a blaze of raging anger he plunges his sword into the breast of his defenceless enemy. Revenge is part of war, as Augustus knew. As a boy he had won the support of the legions by promising to avenge their beloved Caesar, and over the years he had hunted down every last one of the conspirators, formally recording his revenge at the beginning of his _Res Gestae_. Virgil passes no judgement on Aeneas. He describes it as it would have been.\n\n#### _The Solution_\n\nMeanwhile Juno, the greatest liar in the _Aeneid_ , has not been idle. It is she who had suborned Juturna to go to the aid of Turnus in a speech which begins, as usual in rhetoric, with flattery, proceeds to self-justification and ends by urging Juturna into action while offering her no hope. But because Juno is trying to avoid responsibility, her instructions are so deviously expressed that Juturna barely understands them. Juno then loses patience and has to tell her straight out to go to rescue her brother or else stir up a war to block the signing of the treaty. When the arrow wounds Aeneas, no man knows who shot it, but we know who was responsible, and so does Jupiter, as at the end of the _Aeneid_ he smiles at his wife's evasions.\n\nThis final interview between Juno and Jupiter is the solution to a central problem of the _Aeneid_ , how the Roman empire is to be established against the opposition of Juno. The settlement is arranged in the final act of the divine comedy which has run through the whole poem. Although Juno has told Juturna that she cannot bear to watch the battle, Jupiter sees her doing so. He speaks affectionately to her, and then teases her gently: 'What do you hope to achieve by perching there in those chilly clouds?' He knows precisely what, and she knows that he knows. He then changes tack and pleads with her in loving terms: 'Do not let this great sorrow gnaw at your heart in silence, and do not make me listen to grief and resentment for ever streaming from your sweet lips.' He then reminds her of what she has achieved. At the last, after the affection and the praise, the command: 'I forbid you to go further' (791\u2013806).\n\nJuno submits, but not before a flood of bluster, face-saving and self-justification: 'I, Juno, yield and quit these battles which I so detest' (818). Having yielded, she now lays down her stipulations. Her essential point is that she will allow these Trojan men to settle in Italy and marry Italian wives, but only on condition that they forfeit all trace of their Trojan origins. Now we understand why the Trojan women had to be left in Sicily at the end of Book 5. Now we understand how the repeated slur of effeminacy is to be erased from the reputation of these incomers from the East. The Trojans are to lose their name and become Latins. They are to dress in the Italian style and give up their Oriental flounces, so mocked by Numanus Remulus in Book 9. The Alban kings are to rule from generation to generation, and we see that the wheel has come full circle. At the opening of the poem we were told that the _Aeneid_ would reveal the origins of the Alban fathers. Now we remember that the Alban kings, like Augustus, are Julians, descended from Iulus. Juno's last stipulation is the final cleansing of the bloodstock of the Trojans. Rome is to be made mighty by the manly virtue of Italy, _sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago_. _Vir_ is the Latin for 'man', and _virtute_ is the Latin for manly virtue ('manly courage' in the text, 827), so this blend of blood will finally erase all trace of Oriental effeminacy from the founders of Rome. 'Troy has fallen. Let it lie, Troy and the name of Troy' (828).\n\n'He who devised mankind and all the world smiled', and, remarkably, he goes on to remind Juno of their double relationship, brother and sister, husband and wife. He accepts her stipulations and adds his own details. The language of the new people will not be Trojan, but Latin. The overtones of Jupiter's formulation are important. Latin was superseding the native tongues of Italy as the _lingua franca_ of commerce, law and government. When Jupiter says that Ausonia (an ancient name for Italy) will keep the tongue of its fathers, he is suggesting some sort of justification for Latin against the languages which it is supplanting all over Italy. Throughout this dialogue of the gods Virgil is making his legend more plausible by linking it to known contemporary facts.\n\nJupiter will also provide ritual and modes of worship, another ingenious element. At the fall of Troy, Aeneas had been given a solemn charge to establish the Trojan gods in a new city. But Virgil does not wish to argue that the gods of Augustan Rome came from the East. Nor does he want Aeneas to negotiate away the gods which were his sacred responsibility, and capitulate to the Latins in a matter of such central importance in the _Aeneid_. The ingenuity of Virgil's solution to this problem lies in the fact that Aeneas capitulates not to any man but to Jupiter, the supreme god of the Romans. No one could object to a religious ordinance imposed by Jupiter Best and Greatest. The discussion between Jupiter and Juno ends with his assurance that the Romans will surpass all men in piety and also all gods, a prophecy which is less astonishing than it seems, if we recollect that obedience to just authority is part of _pietas_ , and that the gods have not always excelled in that virtue. In particular \u2013 his last assurance \u2013 no other race will be the equals of the Romans in doing honour to Juno.\n\nJupiter has the last word. Juno seems to have the last gesture. The Latin, like all Latin, is untranslatable, literally, 'Rejoicing, she twisted back her mind' (841). Juno then did in the end change her mind, but clearly, she found it a bitter-sweet experience. The domestic dispute is thus resolved. Turnus will be killed. Aeneas will marry Lavinia and found Lavinium, and world history will proceed according to the decisions of this humorous discussion between a god and his wife.\n\nDivine machinery is an obsolete literary device, but it gives a great sweep of human interest to the _Aeneid_ and as a dramatic representation of ordinary human relations and of the unpredictable in life, the place of justice in the world, the limits of human effort and understanding and the inscrutable splendour of the universe, it is not a bad model.\n\n## Further Reading\n\n### BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SURVEY\n\nP. Hardie, _Virgil_ , New Surveys in the Classics 28 (Oxford University Press for the Classical Association, 1998)\n\n### INTRODUCTORY\n\nW. S. Anderson, _The Art of the_ Aeneid (reprinted Bristol Classical Press, 1994)\n\nW. A. Camps, _An Introduction to Virgil's_ Aeneid (Oxford University Press, 1969)\n\nK. W. Gransden, _Virgil's_ Iliad (Cambridge University Press, 1984)\n\nJ. Griffin, _Virgil_ (Oxford University Press, 1986)\n\nR. Jenkyns, _Classical Epic: Homer and Virgil_ (Bristol Classical Press, 1992)\n\n### COMPANIONS\n\nN. Horsfall (ed.), _A Companion to the Study of Virgil_ (Brill, 1995)\n\nC. Martindale (ed.), _The Cambridge Companion to Virgil_ (Cambridge University Press, 1997)\n\n### BACK GROUND\n\nK. Galinsky, _Augustan Culture_ (Princeton University Press, 1996)\n\nP. Zanker, _The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus_ , tr. A. Shapiro (Michigan University Press, 1988)\n\n### COLLECTIONS\n\nS. Commager (ed.), _Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays_ (from studies published 1945\u201364) (Prentice-Hall, 1966)\n\nP. Hardie (ed.), _Virgil: Critical Assessments of Classical Authors_ (1901\u201395), 4 vols. (Routledge, 1999)\n\nS. J. Harrison (ed.), _Oxford Readings in Vergil's_ Aeneid (1933\u201387) (Oxford University Press, 1990)\n\nI. McAuslan and P. Walcot (eds.), _Virgil_ (1972\u201386) (Oxford University Press for the Classical Association, 1990)\n\nH.-P. Stahl (ed.), _Vergil's_ Aeneid: _Augustan Epic and Political Context_ (Conference Proceedings) (Duckworth, 1998)\n\n### CRITICISM\n\nD. L. Drew, _The Allegory of the_ Aeneid (Blackwell, 1927)\n\nR. Heinze, _Virgil's Epic Technique_ , tr. H. and D. Harvey and F. Robertson (Bristol Classical Press, 1993)\n\nE. Henry, _The Vigour of Prophecy_ (Southern Illinois University Press, 1989)\n\nR. O. A. M. Lyne, _Words and the Poet_ (Oxford University Press, 1989)\n\nK. Quinn, _Virgil's_ Aeneid: A _Critical Description_ (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968)\n\nG. Williams, _Technique and Ideas in the_ Aeneid (Yale University Press, 1983)\n\n## Note on the Translation\n\nThe text used, with very few exceptions, is the Oxford Classical Text by Sir Roger Mynors. The numbers in the margin refer to the line numbers of the Latin. Latin being a very compact language, ten lines of Virgil (given in the margin) have often required more than ten in the translation.\n\nReceived wisdom, as represented by _The Proceedings of the Virgil Society_ 19(1988), 14, states that 'to translate poetry into prose is always a folly'. I believe that this view does less than justice to the range, power and music of contemporary English prose. As written by our best novelists and journalists and even sometimes by ordinary letter-writers, it daily moves us towards pity, terror or laughter, and does so more than the voices of contemporary poets. Further \u2013 this is ungentle but the argument requires that it be said \u2013 the English poets who have translated the _Aeneid_ since Dryden have not done well. We may accept that poetic translation need not be true to the tone or detail of the original. A poet's first concern is with his own poem. But if we grant this freedom, we must then judge their works as poems, and as such the poetic translations of the _Aeneid_ are low in interest and inspiration.\n\nThe ruling prose version is Jackson Knight's Penguin Classic of 1956. This is lovingly faithful to the author's vision of Virgil but the language is dated. It would be difficult to disagree with Sandbach's judgement in _The Proceedings of the Virgil Society_ 10(1970\u201371), 35 (reprinted in _Meminisse Iuvabit_ (1989), ed. F. Robertson): '...too often the attempt to grasp and represent each of Virgil's words has pushed aside the need to give the sentence rhythm and cohesion and the emphasis that goes with form'.\n\nThe object of this translation has been to write readable English which does honour to the richness and sublimity of Virgil's language \u2013 ebullient, for example in the utterances of Aeneas at the games in Book 5, charged with grief for the death of Marcellus at the end of Book 6 and ringing with the courage and cruelty of war in the four great last books. Another impossible task. But if it is to be attempted, the translator must be ready to jettison the idiom of Latin and search for the English words that will carry as much as possible of the spirit of the Latin.\n\n### THE AENEID\n\n### BOOK 1  \nSTORM AND BANQUET\n\nI sing of arms and of the man, fated to be an exile, who long  \nsince left the land of Troy and came to Italy to the shores of  \nLavinium; and a great pounding he took by land and sea at the  \nhands of the heavenly gods because of the fierce and unforgetting  \nanger of Juno. Great too were his sufferings in war before he  \ncould found his city and carry his gods into Latium. This was  \nthe beginning of the Latin race, the Alban fathers and the high  \nwalls of Rome. Tell me, Muse, the causes of her anger. How did  \nhe violate the will of the Queen of the Gods? What was his  \n10 offence? Why did she drive a man famous for his piety to such  \nendless hardship and such suffering? Can there be so much  \nanger in the hearts of the heavenly gods?\n\nThere was an ancient city held by colonists from Tyre, opposite  \nItaly and the distant mouth of the river Tiber. It was a city  \nof great wealth and ruthless in the pursuit of war. Its name was  \nCarthage, and Juno is said to have loved it more than any other  \nplace, more even than Samos. Here the goddess kept her armour.  \nHere was her chariot, and this was the city she had long  \n20 favoured, intending to give it sovereignty over the peoples of  \nthe earth, if only the Fates would allow it. But she had heard  \nthat there was rising from the blood of Troy a race of men who  \nin days to come would overthrow this Tyrian citadel; a people  \nproud in war and rulers of a great empire would come to sack  \nthe land of Libya; this is the destiny the Fates were unrolling.  \nThese were the fears of the daughter of Saturn, and she had not  \nforgotten the war she had fought long since at Troy for her  \nbeloved Argos, nor had her bitter resentment and the reasons  \nfor it ever left her mind. There still rankled deep in her heart the  \njudgement of Paris and the injustice of the slight to her beauty,  \nher loathing for the whole stock of Dardanus and her fury at  \nthe honours done to Ganymede, whom her husband Jupiter had  \ncarried off to be his cup-bearer. With all this fuelling her anger  \n30 she was keeping the remnants of the Trojans, those who had  \nescaped the savagery of Achilles and the Greeks, far away from  \nLatium, driven by the Fates to wander year after year round all  \nthe oceans of the world. So heavy was the cost of founding the  \nRoman race.\n\nThe Trojans were in high spirits. They were almost out of  \nsight of Sicily and heading for the open sea with the wind astern  \nand their bronze prows churning the salt sea to foam, as Juno  \nbrooded, still nursing the eternal wound deep in her breast: 'Am  \nI to admit defeat and give up my attempt to keep the king of the  \nTrojans away from Italy? So the Fates do not approve! Yet  \n40 Pallas Athene could fire the fleet and drown my own Argives in  \nthe sea because of the guilt of one man, the mad passion of Ajax,  \nson of Oileus. With her own hand she threw the consuming fire  \nof Jupiter from the clouds, shattering his ships and sending  \nwinds to churn up the level sea. Then, as he breathed out flame  \nfrom his breast where the thunderbolt had pierced it, she caught  \nhim up in a whirlwind and impaled him on a jagged rock. But  \nhere am I, the Queen of the Gods, the sister of Jupiter and his  \nwife, and I have waged war all these years against a whole race  \nof men! Is there no one left who worships the godhead of Juno?  \nWill there be no one in the future to pray to me and lay an  \noffering on my altars?'\n\n50 These are the thoughts the goddess turned over in her burning  \nheart as she came to Aeolia, the home of the clouds, a place  \nteeming with the raging winds of the south. Here Aeolus is king  \nand here in a vast cavern he keeps in subjection the brawling  \nwinds and howling storms, chained and bridled in their prison.  \nThey murmur in loud protest round bolted gates in the mountainside  \nwhile Aeolus sits in his high citadel, holding his sceptre,  \nsoothing their spirits and tempering their angry passions. But  \nfor him they would catch up the sea, the earth and the deeps of  \nthe sky and sweep them along through space. In fear of this, the  \n60 All-powerful Father banished them to these black caverns with  \nmassive mountains heaped over them, and gave them under a  \nfixed charter a king who knew how to hold them in check or,  \nwhen ordered, to let them run with free rein. It was to him that  \nJuno made supplication in these words: 'I come to you, Aeolus,  \nbecause the Father of the Gods and King of Men has given you  \nthe power to calm the waves of the sea or raise them by your  \nwinds. A race of men hateful to me is sailing the Tyrrhenian sea  \ncarrying Ilium to Italy, along with the Penates, their defeated  \ngods. Whip up your winds. Overwhelm their ships and sink  \n70 them. Drive their fleet in all directions and scatter their bodies  \nover the sea. I have fourteen nymphs of the rarest beauty and  \nthe loveliest of them all is Deiopea. I shall make her yours and  \njoin you in lawful wedlock. If you do me this service, she shall  \nspend all her years with you and make you the father of beautiful  \nchildren.'\n\nTo this Aeolus made answer: 'Your task, O queen, is to decide  \nyour wishes; my duty is to carry out your orders. It is thanks to  \nyou that I rule this little kingdom and enjoy this sceptre and the  \nblessing of Jupiter. Through you I have a couch to lie on at the  \n80 feasts of the gods, and my power over cloud and storm comes  \nfrom you.'\n\nAt these words he struck the side of the hollow mountain  \nwith the butt of his spear and the winds seemed to form a  \ncolumn and pour out through an open gate to blow a hurricane  \nover the whole earth. The east wind and the south and the  \nsouth-west with squall upon squall fell upon the sea at once,  \nwhipping it up from its bottom-most depths and rolling huge  \nwaves towards its shores. Men shouted, ropes screamed, clouds  \nsuddenly blotted out the light of the sky from the eyes of the  \nTrojans and black night brooded on the sea as the heavens  \n90 thundered and lightning flashed again and again across the sky.  \nWherever the Trojans looked, death stared them in the face. A  \nsudden chill went through Aeneas and his limbs grew weak.  \nGroaning, he lifted his hands palms upward to the stars and  \ncried: 'Those whose fate it was to die beneath the high walls of  \nTroy with their fathers looking down on them were many, many  \ntimes more fortunate than I. O Diomede, bravest of the Greeks,  \nwhy could I not have fallen to your right hand and breathed out  \nmy life on the plains of Troy, where fierce Hector fell by the  \n100 sword of Achilles, where great Sarpedon lies and where the river  \nSimois caught up so many shields and helmets and bodies of  \nbrave men and rolled them down its current?'\n\nEven as he threw out these words, a squall came howling  \nfrom the north, catching his sail full on and raising the waves to  \nthe stars. The oars broke, the prow was wrenched round, and  \nas they lay beam on to the seas, there came towering over them  \na sheer mountain of water. Some of the ships were hanging on  \nthe crests of the waves; for others the waters opened and in the  \ntroughs could be seen the sea-bed and the seething sand. Three  \nof them were caught by the south wind and driven off course  \non to a reef hidden in mid-ocean \u2013 Italians know it as the Altars  \n110 \u2013 a huge spine of rock just under the surface; three of them the  \nsoutheaster took and carried helplessly from the high sea on to  \nthe sandbanks of the Syrtes, ran them aground and blocked  \nthem in with walls of sand; before the very eyes of Aeneas, the  \nship that carried the faithful Orontes and his Lycians was struck  \non the stern by a great sea and the helmsman was swept away  \nhead first into the water. Three times she spun round on the  \nsame spot till the swift whirlpool sucked her down. Here and  \nthere men could be seen swimming in the vast ocean, and with  \nthem in the waves their armour, spars of wood and the treasures  \n120 of Troy. One by one the stout ships of Ilioneus and brave  \nAchates, then Abas and old Aletes, succumbed to the storm.  \nThe fastenings of the ships' sides were loosened, the deadly  \nwater poured in and the timbers sprang.\n\nNeptune, meanwhile, observed the loud disturbance of the  \nocean, the rampaging of storms, the draining of his deepest  \npools, and was moved to anger. Rising from the depths, he lifted  \nhis head high above the crests of the waves and looked serenely  \nout over the sea at Aeneas' fleet scattered over the face of the  \nwaters and the Trojans overwhelmed by the waves and by the  \n130 rending of the sky. He recognized at once the anger and the  \ncunning of his sister Juno and instantly summoned the east wind  \nand the west and spoke to them in these words: 'Is it your noble  \nbirth that has made you so sure of yourselves? Do you winds  \nnow dare to move heaven and earth and raise these great masses  \nof water without my divine authority? I could take you now and  \n...but first I must still the waves you have stirred up. For any  \ncrimes you commit in the future, you will pay a dearer price.  \nAway with you and take this message to your king: \"He is not  \nthe one who has jurisdiction over the sea or holds the trident  \nthat knows no pity. That is my responsibility, given to me by  \n140 lot. His domain, O Eurus, wind of the east, is the huge crags  \nwhere you have your home. That is where Aeolus can do his  \nswaggering, confining his rule to the closed walls of the prison  \nof the winds.\" '\n\nThese were his words, and before he had finished speaking,  \nhe was calming the swell, dispersing the banked clouds and  \nbringing back the sun. Triton and the sea nymph Cymothoe  \nheaved and strained as they pushed the ships off jagged rocks,  \nwhile Neptune himself lifted them out of the sandbanks with  \nhis trident and opened up the vast Syrtes, restraining the sea as  \nhe skimmed along with his chariot wheels touching the crests of  \nthe waves. As when disorder arises among the people of a great  \ncity and the common mob runs riot, wild passion finds weapons  \n150 for men's hands and torches and rocks start flying; at such a  \ntime if people chance to see a man who has some weight among  \nthem for his goodness and his services to the state, they fall  \nsilent, standing and listening with all their attention while his  \nwords command their passions and soothe their hearts \u2013 so did  \nall the crashing of the sea fall silent and Father Neptune, looking  \nout over the waves, drove the horses of his chariot beneath a  \nclear sky and gave them rein to fly before the wind.\n\nAeneas and his men were exhausted, and making what speed  \nthey could for the nearest land, they set course for the coast of  \n160 Libya. There is a place where a harbour is formed by an island  \nblocking the mouth of a long sound. As the waves come in from  \nthe open sea and break on the sides of this island, they are divided  \ninto the deep inlets of the bay. Rock cliffs are everywhere. A  \ngreat pinnacle threatens the sky on either side, and beneath all  \nthis the broad water lies still and safe. At the end of the bay  \nthere rises a backcloth of shimmering trees, a dark wood with  \nquivering shadows, looming over the water, and there, at the  \nfoot of this scene, is a cave of hanging rocks, a home for the  \nnymphs, with fresh spring water inside it and seats in the virgin  \nrock. Here there is no need of chains to moor the weary ships,  \n170 or of anchors with hooked teeth to hold them fast. This is where  \nAeneas put in with seven ships gathered from all the Trojan fleet,  \nand great was their longing for the land as they disembarked and  \nstepped at last on to the shore and threw their sea-wasted bodies  \ndown on the sand. First of all Achates struck a spark from the  \nflint, caught it in some leaves, fed the flame by putting dry twigs  \nround it and set the fire going with brushwood. Then weary as  \nthey were after all their labours, they laid out their corn, the gift  \nof the goddess Ceres, all tainted with salt, and the goddess's  \nown implements and set themselves to scorch with flame this  \ngrain they had saved from the sea and to grind it on stone.\n\n180 Meanwhile Aeneas climbed a rock to get a view over the  \nwhole breadth of the ocean and see if there was any trace of the  \nstorm-tossed Antheus or of the double-banked Trojan galleys,  \nCapys perhaps, or Caicus' armour high on the poop. There was  \nnot a ship to be seen, but he did see three stags wandering about  \nthe shore with all their herd behind them grazing the low ground  \nin a long line. He stopped in his tracks and snatched his bow  \n190 and swift arrows from the trusty Achates. First he took down  \nthe three leaders with their high heads of branching antlers. The  \nwhole of the rest of the herd scattered into the leafy cover of the  \nwood, but not before he succeeded in stretching seven huge  \ncarcasses on the ground, one for each of the ships. He then made  \nfor the harbour and gave them out to all his men. Last of all he  \nshared out the wine the good Acestes with a hero's generosity  \nhad poured into casks for them as they left the shores of Sicily.  \nThen, as they mourned, he comforted them, saying: 'My friends,  \nthis is not the first trouble we have known. We have suffered  \n200 worse before, and this too will pass. God will see to it. You have  \nbeen to Scylla's cave and heard the mad dogs howling in the  \ndepths of it. You have even survived rocks thrown by the  \nCyclops. So summon up your courage once again. This is no  \ntime for gloom or fear. The day will come, perhaps, when it will  \ngive you pleasure to remember even this. Whatever chance may  \nbring, however many hardships we suffer, we are making for  \nLatium, where the Fates show us our place of rest. There it is  \nthe will of God that the kingdom of Troy shall rise again. Your  \ntask is to endure and save yourselves for better days.' These  \nwere his words, but he was sick with all his cares. He showed  \nthem the face of hope and kept his misery deep in his heart.\n\n210 His men went briskly to work preparing the coming feast.  \nThey flayed the hide off the ribs and exposed the flesh. Some cut  \nit into quivering slices and speared it on spits. Others laid out  \ncauldrons of water on the shore and lit fires. Then at last they  \nate, and recovered their strength, lying on the grass and taking  \ntheir fill of old wine and rich venison. When their hunger was  \nsatisfied and the remains of the feast removed, they talked at  \nlength about their missing comrades, not knowing whether to  \nhope or fear, wondering whether they were still alive or whether  \nat that very moment they were drawing their last breath and  \n220 beyond all calling. Most of all did Aeneas, who loved his men,  \nmourn to himself the loss of eager Orontes and Amycus and the  \ncruel death of Lycus, then brave Gyas, and brave Cloanthus.\n\nNow the feast was ended and Jupiter was looking down from  \nthe height of heaven on the sea flying with sails and the land far  \nbeneath him, on the shores of the seas and the far-spread  \npeoples, when suddenly he stopped in his survey at the highest  \npoint of the sky and fixed his eyes upon the kingdom of Libya.  \nEven as he was turning over in his mind all the suffering that he  \nsaw, his daughter Venus came to him, her shining eyes brimming  \n230 with tears, and spoke with a sadness greater than his own: 'You  \nwho rule the affairs of gods and men with your eternal law and  \nat whose lightning we are all afraid, what great harm has my  \nson Aeneas been able to do to you? What crime have the Trojans  \ncommitted that they should suffer all this loss of life and the  \nwhole world be closed to them for the sake of Italy? Did you  \nnot promise that with the rolling years there would come a time  \nwhen from this stock the Romans would arise? From this blood  \nof Teucer, recalled to Italian soil, there would come leaders of  \nmen who would hold power over every land and sea. O father,  \nfather, has some argument changed your mind? As for me, I  \nused to console myself with this for the cruel fall and sack of  \n240 Troy, by weighing one destiny against another. But unrelieved  \nmisfortune is now hounding these men from disaster to disaster.  \nO great king, what end do you set to their labours? The Greeks  \nwere all around Antenor, but he escaped them, made his way  \nsafely into the Illyrian Gulf and the heartlands of the kingdom  \nof the Liburnians, and then went beyond the mouth of the  \nTimavus. From there with a great roar from inside the mountain,  \na sea of water bursts out of nine mouths and covers the fields  \nwith a sounding ocean. But in this place he founded the city of  \nPatavium as a home for his Trojans and gave them a name.  \nThere he dedicated the arms with which he fought at Troy and  \n250 there he now lives in settled peace and quiet. But as for us, your  \nown children, to whom you grant a place in the citadel of  \nheaven, we lose our ships. It is unspeakable. We are betrayed  \nand kept far away from the shores of Italy because there is one  \nwho hates us. Is this our reward for piety and obedience? Is this  \nhow you bring us to our kingdom?'\n\nThe Father of Gods and Men, looking at his daughter with  \nthe smile that clears the sky and dispels the storms, kissed her  \nlightly on the lips, and said: 'Spare yourself these fears, my  \nlady from Cythera. You can be sure that the destiny of your  \ndescendants remains unchanged. You will see the city of Lavinium  \n260 and its promised walls. You will take great-hearted Aeneas  \nup to the stars of heaven. No argument changes my mind. But  \nnow, since this anxiety is gnawing at you, I shall tell you more,  \nunrolling for you the secrets of the scroll of the Fates. He will  \nwage a great war in Italy and crush its fierce tribes. He will build  \nwalls for his people and establish their way of life, until a third  \nsummer has seen him reigning in Latium and a third winter has  \npassed after the subjection of the Rutulians. But the reign of his  \nson Ascanius, who now receives the second name Iulus (it was  \nIlus while the kingdom of Ilium still stood), shall last while the  \n270 months of thirty long years revolve, and he shall transfer his  \nkingdom from its seat at Lavinium and build a city with powerful  \nfortifications at Alba Longa. Here the rule of the race of  \nHector will last for three hundred long years until Ilia the  \npriestess queen, heavy with the seed of Mars, shall give birth to  \ntwin sons. Then Romulus shall receive the people, wearing with  \njoy the tawny hide of the wolf which nursed him. The walls he  \nbuilds will be the walls of Mars and he shall give his own name  \nto his people, the Romans. On them I impose no limits of time  \nor place. I have given them an empire that will know no end.  \n280 Even angry Juno, who is now wearying sea and land and sky  \nwith her terrors, will come to better counsel and join with me  \nin cherishing the people of Rome, the rulers of the world, the  \nrace that wears the toga. So it has been decreed. There will come  \na day, as the years glide by, when the house of Assaracus will  \nreduce Achilles' Pthia and glorious Mycenae to slavery and will  \nconquer and rule the city of Argos. From this noble stock there  \nwill be born a Trojan Caesar to bound his empire by Oceanus  \nat the limits of the world, and his fame by the stars. He will be  \ncalled Julius, a name passed down to him from the great Iulus.  \n290 In time to come, have no fear, you will receive him in the sky,  \nladen with the spoils of the East. He too will be called upon in  \nprayer. Then wars will be laid aside and the years of bitterness  \nwill be over. Silver-haired Truth and Vesta, and Romulus Quirinus  \nwith his brother Remus, will sit dispensing justice. The  \ndread Gates of War with their tight fastenings of steel will then  \nbe closed, and godless Strife will sit inside them on his murderous  \narmour roaring hideously from bloody mouth, hands shackled  \nbehind his back with a hundred bands of bronze.'\n\nSo spoke Jupiter, and he sent down Mercury, the son of Maia,  \nto make the lands and the citadel of the new city of Carthage  \nhospitable to the Trojans, in case Dido, in her ignorance of  \n300 destiny, should bar her country to them. Through the great  \nexpanse of air he flew, wielding his wings like oars, and soon  \nalighted on the shores of Libya. There he lost no time in carrying  \nout the commands of Jupiter, and in accordance with the divine  \nwill the Carthaginians laid aside their fiery temper. Most of all  \nthe queen took into her heart a feeling of quiet and kindness  \ntowards the Trojans.\n\nBut all that night the dutiful Aeneas was turning many things  \nover in his mind. As soon as life-giving morning came, he decided  \nto go out and explore this new land and bring back to his men  \na true account of the shores to which the winds had driven him,  \nand the beasts and men who lived there, if there were any men,  \n310 for he saw no signs of cultivation. So, leaving his ships hidden  \nin the wooded cove under the overhanging rocks, and shut in  \non every side by trees and quivering shade, he set out alone with  \nAchates, gripping two broad-bladed steel spears in his hand. As  \nhe walked through the middle of the wood, his mother came to  \nmeet him looking like a Spartan girl out hunting, wearing the  \ndress of a Spartan girl and carrying her weapons, or like the  \nThracian Harpalyce, as she wearies horses with her running and  \noutstrips the swift current of the river Hebrus. She had a light  \nbow hanging from her shoulders in hunting style, her hair was  \n320 unbound and streaming in the wind and her flowing dress was  \ncaught up above the knee. 'Hey there, soldiers,' she called out  \nto them, 'do you happen to have seen one of my sisters wandering  \nabout here or in full cry after the foaming boar? She was  \nwearing a spotted lynx skin and had a quiver hanging from  \nher belt.'\n\nSo spoke Venus, and Venus' son so began his reply: 'I have  \nneither seen nor heard any of your sisters. But how am I to  \naddress a girl like you? Your face is not the face of a mortal,  \nand you do not speak like a human being. Surely you must be a  \ngoddess? Are you Diana, sister of Apollo? Are you one of the  \n330 sister nymphs? Be gracious to us, whoever you may be, and  \nlighten our distress. Tell us what sky this is we find ourselves at  \nlast beneath. What shore of the world is this on which we now  \nwander, tossed here by the fury of wind and wave? We do not  \nknow the place. We do not know the people. Tell us and many  \na victim will fall by my right hand before your altars.'\n\nVenus replied: 'I am sure I deserve no such honour. Tyrian  \ngirls all carry the quiver and wear purple boots with this high  \nankle binding. This is a Phoenician kingdom you are looking at.  \nWe are Tyrians. This is the city of the people of Agenor, but the  \nland belongs to the Libyans, a race not easy to handle in war.  \n340 Dido, who came from the city of Tyre to escape her brother,  \nholds sway here. There was a crime long ago. It is a long and  \nwinding story, but I shall trace its outlines for you. Her father  \nhad given her in marriage to Sychaeus, the wealthiest of the  \nPhoenicians. They were joined with all the due rites of a first  \nmarriage and great was the love the poor queen bore for him.  \nBut the kingdom of Tyre was ruled by her brother Pygmalion,  \nthe vilest of criminals. A mad passion came between the two  \nmen. In blind lust for his gold the godless Pygmalion attacked  \n350 him without warning, ambushing him at the altar. With no  \nthought for his sister's love he killed Sychaeus and for a long  \ntime concealed what he had done. Dido was sick with love and  \nhe deceived her with false hopes and empty pretences. But one  \nnight there appeared to her in a dream the very ghost of her  \nunburied husband. He lifted up his face, pale with the strange  \npallor of the dead, and, baring the sword wounds on his breast,  \nhe pointed to the altar where he had been killed and revealed  \nthe whole horror of the crime that had been hidden in their  \nhouse. He then urged her to escape with all speed from their  \nnative land, and to help her on her wanderings he showed  \nher where to find an ancient treasure buried in the earth, an  \n360 incalculable weight of silver and gold. This moved Dido to plan  \nher escape and gather followers, men driven by savage hatred  \nor lively fear of the tyrant. They seized some ships which happened  \nto be ready for sea. They loaded them with the gold and  \nsailed away with the wealth Pygmalion had coveted. The woman  \nled the whole undertaking. When they arrived at the place where  \nyou will now see the great walls and rising citadel of the new  \ncity of Carthage, they bought a piece of land called the \"Byrsa\",  \nthe animal's hide, as large an area as they could include within  \nthe hide of a bull. But now tell me, who are you? What country  \n370 have you sailed from? Where are you making for?'\n\nIn reply to her questions Aeneas drew a great sigh from the  \nbottom of his heart and said: 'O goddess, if I were to start at the  \nbeginning and retrace our whole story, and if you had the time  \nto listen to the annals of our suffering, before I finish the doors  \nof Olympus would close and the Evening Star would lay the day  \nto rest. We come from the ancient city of Troy, if the name of  \nTroy has ever reached your ears. We have sailed many seas and  \nby the chance of the winds we have been driven ashore here in  \nLibya. I am Aeneas, known for my devotion. I carry with me on  \nmy ships the gods of my home, the Penates, wrested from my  \nenemies, and my fame has reached beyond the skies. I am  \n380 searching for my fatherland in Italy. My descent is from highest  \nJupiter. With my goddess mother to show the way, I embarked  \nupon the Phrygian sea with twenty ships, following the destiny  \nwhich had been given to me, and now a bare seven of them  \nremain, and these torn to pieces by wind and wave. I am a  \nhelpless stranger, driven out of Europe and out of Asia, tramping  \nthe desert wastes of Libya.'\n\nVenus could listen to no more. She broke in on the tale of his  \nsufferings, saying: 'Whoever you are I do not believe you are  \nhated by the gods: you live and breathe and have reached this  \n390 Tyrian city. Go on now from here to the queen's door. I can tell  \nyou that your comrades are restored and your fleet returned to  \nyou. The winds have veered to the north and blown them safe  \nto shore. All this is true unless my parents have failed in their  \nefforts to teach me to interpret the flight of birds. Look at these  \ntwelve swans flying joyfully in formation. The eagle of Jupiter  \nwas swooping down on them from the heights of heaven and  \nscattering them over the open sky, but now look at them in  \ntheir long column. Some are reaching land. Some have already  \nreached it and are looking down on it. Just as they have come  \nto their home and their flock has circled the sky in play, singing  \nas they fly with whirring wings, so your ships and your warriors  \n400 are either already in port or crossing the bar in full sail. Go on  \nnow, and follow where the road takes you.'\n\nWhen she had finished speaking and was turning away, her  \nneck shone with a rosy light and her hair breathed the divine  \nodour of ambrosia. Her dress flowed free to her feet and as she  \nwalked he knew she was truly a goddess. As she hastened away,  \nhe recognized her as his mother and called after her: 'Why do  \nyou so often mock your own son by taking on these disguises?  \nYou too are cruel. Why am I never allowed to take your hand  \nin mine, to hear your true voice and speak to you as you really are?'\n\n410 With these reproaches he took the road that led to the city,  \nbut Venus hedged them about with a thick mist as they walked.  \nThe goddess spread a great veil of cloud over them so that no  \none could see them or touch them or cause any delay or ask the  \nreason for their coming. She herself soared high into the sky and  \ndeparted for Paphos, returning happily to her beloved home  \nwhere she has her temple, and a hundred altars steam with the  \nincense of Sheba and breathe the fragrance of fresh-cut flowers.\n\nMeanwhile Aeneas and Achates hurried on their way, following  \n420 the track, and they were soon climbing the great hill which  \ntowered over the city and looked down upon the citadel opposite.  \nAeneas was amazed by the size of it where recently there  \nhad been nothing but shepherds' huts, amazed too by the gates,  \nthe paved streets and all the stir. The Tyrians were working with  \na will: some of them were laying out the line of walls or rolling  \nup great stones for building the citadel; others were choosing  \nsites for building and marking them out with the plough; others  \nwere drawing up laws and electing magistrates and a senate  \nwhom they could revere; on one side they were excavating a  \nharbour; on the other laying deep foundations for a theatre and  \nquarrying huge columns from the rock to make a handsome  \n430 backdrop for the stage that was to be. They were like bees at  \nthe beginning of summer, busy in the sunshine all through the  \nflowery meadows, bringing out the young of the race, just come  \nof age, or treading the oozing honey and swelling the cells with  \nsweet nectar, or taking the loads as they come in or mounting  \nguard to keep the herds of idle drones out of their farmstead.  \nThe hive seethes with activity and the fragrance of honey  \nflavoured with thyme is everywhere. 'How fortunate they are!'  \ncried Aeneas, now looking up at the high tops of the buildings.  \n' _Their_ walls are already rising!' and he moved on through the  \n440 middle of the people, hedged about by the miraculous cloud,  \nand no one saw him.\n\nThere was a wooded grove which gave abundant shade in the  \nmiddle of the city. When first the Phoenicians had been driven  \nthere by wind and wave, Juno, the Queen of the Gods, had led  \nthem to this spot where they had dug up the head of a spirited  \nstallion. This was a sign that from generation to generation they  \nwould be a race glorious in war and would have no difficulty in  \nfinding fields to graze. Here Sidonian Dido was building for  \nJuno a huge temple rich with offerings and rich, too, with the  \npresence of the goddess. It was a raised temple, and at the top  \nof its steps the threshold was of bronze, the beams were jointed  \nwith bronze and the bronze doors grated as they turned in their  \n450 sockets. Here in this grove Aeneas saw a strange sight which for  \nthe first time allayed his fears. Here for the first time he dared  \nto hope, and despite all the calamities of the past to have  \nbetter confidence in the future. While waiting for the queen and  \nstudying everything there was to see under the roof of this huge  \ntemple, as he marvelled at the good fortune of the city, the skill  \nof the workmen and all the works of their hands, he suddenly  \nsaw, laid out in order, depictions of the battles fought at Troy.  \nThe Trojan War was already famous throughout the world. The  \ntwo sons of Atreus were there, and Priam, and Achilles who  \nhated both sides. Aeneas stopped, and wept, and said to Achates:  \n460 'Is there anywhere now on the face of this earth that is not  \nfull of the knowledge of our misfortunes? Look at Priam. Here  \ntoo there is just reward for merit, there are tears for suffering  \nand men's hearts are touched by what man has to bear. Forget  \nyour fears. We are known here. This will give you some hope  \nfor the future.'\n\nAs he spoke these words, he was feeding his spirit with the  \nempty images and groaning, and rivers of tears washed down  \nhis cheeks as he gazed at the fighting round the walls of Troy.  \nOn one side Greeks were in flight with Trojan warriors hard on  \ntheir heels; on the other Trojans were retreating and Achilles  \n470 with his crested helmet was pursuing them in his chariot. He  \nwept, too, when he recognized the white canvas of the tents of  \nRhesus nearby. It was the first sleep of the night. The tents had  \nbeen betrayed, and were being torn down by Diomede, red with  \nthe blood of all the men he had slaughtered. He stole the fiery  \nhorses and took them back to the Greek camp before they could  \ncrop the grass of Troy or drink the water of the Xanthus. In  \nanother part of the picture poor Troilus, a mere boy and no  \nmatch for Achilles, had lost his armour and was in full flight.  \nHis horses had run away with the chariot and he was being  \ndragged along helpless on his back behind it, still holding on to  \nthe reins. His neck and hair were trailing along the ground and  \nthe end of his spear was scoring the dust behind him. The women  \nof Troy, meanwhile, were going in supplication to the temple  \n480 of Pallas Athene, but the goddess was hostile to them. Their hair  \nwas unbound, and they were carrying a robe to offer her, beating  \ntheir breasts in grief, but her head was turned from them and  \nher eyes were fixed upon the ground. There too was Achilles.  \nHe had dragged Hector three times round the walls of Troy,  \nand now was selling his dead body for gold. Aeneas groaned  \nfrom the depths of his heart to see the armour stripped off him,  \nthe chariot, the corpse of his dear friend and Priam stretching  \nout his feeble hands. Aeneas even recognized himself in the  \nconfusion of battle, with the leaders of the Greeks all around  \n490 him. There were the warriors of the East, the armour of Memnon  \nand his dark skin. The Amazons were there in their thousands  \nwith crescent shields and their leader Penthesilea in the middle  \nof her army, ablaze with passion for war. There, showing her  \nnaked breast supported by a band of gold, was the warrior  \nmaiden, daring to clash with men in battle.\n\nWhile Trojan Aeneas stood gazing, rooted to the spot and  \nlost in amazement at what he saw, queen Dido in all her beauty  \narrived at the temple with a great crowd of warriors around her.  \nShe was like Diana leading the dance on the banks of the Eurotas  \nor along the ridges of Mount Cynthus with a thousand mountain  \n500 nymphs thronging behind her on either side. She carries her  \nquiver on her shoulder, and as she walks, she is the tallest of all  \nthe goddesses. Her mother Latona does not speak, but a great  \njoy stirs her heart at the sight of her. Dido was like Diana, and  \nlike Diana she bore herself joyfully among her people, urging  \non their work for the kingdom that was to be. Then in the  \ndoorway of the goddess, under the middle of the vault of the  \ntemple, she took her seat with her armed guards about her.  \nThere, as she was giving laws and rules of conduct to her people,  \nand dividing the work that had to be done in equal parts or  \nallocating it by lot, Aeneas suddenly saw a great throng approaching,  \n510 Antheus, Sergestus, brave Cloanthus and the other  \nTrojans who had been scattered over the sea by the dark storm  \nand swept away to distant shores. He was astounded, and  \nAchates, too, was stunned with joy and fear. They burned with  \nlonging to clasp the hands of their comrades, but were at a  \nloss because they did not understand what they saw. They did  \nnothing, but stayed hidden in their cloak of cloud, waiting to  \nlearn how Fortune had dealt with their comrades. On what  \nshore had they left their fleet? Why were they here? For these  \nwere picked men coming from each of the ships to plead their  \ncase, and they were now walking to the temple with shouting  \nall about them.\n\n520 They came in and were allowed to address the queen. Ilioneus,  \nthe oldest of them, made this appeal: 'You are a queen whom  \nJupiter has allowed to found a new city and curb proud peoples  \nwith your justice; we are the unhappy men of Troy, blown by  \nthe winds over all the oceans of the world, and we come to you  \nas suppliants. Save our ships from the impious threat of fire. We  \nare god-fearing men. Take pity on us. Look more closely at us  \n\u2013 we have not come to Libya to pillage your homes and their  \ngods, to take plunder and drive it down to the shore. Such  \nviolence and arrogance are not to be found in the hearts of the  \ndefeated.\n\n530 'There is a place which Greeks know by the name Hesperia.  \nIt is an ancient land, strong in war and rich in the fertility of its  \nsoil. It was once tilled by Oenotrians, but now we believe  \ntheir descendants have called themselves Italians after their king  \nItalus. This is where we were steering when suddenly Orion rose  \nin cloud and tempest and drove us on to hidden shallows, the  \nsea overwhelmed us and fierce southerly squalls scattered us far  \nand wide among breakers and uncharted rocks. A few of us  \ndrifted ashore here to your land. What manner of men are these?  \n540 Is this a country of barbarians that allows its people to act in  \nthis way? Sailors have a right to the shore and we are refused it.  \nThey make war on us and will not let us set foot on land. You  \nmay be no respecters of men. You may fear no men's arms, but  \nthink of the gods, who see right and wrong and do not forget.  \nOur king was Aeneas. He had no equal for his piety and his care  \nfor justice, and no equal in the field of battle. If the Fates still  \nprotect him, if he still breathes the air of heaven, if he is not  \neven now laid low among the merciless shades, you would have  \nnothing to fear or to regret by taking the lead in a contest of  \n550 kindness. In the land of Sicily we have arms and cities and the  \ngreat Acestes, sprung from Trojan blood. Allow us to draw up  \nour storm-battered ships, to hew timbers in your woods and  \nshape new oars, so that we can make for Italy and Latium with  \njoy in our hearts, if indeed we go to Italy with our comrades  \nand our king; but if they are lost, if you, great Father of the  \nTrojans, are drowned in the sea off Libya, and there are no  \nhopes left in Iulus, then we can at least go back to where we  \ncame from across the Sicilian sea, to the place that is prepared  \n560 for us, and return to king Acestes.' So spoke Ilioneus and all the  \nTrojans to a man murmured in agreement.\n\nThen Dido looked down at them and made a brief answer:  \n'Have no fear, men of Troy. Put every anxious thought out of  \nyour hearts. This is a new kingdom, and it is harsh necessity  \nthat forces me to take these precautions and to post guards on  \nall our frontiers. But who could fail to know about the people  \nof Aeneas and his ancestry, about the city of Troy, the valour of  \nits men and the flames of war that engulfed it? We here in  \nCarthage are not so dull in mind as that. The sun does spare a  \nglance for our Tyrian city when he yokes his horses in the  \nmorning. Whether you choose to go to great Hesperia and the  \n570 fields of Saturn, or to the land of Eryx and king Acestes, you will  \nleave here safe under my protection, and I shall give you supplies  \nfor your voyage. Or do you wish to settle with me on an equal  \nfooting, even here in this kingdom of Carthage? The city which  \nI am founding is yours. Draw up your ships on the beach. Trojan  \nand Tyrian shall be as one in my eyes. I wish only that your king  \nAeneas had been driven by the same wind, and were here with  \nyou now. But what I can, I shall do. I shall send men whom I  \ncan trust all along the coast, and order them to cover every  \nfurthest corner of Libya, in case he has been shipwrecked and is  \nwandering in any of the woods or cities.'\n\n580 The brave Achates and Father Aeneas had long been impatient  \nto break out of the cloud, and at Dido's words their eagerness  \nincreased. 'Aeneas,' said Achates, 'son of the goddess, what  \nthoughts are now rising in your heart? You see there is no  \ndanger. Our ships are safe. Our comrades are rescued. Only one  \nof them is missing, and we saw him with our own eyes founder  \nin mid-ocean. Everything else is as your mother Venus said it  \nwould be.'\n\nHe had scarcely finished speaking when the cloud that was  \nall about them suddenly parted and dissolved into the clear sky.  \nAeneas stood there resplendent in the bright light of day with  \nthe head and shoulders of a god. His own mother had breathed  \n590 upon her son and given beauty to his hair and the sparkle of joy  \nto his eyes, and the glow of youth shone all about him. It was  \nas though skilled hands had added embellishments to ivory or  \napplied gilding to silver or Parian marble. Then suddenly, to the  \nsurprise of all, he addressed the queen in these words: 'The man  \nyou are looking for is standing before you. I am Aeneas the  \nTrojan, saved from the Libyan sea, and you, Dido, alone have  \npitied the unspeakable griefs of Troy. We are the remnants left  \nby the Greeks. We have suffered every calamity that land and  \n600 sea could inflict upon us, and have lost everything. And now  \nyou offer to share your city and your home with us. It is not  \nwithin our power to repay you as you deserve, nor could whatever  \nsurvives of the Trojan race, scattered as it is over the face  \nof the wide earth. May the gods bring you the reward you  \ndeserve, if there are any gods who have regard for goodness, if  \nthere is any justice in the world, if their minds have any sense of  \nright. What happy age has brought you to the light of life? What  \nmanner of parents have produced such a daughter? While rivers  \nrun into the sea, while shadows of mountains move in procession  \nround the curves of valleys, while the sky feeds the stars, your  \nhonour, your name, and your praise will remain for ever in  \n610 every land to which I am called.' As he spoke, he put out his  \nright hand to his friend Ilioneus and his left to Serestus, then  \ngreeted the others, brave Gyas, and brave Cloanthus.\n\nDido of Sidon was amazed at her first sight of him and then  \nat the thought of the ill fortune he had endured. 'What sort of  \nchance is this,' she exclaimed, 'that hounds the son of a goddess  \nthrough all these dangers? What power has driven you to these  \nwild shores? Are you that Aeneas whom the loving goddess  \nVenus bore to Dardanian Anchises in Phrygia by the river waters  \nof the Simois? I myself remember the Greek Teucer coming to  \n620 Sidon after being exiled from his native Salamis. He was looking  \nto found a new kingdom, and was helped by my father Belus,  \nwho in those days was laying waste the wealth of Cyprus. He  \nhad conquered the island and it was under his control. From  \nthat day on I knew all the misfortunes of the city of Troy. I  \nknew your name and the names of the Greek kings. Teucer  \nhimself, your enemy, held the Teucrians, the people of Troy, in  \nhighest respect and claimed descent from an ancient Teucrian  \nfamily. This is why I now invite your warriors to come into my  \nhouse. I, too, have known ill fortune like yours and been tossed  \nfrom one wretchedness to another until at last I have been  \n630 allowed to settle in this land. Through my own suffering, I am  \nlearning to help those who suffer.'\n\nWith these words she led Aeneas into her royal palace, and  \nas she went she appointed sacrifices to be offered in the temples  \nof the gods. Nor at that moment did she forget Aeneas' comrades  \non the shore, but sent down to them twenty bulls, a hundred  \ngreat bristling hogs' backs and a hundred fat lambs with their  \nmothers, rich gifts to celebrate the day. Meanwhile the inside  \nof her palace was being prepared with all royal luxury and  \nsplendour. They were laying out a banquet in the central hall  \nand the draperies were of proud purple, richly worked. The  \n640 silver was massive on the tables, with the brave deeds of their  \nancestors embossed in gold, a long tradition of feats of arms  \ntraced through many heroes from the ancient origins of the race.\n\nBut a father's love allowed Aeneas' mind no rest, and he asked  \nAchates to go quickly ahead to the ships to take the news to  \nAscanius and bring him back to the city. All his thoughts  \nwere on his dear son Ascanius. He also told Achates to bring  \nback with him as gifts for Dido some of the treasures that  \nhad been rescued from the ruins of Troy, a cloak stiff with  \ngold-embroidered figures and a dress with a border woven of  \nyellow acanthus flowers. These miracles of workmanship had  \n650 been given to Helen of Argos by her mother Leda, and she had  \ntaken them from Mycenae when she came to Troy for her illicit  \nmarriage with Paris. There was also the sceptre which had once  \nbeen carried by Ilione, the eldest daughter of Priam, a necklace  \nof pearls and a double gold coronet set with jewels. Achates set  \noff for the ships in great haste to carry out his instructions.\n\nBut Venus meanwhile was turning over new schemes in her  \nmind and devising new plans. She decided to change the form  \nand features of Cupid, and send him in place of the lovely  \n660 young Ascanius to inflame the heart of the queen, driving her to  \nmadness by the gifts and winding the fire of passion round  \nher bones. For Venus was afraid of the treacherous house of  \nCarthage and the double-tongued people of Tyre. The thought  \nof the bitterness of Juno's hatred burned in her heart, and as  \nnight began to fall and her anxiety kept returning, she spoke to  \nthe winged god of love in these words: 'My dear son, you are  \nthe source of my power. You are my great strength. Only you,  \nmy son, can laugh at the thunderbolts which my father, highest  \nJupiter, hurled against the Giant Typhoeus. To you I come for  \nhelp. I am your suppliant, begging the aid of your divine power.  \nYou well know how Juno's bitter hatred is tossing your own  \nbrother from shore to shore round all the seas of the world and  \n670 you have often grieved to see me grieving. Now he is in the  \nhands of the Phoenician Dido, who is delaying him with honeyed  \nwords, and I am afraid of Juno's hospitality and what it may  \nbring. She will not stand idle when the gate of the future is  \nturning. That is why I am resolved to act first, taking possession  \nof the queen by a stratagem and surrounding her with fire, so  \nthat no power in heaven may change her, but she will be held  \nfast, as I am, in love for Aeneas. As for how you are to achieve  \nthis, listen now and I shall tell you my mind. Aeneas has sent  \nfor his son, whom I so love, and the young prince is preparing  \nto go to the city of Carthage, bringing gifts which have survived  \n680 the hazards of the sea and the burning of Troy. I shall put him  \ninto a deep sleep and hide him in one of my sacred shrines above  \nIdalium or the heights of Cythera, so that he will not know of  \nmy scheme or suddenly arrive to interrupt it. You will have to  \nuse your cunning and take on his appearance for just one night.  \nHe is a boy like yourself and you know him, so put on his  \nfeatures, and when the royal table is flowing with wine that  \nbrings release, and Dido takes you happily on to her lap and  \ngives you sweet kisses, you can then breathe fire and poison into  \nher and she will not know.'\n\n690 Cupid obeyed his beloved mother. He took off his wings and  \nstrutted about copying Iulus' walk and laughing. But the goddess  \npoured quiet and rest into all the limbs of Ascanius, and holding  \nhim to the warmth of her breast, she lifted him into the high  \nIdalian woods, where the soft amaracus breathed its fragrant  \nshade and twined its flowers around him.\n\nNow Cupid was obeying his instructions and was amused to  \nbe escorted by Achates as he took the royal gifts to the Tyrians.  \nWhen he came in, the queen was already seated under a rich  \nawning on a golden couch in the middle of the palace. Presently  \n700 Father Aeneas and after him the men of Troy arrived and  \nreclined on purple coverlets. Attendants gave them water for  \ntheir hands, plied them with bread from baskets and brought  \nthem fine woollen napkins with close-cut nap. Inside were fifty  \nserving-women, whose task it was to lay out the food in order  \nin long lines and honour the Penates by tending their fires. There  \nwere a hundred other female slaves and a hundred men, all of  \nthe same age, to load the tables for the banquet and set out the  \ndrinking cups. The Tyrians, too, came thronging through the  \ndoors, and the palace was full of joy as they took their appointed  \nplaces on the embroidered couches. They admired the gifts  \n710 Aeneas had given. They admired Iulus, the glowing face of the  \ngod and his false words, the cloak and the dress embroidered  \nwith yellow acanthus flowers. But most of all the unfortunate  \nDido, doomed to be the victim of a plague that was yet to come,  \ncould not have her fill of gazing, and as she gazed, moved by  \nthe boy as much as by the gifts, the fire within her grew. After  \nhe had embraced Aeneas and hung on his neck to satisfy the  \ngreat love of his father who was not his father, he went to the  \nqueen. She fixed her eyes and her whole heart on him and  \nsometimes dandled him on her knee, without knowing what a  \ngreat god was sitting there marking her out to suffer. But he was  \n720 remembering his mother, the goddess of the Acidalian spring,  \nand he began gradually to erase the memory of Sychaeus, trying  \nto turn towards a living love a heart that had long been at peace  \nand long unused to passion.\n\nAs soon as the first pause came in the feasting and the tables  \nwere cleared away, they set up great mixing bowls full of wine  \nand garlanded them with flowers. The palace was ringing with  \nnoise and their voices swelled through the spacious hall. Lamps  \nwere lit and hung from the gold-coffered ceilings and the flame  \nof torches routed the darkness. The queen now asked for a  \ngolden bowl heavy with jewels, and filled it with wine unmixed  \n730 with water. From this bowl Belus had drunk, and all the royal  \nline descended from Belus. Then there was silence in the hall as\n\nDido spoke: 'Jupiter, to you we pray, since men say that you  \nordain the laws of hospitality. Grant that this day may be a day  \nof happiness for the Tyrians and the men from Troy, and may  \nour descendants long remember it. Let Bacchus, giver of good  \ncheer, be among us, and kindly Juno, and you, Tyrians, celebrate  \nthis gathering with welcome in your hearts.'\n\nAt these words she poured a libation of wine on the table to  \nhonour the gods, and having poured it, she took it first and just  \ntouched it to her lips. She then passed it to Bitias with a smile  \nand a challenge. Nothing loth, he took a great draught from the  \n740 golden bowl foaming to the brim, and bathed himself in wine.  \nThe other leaders of the Carthaginians did the same after him.  \nLong-haired Iopas, the pupil of mighty Atlas, then sang to his  \ngilded lyre of the wanderings of the moon and the labours of  \nthe sun, the origin of the human race and of the animals, the  \ncauses of rain and of the fires of heaven, of Arcturus, of  \nthe Hyades, bringers of rain, of the two Triones, the oxen of the  \nPlough; why the winter suns are so eager to immerse themselves  \nin the ocean, and what it is that slows down the passage of the  \nnights. The Tyrians applauded again and again and the Trojans  \nfollowed their lead.\n\nSo the doomed Dido was drawing out the night with all  \nmanner of talk, drinking long draughts of love as she asked  \n750 question after question about Priam and Hector, what armour  \nMemnon, son of the Dawn, was wearing when he came, what  \nkind of horses did Diomede have, how tall was Achilles. 'But  \nno,' she said, 'come tell your hosts from the beginning about  \nthe treachery of the Greeks, the sufferings of your people and  \nyour own wanderings, for this is now the seventh summer that  \nhas carried you as a wanderer over every land and sea.'\n\n## BOOK 2  \nTHE FALL OF TROY\n\nThey all fell silent, gazing at Father Aeneas, and he began to  \nspeak from his raised couch: 'O queen, the sorrow you bid  \nme bring to life again is past all words, the destruction by the  \nGreeks of the wealth of Troy and of the kingdom that will be  \nmourned for ever, and all the horrors I have seen, and in which  \nI played a large part. No man could speak of such things and  \nnot weep, none of the Myrmidons of Achilles or the Dolopians  \nof Neoptolemus, not even a follower of Ulixes, a man not prone  \nto pity. Besides, the dewy night is already falling fast from the  \n10 sky and the setting stars are speaking to us of sleep. But if you  \nhave such a great desire to know what we suffered, to hear in  \nbrief about the last agony of Troy, although my mind recoiled  \nin anguish when you asked and I shudder to remember, I shall  \nbegin:\n\nYear after year the leaders of the Greeks had been broken in  \nwar and denied by the Fates, until, with the aid of the divine  \nskill of Pallas Athene, they built a horse the size of a mountain,  \ncutting pine trees to weave into it for ribs. They pretended it  \nwas a votive offering for their safe return to Greece, and that  \nwas the story on men's lips. Then they chose some men by lot  \nfrom their best warriors and shut them up in the darkness of its  \n20 belly, filling the vast cavern of its womb with armed soldiers.\n\nWithin sight of the mainland is the island of Tenedos, famous  \nin story. While the kingdom of Priam stood, it was rich and  \nprosperous, but now there is only a bay giving a none too safe  \nanchorage for ships. The Greeks sailed here and took cover on  \nits lonely shore. We thought they had left us and sailed for  \nMycenae with favouring winds. The whole of Troy then shook  \nitself free of its long sorrow. The gates were thrown open and  \nthe people went out rejoicing to see the Greek encampment, the  \ndeserted shore and all the places abandoned by the enemy. Here  \nwas the Dolopian camp and here fierce Achilles had his tent.  \n30 This was where the fleet was drawn up. This was where they  \nused to fight their battles. Some gazed at the fatal offering to the  \nvirgin goddess Minerva and marvelled at the huge size of the  \nhorse. Thymoetes was the first to urge them to drag it inside  \ntheir walls and set it on their citadel, whether it was treachery  \nthat made him speak, or whether the Fates of Troy were already  \nmoving towards that end. But Capys, and those of sounder  \njudgement, did not trust this offering. They thought it was some  \ntrick of the Greeks and should be thrown into the sea, or set fire  \nto and burned, or that they should bore holes in its hollow belly  \nand probe for hiding places. The people were uncertain and  \ntheir passions were divided.\n\n40 Then suddenly at the head of a great throng Laocoon came  \nrunning down in a blaze of fury from the heights of the citadel,  \nshouting from a distance as he came: 'O you poor fools! Are  \nyou out of your minds, you Trojans? Do you seriously believe  \nthat your enemies have sailed away? Do you imagine Greeks  \never give gifts without some devious purpose? Is this all you  \nknow about Ulixes? I tell you there are Greeks hiding in here,  \nshut up in all this wood, or else it is a siege engine designed for  \nuse against our walls, to spy on our homes and come down on  \nthe city from above, or else there is some other trick we cannot  \nsee. Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I am afraid  \nof Greeks, even when they bear gifts.'\n\n50 With these words he threw a great spear with all his strength  \ninto the beast's side, into the curved timbers of its belly. It stuck  \nthere vibrating, the creature's womb quivered and the hollow  \ncaverns boomed and groaned. If divine Fate, if the minds of the  \ngods had not been set against us, Laocoon would surely have  \nforced us to tear open the hiding places of the Greeks with our  \nswords, Troy would still be standing and the high citadel of  \nPriam would still be in its place.\n\nWhile this was going on, there was a sudden outcry, and some  \nTrojan shepherds came before the king, dragging a man with  \nhis hands tied behind his back. They knew nothing about him.  \n60 They had come upon him and he had given himself up. This was  \nall part of his scheme. His purpose was to open Troy to the  \nGreeks. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he was  \nready for either outcome, to spin his web or to meet certain  \ndeath if he failed. In their eagerness to see the prisoner, Trojan  \nsoldiers came running up from all sides, and gathered round to  \njoin in jeering at him. Listen now to this story of Greek treachery,  \nand from this one indictment, learn the ways of a whole people.  \nDishevelled and defenceless, he stood there with every eye upon  \nhim, looking all round him at the warriors of Troy, and said  \n70 with a great sigh: 'There is nowhere for me now on sea or land.  \nThere is nothing left for a man like me, who has no place among  \nthe Greeks, and now here are my enemies the Trojans, baying  \nfor my blood.'\n\nHe groaned. We had a change of heart, and all our passions  \nwere checked. We fell to asking him what his family was, and  \nwhat he had come to tell us. We wanted to hear why he had  \nallowed himself to be taken prisoner.\n\n'O king Priam,' he replied, 'I am the sort of man who will  \nconfess the whole truth to you, whatever it may be. First of all,  \n80 I am a Greek from Argos, and I will not deny it. Fortune may  \nhave made Sinon an object of pity, but for all her malice, she  \nwill never make him a cheat or a liar. You may perhaps have  \nheard tell of the name of Palamedes, son of Belus, and the great  \nglory that was his. Although he was innocent, false information  \nwas infamously laid against him. His offence was that he  \nobjected to the war, and the Greeks put him to death. They  \nmurdered him and now they mourn him. This Palamedes was  \nmy comrade and my kinsman. My father was a poor man, and  \nsent me here to the war to be with him from my earliest years.  \nWhile Palamedes was secure in his kingship and had authority  \n90 in the council of the kings, we too had some standing and some  \ncredit. But after he left the shores of this upper world, the victim  \nof the jealousy of Ulixes and his smooth tongue (you all know  \nabout Ulixes), I was prostrate and dragged out my life in darkness  \nand grief, brooding to myself over the downfall of my  \ninnocent friend, till, like a madman, I broke my silence and  \npromised that I would miss no chance of revenge if ever I came  \nback in victory to our native Argos. My words roused his bitter  \nhatred. This was my first step on a slippery path. From this  \nmoment on, Ulixes kept me in a constant state of fear by one  \nnew accusation after another. From this moment on he spread  \nvague rumours about me among the common soldiers. He knew  \nhe was guilty and was looking for weapons to use against me.  \n100 Nor did he rest until with Calchas the priest as his lackey...  \nbut why do I waste time? Why go over this sordid story to no  \npurpose? If in your eyes all Greeks are the same, and all you have  \nto know is that a man is a Greek, then give me my punishment. It  \nis long overdue. This would please Ulixes, our friend from  \nIthaca, and Agamemnon and Menelaus would pay you well  \nfor it.'\n\nBy this time we were burning to ask questions and find out  \nwhy all this had happened. We had never met villainy on this  \nscale before. We were not familiar with the arts of Greece. He  \nwent on with his lies, cringing with fear as he spoke:\n\n'The Greeks have often wanted to make their escape from  \nhere and leave Troy far behind them, abandoning this long and  \n110 weary war. And oh how I wish they had done so! But again and  \nagain rough seas here kept them in port or the south wind  \nalarmed them as they were setting sail. And most of all, when  \nthis construction of interwoven maple beams, this horse, was at  \nlast in position here, the black clouds thundered all round the  \nsky. We were at a loss and sent Eurypylus to consult the oracle  \nof Phoebus Apollo, and this is the grim response he brought  \nback from the shrine: \"When you Greeks first came to Troy you  \nkilled a virgin and appeased the winds with her blood. With  \nblood you must find a way to return. You must sacrifice a Greek  \n120 life.\" When this answer came to people's ears, they did not  \nknow where to turn, and the cold fear ran through the marrow  \nof their bones. For whom were they to prepare death? Whom  \ndid Apollo want? At this point there was a great uproar, and  \nthe Ithacan dragged out the prophet Calchas into the middle of  \nus and demanded to know what was the will of the gods. Many  \npeople could detect even then the ruthless hand of the schemer  \ndirected against me. They saw what was to come and held their  \npeace. For ten days Calchas gave no answer, concealing himself  \nand refusing to say the word that would betray a man and send  \nhim to his death. But at long last, all according to plan, he  \nallowed the clamour raised by the Ithacan to force him to break  \n130 his silence and mark me out for the altar. They all agreed. They  \nhad all been afraid, but now one man was doomed, and this  \nthey could endure.\n\n'The day of the abomination was soon upon us. The sacred  \nrites were all prepared for me. The salted meal was sprinkled  \nand the sacrificial ribbons were round my head. I escaped from  \ndeath, I admit it, I broke my bonds, and lay hidden all night in  \nthe reeds of a marsh, waiting for them to set sail, and wondering  \nif they had. I have no hope now of seeing the land which was  \nonce my home, or my beloved children, or my father whom I  \n140 have so often longed for. Perhaps they will be punished for my  \nescape, and wash away this guilt of mine with their own helpless  \nblood. But I beg of you by the gods who know the truth, by any  \nhonesty that may survive unsullied between men, pity me in my  \ngreat suffering. I know in my heart I have not deserved it.'\n\nHe wept. We spared him and and even began to pity him.  \nPriam spoke first and ordered him to be freed from the manacles  \nand the ropes that tied him, and spoke these friendly words:  \n'Whoever you are, from this moment on forget the Greeks  \nwhom you have lost. You will be one of us. But now give full  \n150 and truthful answers to the questions I ask you: why have they  \nset up this huge monster of a horse? Who proposed it? What is  \nthe purpose of it? Does it have some supernatural power? Is it  \nan engine of war?'\n\nSinon was ready with all his Greek arts and stratagems.  \nRaising to the skies the hands we had just freed from their  \nshackles, he cried: 'I call upon you, eternal fires of heaven and  \nyour inviolable godhead. I call upon the altars and the impious  \nswords from which I have escaped. I call upon the sacred ribbons  \nwhich I wore as sacrificial victim. It is no sin for me to break my  \nsacred oaths of allegiance to the Greeks. It is no sin for me to  \nhate these men and bring all their secrets out into the open. I  \n160 am no longer subject to the laws of my people. Only you must  \nstand by your promises. If I keep Troy safe, Troy must keep its  \nword and save me, if what I say is true, and what I offer is a full  \nand fair exchange.\n\n'All the hopes and confidence of the Greeks in this war they  \nstarted have always depended upon the help of Pallas Athene.  \nBut ever since the impious Diomede and Ulixes, the schemer  \nbehind all their crimes, took it upon themselves to tear the  \nfateful Palladium, the image of the goddess, from her own sacred  \ntemple in Troy, ever since they slew the guards on the heights  \nof the citadel and dared to touch the sacred bands on the head  \nof the virgin goddess with blood on their hands, from that  \n170 moment their hopes turned to water and ebbed away from them,  \ntheir strength was broken and the mind of the goddess was set  \nagainst them. Tritonian Pallas gave clear signs of this by sending  \nportents that could not be doubted. No sooner had they laid  \ndown the image in the Greek camp, than its eyes glared and  \nflashed fire, the salt sweat streamed over its limbs and by some  \nmiracle the image of the goddess leapt three times from the  \nground with her shield and spear quivering. Calchas declared  \nthat they had to take to instant flight across the sea, and prophesied  \nthat Troy could not be sacked by Argive weapons unless  \nthey first took the omens again in Argos, and then brought back  \nto Troy the divine image which they have now carried away  \n180 across the sea on their curved ships. So now they have set sail  \nfor their native Mycenae to rearm and to muster their gods to  \ncome with them and they will soon remeasure the ocean and be  \nback here when you least expect them. This is how Calchas  \ninterprets the omens, and on his advice they have set up this  \neffigy of a horse to atone for the violation of the Palladium and  \nthe divinity of Pallas, and for their deadly sin of sacrilege. But  \nhe told them to make it an immense structure of interlaced  \ntimbers soaring to the sky, so that it could not be taken through  \nthe gates and brought into the city or protect the people should  \nthey receive it with their traditional piety. For if your hands  \n190 violate this offering to Minerva, then total destruction shall fall  \nupon the empire of Priam and the Trojans (and may the gods  \nrather send that on his own head). But if your hands raise it up  \ninto your city, Asia shall come unbidden in a mighty war to the  \nwalls of Pelops, and that is the fate in store for our descendants.'\n\nThe trap was laid. These were the arts of the liar Sinon, and  \nwe believed it all. Cunning and false tears had overcome the  \nmen who had not been subdued by Diomede, son of Tydeus,  \nnor Achilles of Larisa, not by ten years of siege nor a thousand  \nships.\n\n200 And now there came upon this unhappy people another and  \nyet greater sign, which caused them even greater fear. Their  \nhearts were troubled and they could not see what the future  \nheld. Laocoon, the chosen priest of Neptune, was sacrificing a  \nhuge bull at the holy altar, when suddenly there came over the  \ncalm water from Tenedos (I shudder at the memory of it), two  \nserpents leaning into the sea in great coils and making side by  \nside for the shore. Breasting the waves, they held high their  \nblood-stained crests, and the rest of their bodies ploughed the  \nwaves behind them, their backs winding, coil upon measureless  \ncoil, through the sounding foam of the sea. Now they were on  \n210 land. Their eyes were blazing and flecked with blood. They  \nhissed as they licked their lips with quivering tongues. We grew  \npale at the sight and ran in all directions, but they made straight  \nfor Laocoon. First the two serpents seized his two young sons,  \ntwining round them both and feeding on their helpless limbs.  \nThen, when Laocoon came to the rescue with his sword in his  \nhand, they seized him and bound him in huge spirals, and soon  \ntheir scaly backs were entwined twice round his body and twice  \n220 round his throat, their heads and necks high above him as he  \nstruggled to prise open their coils, his priestly ribbons befouled  \nby gore and black venom, and all the time he was raising horrible  \ncries to heaven like the bellowing of a wounded bull shaking  \nthe ineffectual axe out of its neck as it flees from the altar. But  \nthe two snakes escaped, gliding away to the highest temples  \nof the city and making for the citadel of the heartless Pallas, the  \nTritonian goddess, where they sheltered under her feet and  \nunder the circle of her shield.\n\nAt that moment a new fear crept into all their trembling  \n230 hearts. They said that Laocoon had been justly punished for his  \ncrime. He had violated the sacred timbers by hurling his sinful  \nspear into the horse's back, and they all shouted together that  \nit should be taken to a proper place and prayers offered up to  \nthe goddess. We breached the walls and laid open the buildings  \nof our city. They all buckled to the task, setting wheels to roll  \nbeneath the horse's feet and stretching ropes of flax to its neck.  \nThe engine of Fate mounted our walls, teeming with armed  \nmen. Unmarried girls and boys sang their hymns around it  \n240 and rejoiced to have a hand on the rope. On it came, gliding  \nsmoothly, looking down on the heart of the city. O my native  \nland! O Ilium, home of the gods! O walls of the people of  \nDardanus, famous in war! Four times it stopped on the very  \nthreshold of the gate, and four times the armour clanged in its  \nwomb. But we paid no heed and pressed on blindly, madly, and  \nstood the accursed monster on our consecrated citadel. Even at  \nthis last moment Cassandra was still opening her lips to foretell  \nthe future, but God had willed that these were lips the Trojans  \nwould never believe. This was the last day of a doomed people  \nand we spent it adorning the shrines of the gods all through the  \ncity with festal garlands.\n\n250 Meanwhile the sky was turning and night was rushing up  \nfrom the Ocean to envelop in its great shadow the earth, the sky  \nand the treachery of the Greeks, while the Trojans were lying  \nquiet in their homes, their weary bodies wrapped in sleep. The  \nGreek fleet in full array was already taking the army from  \nTenedos through the friendly silence of the moon and making  \nfor the shore they knew so well, when the royal flagship raised  \nhigh the fire signal and Sinon, preserved by the cruelty of the  \ndivine Fates, stealthily undid the pine bolts of the horse and  \n260 freed the Greeks from its womb. The wooden horse was open,  \nand the Greeks were pouring gratefully out of its hollow chambers  \ninto the fresh air, the commanders Thessandrus and  \nSthenelus and fierce Ulixes sliding down the rope they had  \nlowered, and with them Acamas, Thoas, Neoptolemus of the  \nline of Peleus, Machaon, who came out first, Menelaus and  \nEpeos himself, the maker of the horse that tricked the Trojans.  \nThey moved into a city buried in wine and sleep, slaying the  \nguards and opening the gates to let in all their waiting comrades  \nand join forces as they had planned.\n\nIt was the time when rest, the most grateful gift of the gods,  \nwas first beginning to creep over suffering mortals, when Hector  \n270 suddenly appeared before my eyes in my sleep, full of sorrow  \nand streaming with tears. He looked as he did when he had been  \ndragged behind the chariot, black with dust and caked with  \nblood, his feet swollen where they had been pierced for the  \nleather thongs. What a sight he was! How changed from the  \nHector who had thrown Trojan fire on to the ships of the Greeks  \nor come back clad in the spoils of Achilles. His beard was filthy,  \nhis hair matted with blood, and he had on his body all the  \n280 wounds he had received around the walls of his native city. In  \nmy dream I spoke to him first, forcing out my words, and I too  \nwas weeping and full of sorrow: 'O light of Troy, best hope and  \ntrust of all Trojans, what has kept you so long from us? Long  \nhave we waited for you, Hector. From what shores have you  \ncome? With what eyes do we look upon you in our weariness  \nafter the death of so many of your countrymen, after all the  \nsufferings of your people and your city? What has so shamefully  \ndisfigured the face that was once so serene? What wounds are  \nthese I see?'\n\nThere was no reply. He paid no heed to my futile questions,  \nbut heaved a great groan from the depths of his heart and said:  \n'You must escape, son of the goddess. You must save yourself  \n290 from these flames. The enemy is master of the walls and Troy is  \nfalling from her highest pinnacle. You have given enough to  \nyour native land and to Priam. If any right hand could have  \nsaved Troy, mine would have saved it. Into your care she now  \ncommends her sacraments and her household gods. Take them  \nto share your fate. Look for a great city to establish for them  \nafter long wanderings across the sea.' These were his words,  \nand he brought out in his own hands from her inmost shrine the  \nmighty goddess Vesta with the sacred ribbons on her head and  \nher undying flame.\n\nMeanwhile the city was in utter confusion and despair.  \n300 Although the house of my father Anchises stood apart and was  \nscreened by trees, the noise was beginning to be heard and the  \ndin of battle was coming closer and closer. I shook the sleep  \nfrom me and climbed to the top of the highest gable of the roof,  \nand stood there with my ears pricked up like a shepherd when  \na furious south wind is carrying fire into a field of grain, or a  \nmountain river whirls along in spate, flattening all the fields, the  \ngrowing crops and all the labour of oxen, carrying great trees  \nheadlong down in its floods while the shepherd stands stupefied  \non the top of the rock, listening to the sound without knowing  \n310 what it is. Then in that moment I knew the truth. The treacherous  \nscheming of the Greeks was there to see. Soon the great  \nhouse of Deiphobus yielded to the flames and fell in ruins. Soon  \nhis neighbour Ucalegon was burning and the broad waters of  \nthe strait of Sigeum reflected the flames. The clamour of men  \nand the clangour of trumpets rose to high heaven. Mindlessly I  \nput on my armour, for reason had little use for armour, but my  \nheart was burning to gather comrades for battle and rush to the  \ncitadel with them. Frenzy and anger drove me on and suddenly  \nit seemed a noble thing to die in arms.\n\nI now caught sight of Panthus, just escaped from the weapons  \nof the Greeks, Panthus, son of Othrys, priest of Apollo and of  \n320 the citadel. He was carrying in his hands the sacraments and the  \ndefeated gods from the temple, and dragging his young grandson  \nalong behind him in a mad rush to the door of my father's  \nhouse. 'Where is our strong-point? Where are we rallying?' I  \nhad scarcely time to speak before he replied, groaning: 'The last  \nday has come for the people of Dardanus. This is the hour they  \ncannot escape. The Trojans are no more. Ilium has come to an  \nend and with it the great glory of the race of Teucer. Pitiless  \nJupiter has given everything over to Argos. The Greeks are  \nmasters of the burning city. The horse stands high in the heart  \n330 of it, pouring out its armed men, and Sinon is in triumph,  \nspreading the flames and gloating over us. The great double  \ngates are open and Greeks are there in their thousands, as many  \nas ever came from great Mycenae. Others have blocked the  \nnarrow streets with their weapons levelled. Their lines are drawn  \nup and the naked steel is flashing, ready for slaughter. Only the  \nfirst few guards on the gates are trying to fight and offering blind  \nresistance.'\n\nI went where I was driven by the words of Panthus and the  \nwill of the gods, into the fighting and the flames, where the grim  \nFury of war called me, where I could hear the din of battle  \nand the shouts rising to heaven. I came across Rhipeus in the  \n340 moonlight and Epytus, huge in his armour, and they threw in  \ntheir lot with me. Hypanis and Dymas too came to my side, and  \nso did Coroebus, son of Mygdon. He had happened to come to  \nTroy just in these last few days, burning with mad love for  \nCassandra, and was fighting as son-in-law on the side of Priam  \nand the Trojans. It was his misfortune not to heed the advice his  \nbride had given him in her prophetic frenzy.\n\nWhen I saw them standing shoulder to shoulder and spoiling  \nfor battle, I addressed them in these words: 'You are the bravest  \n350 of all our warriors, and your bravery is in vain. If your desire is  \nfixed to follow a man who fights to the end, you see how things  \nstand with us. All the gods on whom this empire once depended  \nhave left their shrines and their altars. You are rushing to defend  \na burning city. Let us die. Let us rush into the thick of the  \nfighting. The one safety for the defeated is to have no hope of  \nsafety.'\n\nThese words added madness to their courage. From that  \nmoment, like wolves foraging blindly on a misty night, driven  \nout of their lairs by a ravening hunger that gives them no rest  \nand leaving their young behind to wait for them with their  \nthroats all dry, we ran the gauntlet of the enemy to certain  \n360 death, holding our course through the middle of the city, with  \nthe hollow blackness of dark night hanging over us. Who could  \nunfold the horrors of that night? Who could speak of such  \nslaughter? Who could weep tears to match that suffering? It was  \nthe fall of an ancient city that had long ruled an empire. The  \nbodies of the dead lay through all its streets and houses and the  \nsacred shrines of its gods. Nor was it only Trojans who paid  \ntheir debts in blood; sometimes valour came back even to the  \nhearts of the defeated and Greeks were cut down in their hour  \nof triumph. Bitter grief was everywhere. Everywhere there was  \nfear, and death in many forms.\n\n370 The first of the Greeks to come to meet us was Androgeos,  \nand he had a large contingent of men with him. Not knowing  \nwho we were, but thinking we were allies, he called out first to  \nus: 'Move along there, friends! Why are you so slow? What is  \nkeeping you back? The citadel is on fire, and everyone else is  \npillaging and plundering. Have you just arrived from your tall  \nships?' He spoke, and when no convincing answer came, he  \ninstantly realized that he had fallen amongst enemies. He was  \nstupefied and started backwards without another word. He was  \n380 like a man going through rough briers who steps on a snake  \nwith all his weight without seeing it, and starts back in sudden  \npanic as it raises its wrath and puffs up its blue-green neck: that  \nis how Androgeos recoiled in terror at the sight of us. We fell  \nupon them and surrounded them with a wall of weapons. They  \ndid not know the ground, and were stricken with fear, so we  \ncut them down wherever we caught them. Fortune gave us a  \nfair wind for our first efforts, and Coroebus, his spirits raised  \nby our success, cried out: 'Come comrades, let us take the first  \nroad Fortune shows us to safety, and go where she shows that  \n390 she approves. Let us change shields with the Greeks and put on  \ntheir insignia. Is this treachery or is it courage? Who would ask  \nin dealing with an enemy? The Greeks themselves will provide  \nour armour.'\n\nHe spoke, and then put on the plumed helmet of Androgeos  \nand his richly blazoned shield, and buckled the Greek sword to  \nhis side. Rhipeus cheerfully followed suit, then Dymas himself  \nand the whole band. Every man armed himself with the spoils  \nhe had just taken, and, moving through the city, we mingled  \nwith the Greeks and fought many battles under gods not our  \nown, clashing blindly in the night, and many a Greek did we send  \ndown to Orcus. Some scattered towards their ships, running for  \n400 the safety of the shore. Some climbed back in abject fear into  \nthe huge horse, and hid themselves in its familiar belly.\n\nBut no man can put trust in gods who are opposed to him.  \nSuddenly there was Cassandra, the maiden daughter of Priam,  \nbeing dragged from the temple of Minerva, from her very sanctuary,  \nwith hair streaming and her burning eyes raised in vain to  \nheaven, but only her eyes \u2013 they had tied her gentle hands.  \nCoroebus could not endure the sight of this, but a wild frenzy  \ntook him and he hurled himself into the middle of the enemy to  \nhis death. We all went after him and ran upon their spears where  \n410 they were thickest. First we were attacked by our own men and  \noverwhelmed by their missiles thrown from the high gable of  \nthe temple roof, and the sight of our armour and the confusion  \ncaused by our Greek crests brought pitiable slaughter on us.  \nThen the Greeks raised furious alarm at the rescue of Cassandra  \nand gathered from every quarter to attack us, Ajax fiercest of  \nthem all, the two sons of Atreus and the whole army of the  \nDolopians. It was as though a whirlwind had burst and opposing  \nwinds were clashing, the west, the south, and the east wind  \nglorying in the horses of the morning, with woods wailing and  \n420 wild Nereus churning up the sea from its depths. Then also  \nappeared all those Greeks who had been routed by our stratagem  \nin the darkness of the night and scattered through the city. They  \nrealized that our shields and weapons were not our own and  \ndid not accord with the words on our lips. In an instant they  \noverwhelmed us by the sheer weight of their numbers. Coroebus  \nwas the first to die. He fell by the right hand of Peneleus and lay  \nthere face down on the altar of Minerva, goddess mighty in  \narms. Rhipeus also fell. Of all the Trojans he was the most  \nrighteous, the greatest lover of justice. But the gods took their  \nown decision. Hypanis and Dymas were cut down by their  \n430 fellow-Trojans, and as for you, Panthus, you found as you fell  \nthat your great devotion and the ribbon you wore as priest of  \nApollo were no protection. I call to witness the ashes of Troy. I  \ncall upon the flames in which my people died. In the hour of  \nyour fall I did not flinch from the weapons of the Greeks or  \nfrom anything they could do. If it had been my fate to fall, my  \nright hand fully earned it.\n\nFrom here we were swept along in the fighting, Iphitus and  \nPelias with me. Iphitus was no longer young, and Pelias had  \nbeen slowed by a wound he had received from Ulixes. The noise  \nof shouting drew us straight to Priam's palace and there we  \nfound the fighting so heavy that it seemed there were no battles  \nanywhere else, that this was the only place in the city where men  \n440 were dying. We saw Mars, the irresistible God of War, Greeks  \nrushing to the palace, men with shields locked over their backs  \npacking the threshold, ladders hooked to the walls and men  \nstruggling to climb them right against the very doorposts, thrusting  \nup their shields on their left arms to protect themselves while  \ntheir right hands gripped the top of the walls. The Trojans for  \ntheir part were tearing down their towers and the roofs of all  \ntheir buildings. They saw the end was near, and these were the  \nweapons they were preparing to defend themselves with in the  \nvery moment of death, rolling down on the heads of their  \nenemies the gilded beams and richly ornamented ceilings of  \ntheir ancestors. Down on the ground others were standing  \n450 shoulder to shoulder with drawn swords blocking the doorway.  \nMy spirit was renewed and I rushed to bring relief to the  \npalace of my king, to help its defenders, to put heart into men  \nwho were defeated.\n\nThere was a forgotten entrance at the rear, a secret doorway  \nentering into a passage which joined the different parts of  \nPriam's palace. While the kingdom of Troy still stood, poor  \nAndromache often used to come this way unattended to visit  \nHector's parents, taking her son Astyanax to see his grandfather.  \nI slipped through this door and climbed to the highest gable of  \nthe roof, from where the doomed Trojans were vainly hurling  \n460 missiles. There was a tower rising sheer towards the stars from  \nthe top of the palace roof, from which we used to look out over  \nthe whole of Troy, the Greek fleet and the camp of the Achaeans.  \nWe set about this tower and worked round it with iron bars  \nwhere there was a join we could open up above the top floor of  \nthe palace. Having loosened it from its deep bed in the walls,  \nwe rocked it and suddenly sent it toppling, spreading instant  \ndestruction and crushing great columns of Greeks. But others  \nstill came on and the hail of rocks and other missiles never  \nslackened.\n\nIn the portico in front of the palace, on the very threshold,  \n470 Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, whom men also call Neoptolemus, was  \nrampaging and the light flashed on the bronze of his weapons.  \nHe was like a snake which has fed on poisonous herbs and  \nhidden all winter in the cold earth, but now it emerges into the  \nlight, casts its slough and is renewed. Glistening with youth, it  \ncoils its slithering back and lifts its breast high to the sun with  \nits triple tongue flickering from its mouth. Huge Periphas was  \nwith him, and Automedon, the charioteer and armour-bearer  \nof Achilles. With him too were all the young warriors of Scyros  \ncoming to attack the palace and throwing firebrands on to the  \n480 roof. Pyrrhus himself at their head seized a double-headed axe  \nand with it smashed the hard stone of the threshold, wrenching  \nthe bronze-plated doorposts from their sockets. He then hacked  \na panel out of the mighty timbers of the door and broke a gaping  \nhole which gave them a view into the house. There before their  \neyes were the long colonnades and the inner chambers. There  \nbefore their eyes was the heart of the palace of Priam and the  \nancient kings. They saw armed men standing in the doorway,  \nbut inside all was confusion and lamentation, and deep into the  \nhouse the hollow chambers rang with the wailing of women,  \nand their cries rose to strike the golden stars. Frightened mothers  \n490 were wandering through the great palace, clinging to the doorposts  \nand kissing them. But Pyrrhus pressed on with all the  \nviolence of his father Achilles, and no bolts or guards could hold  \nhim. The door gave way under repeated battering and the posts  \nhe had dislodged from their sockets fell to the ground. Brute  \nforce made the breach and the Greeks went storming through,  \nbutchering the guards who stood in their way and filling the  \nwhole house with soldiers. No river foaming in spate was ever  \nlike this, bursting its banks and leaving its channel to overwhelm  \neverything in its path with its swirling current, as it bears down  \nfuriously on ploughed fields in a great wave, and cattle and their  \n500 pens are swept all over the plains. I myself saw Neoptolemus in  \nan orgy of killing and both the sons of Atreus on the threshold.  \nI saw Hecuba with a hundred women, her daughters and the  \nwives of her sons. I saw Priam's blood all over the altar, polluting  \nthe flame which he himself had sanctified. Down fell the fifty  \nbedchambers with all the hopes for generations yet to come,  \nand down came the proud doorposts with their spoils of barbaric  \ngold. Everything not claimed by fire was now held by Greeks.\n\nPerhaps you may also ask how Priam died. When he saw the  \ncapture and fall of his city, the doors of his palace torn down  \n510 and his enemy in the innermost sanctuary of his home, although  \nhe could achieve nothing, the old man buckled his armour long  \nunused on shoulders trembling with age, girt on his feeble sword  \nand made for the thick of the fight, looking for his death. In the  \nmiddle of the palace, under the naked vault of heaven, there  \nstood a great altar, and nearby an ancient laurel tree leaning  \nover it and enfolding the household gods in its shade. Here,  \nvainly embracing the images of the gods, Hecuba and her daughters  \nwere sitting flocked round the altar, like doves driven down  \nin a black storm. When Hecuba saw that Priam had now put on  \n520 his youthful armour, 'O my poor husband,' she cried, 'this is  \nmadness. Why have you put on this armour? Where can you  \ngo? This is not the sort of help we need. You are not the defender  \nwe are looking for. Not even my Hector, if he were here now  \n...Just come here and sit by me. This altar will protect us all,  \nor you will die with us.' As she spoke she took the old man to  \nher and led him to a place by the holy altar.\n\nSuddenly Polites, one of Priam's sons, came in sight. He had  \nescaped death at the hands of Pyrrhus and now, wounded and  \nwith enemy weapons on every side, he was running through the  \nlong porticos of the palace and across the empty halls with  \n530 Pyrrhus behind him in full cry, almost within reach, pressing  \nhim hard with his spear and poised to strike. As soon as he  \nreached his father and mother, he fell and vomited his life's  \nblood before their eyes. There was no escape for Priam. Death  \nwas now upon him, but he did not check himself or spare the  \nanger in his voice. 'As for you,' he cried, 'and for what you have  \ndone, if there is any power in heaven that cares for such things,  \nmay the gods pay you well. May they give you the reward you  \nhave deserved for making me see my own son dying before my  \n540 eyes, for defiling a father's face with the murder of his son. You  \npretend that Achilles was your father, but this is not how Achilles  \ntreated his enemy Priam. He had respect for my rights as a  \nsuppliant and for the trust I placed in him. He gave me back the  \nbloodless body of Hector for burial and allowed me to return  \nto the city where I was king.' With these words the old man  \nfeebly threw his harmless spear. It rattled on the bronze of  \nPyrrhus' shield and hung there useless sticking on the surface of  \nthe central boss. Pyrrhus then made his reply. 'In that case you  \nwill be my messenger and go to my father, son of Peleus. Let  \nhim know about my wicked deeds and do not forget to tell  \nhim about the degeneracy of his son Neoptolemus. Now, die.'  \n550 As he spoke the word, he was dragging Priam to the very altar,  \nhis body trembling as it slithered through pools of his son's  \nblood. Winding Priam's hair in his left hand, in his right he  \nraised his sword with a flash of light and buried it to the hilt  \nin Priam's side.\n\nSo ended the destiny of Priam. This was the death that fell to  \nhis lot. He who had once been the proud ruler over so many  \nlands and peoples of Asia died with Troy ablaze before his eyes  \nand the citadel of Pergamum in ruins. His mighty trunk lay  \nupon the shore, the head hacked from the shoulders, a corpse  \nwithout a name.\n\nThen for the first time I knew the horror that was all about  \n560 me. What was I to do? There came into my mind the image of  \nmy own dear father, as I looked at the king who was his equal  \nin age breathing out his life with that cruel wound. There came  \ninto my mind also my wife Creusa whom I had left behind, the  \nplundering of my home and the fate of young Iulus. I turned to  \nlook at the men fighting by my side. Exhausted, they had all  \ndeserted me and thrown themselves from the roof or given their  \nsuffering bodies to the flames.\n\nNow that I was alone, I caught sight of Helen keeping watch  \non the doors of the temple of Vesta where she was staying quietly  \n570 in hiding. The fires gave a bright light and I was gazing all  \naround me wherever I went. This Helen, this Fury sent to be the  \nscourge both of Troy and of her native Greece, was afraid of the  \nTrojans, who hated her for the overthrow of their city. She was  \nafraid the Greeks would punish her and afraid of the wrath of  \nthe husband she had deserted, so, hated by all, she had gone  \ninto hiding and was sitting there at the altar. The passion flared  \nin my heart and I longed in my anger to avenge my country even  \nas it fell and to exact the penalty for her crimes. 'So this woman  \nwill live to set eyes on Sparta and her native Mycenae again,  \nand walk as queen in the triumph she has won? Will she see her  \n580 husband, her father's home and her children and be attended  \nby women of Troy and Phrygian slaves, while Priam lies dead  \nby the sword, Troy has been put to the flames and the shores of  \nthe land of Dardanus have sweated so much blood? This will  \nnot be. Although there is no fame worth remembering to be  \nwon by punishing a woman and such a victory wins no praise,  \nnevertheless I _shall_ win praise for blotting out this evil and  \nexacting a punishment which is richly deserved. I shall also take  \npleasure in feeding the flames of vengeance and appeasing the  \nashes of my people.'\n\n590 As I ran towards her ranting and raving, my loving mother  \nsuddenly appeared before my eyes. I had never before seen her  \nso clearly, shining in perfect radiance through the darkness of  \nthe night. She revealed herself as a goddess as the gods in heaven  \nsee her, in all her majesty of form and stature. As she caught my  \nright hand and held me back, she opened her rosy lips and spoke  \nto me \u2013 'O my son, what bitterness can have been enough to stir  \nthis wild anger in you? Why this raging passion? Where is all  \nthe love you used to have for me? Will you not first go and see  \nwhere you have left your father, crippled with age, and find  \nwhether your wife Creusa is still alive, and your son Ascanius?  \n600 The whole Greek army is prowling all around them and they  \nwould have been carried off by the flames or slashed by the  \nswords of the enemy if my loving care were not defending them.  \nIt is not the hated beauty of the Spartan woman, the daughter  \nof Tyndareus, that is overthrowing all this wealth and laying  \nlow the topmost towers of Troy, nor is it Paris although you all  \nblame him, it is the gods, the cruelty of the gods. Look, for I  \nshall tear away from all around you the dank cloud that veils  \nyour eyes and dulls your mortal vision. You are my son, do not  \nbe afraid to do what I command you, and do not disobey me.  \n610 Here where you see shattered masonry, stone torn from stone,  \nand waves of dust-laden smoke, Neptune has loosened the  \nfoundations with his great trident and is shaking the walls,  \ntearing up your whole city from the place where it is set. Here  \ntoo is Juno, cruellest of all, the first to seize the Scaean Gate,  \nstanding there sword in hand, and furiously calling up the  \nsupporting columns from the ships. Now look behind you,  \nTritonian Pallas is already sitting on top of your citadel shining  \nout of the cloud with her terrible Gorgon, while the Father of  \nthe Gods himself puts heart into the Greeks and gives them  \nstrength. It is Jupiter himself who is rousing the gods against  \nthe armies of Troy. Escape, my son, escape with all haste. Put  \n620 an end to your struggle, I shall not leave your side till I see you  \nsafely standing on the threshold of your father's door.' She  \nfinished speaking and melted into the dense shadows of that  \nnight, and there before my eyes I saw the dreadful vision of the  \ngods in all their might, the enemies of Troy.\n\nAt that moment I seemed to see the whole of Ilium settling  \ninto the flames and Neptune's Troy toppling over from its  \nfoundations like an ancient ash tree high in the mountains which  \nfarmers have hacked with blow upon blow of their double axes,  \nlabouring to fell it; again and again it threatens to fall, its foliage  \n630 shudders and its head trembles and nods until at last it succumbs  \nto its wounds and breaks with a dying groan, spreading ruin  \nalong the ridge. I came down from the roof and with the god to  \nlead me, a way opened through fire and sword. The weapons  \nparted and the flames drew back before me.\n\nWhen at last I had reached the door of my father's house and  \nour ancient home, my first wish was to find my father and take  \nhim into the high mountains, but he refused to go on living now  \nthat Troy had been levelled to the earth. He would not hear of  \nexile, but cried: 'Those of you with young blood still thick in  \nyour veins, those of you whose strength is sound and unimpaired,  \n640 you are the ones who must busy yourselves with escaping.  \nIf the gods in heaven had wished me to go on living, they  \nwould have preserved this place for me. I have already seen one  \nsack of the city and survived its capture, and that is more than  \nenough. Here I lie and here I stay. Take your farewells and leave  \nme. My own right hand will earn me my death. The enemy will  \ntake pity on me. They will  \nbe looking for spoils. I shall have no  \ntomb, but that is an easy loss to bear. For long years, ever since  \nthe Father of the Gods and King of Men blew the wind of his  \nthunderbolt upon me and touched me with its fire, I have been  \nlingering here hated by the gods and useless to men.'\n\n650 As he said these words he stood there rooted and no power  \ncould move him. Streaming with tears, my wife Creusa, Ascanius,  \nall of us begged him not to bring everything down on his  \nown head: when Fate batters a house, the father should not add  \nhis weight to the blows. But he still refused. He stood by his  \ndecision and stayed where he was. I rushed to take up arms  \nagain in complete despair. Death was the only thing I could  \nhope for. What course could I follow? What fate was in store  \nfor us? 'Did you think I could run away and leave my father  \nhere?' I exclaimed. 'How did such a sacrilege escape my father's  \n660 lips? If the gods above decree that nothing of this great city is to  \nsurvive, if your mind is fixed and it is your pleasure to add  \nyourself and those you love to the destruction of the city, the  \ndoor is open and the deaths you want will come. Pyrrhus will  \nsoon be here, soaked in the blood of Priam. He is the one who  \nmurders the son before the face of the father, and the father at  \nthe altar. O my loving mother, is this why you took me through  \nfire and sword, so that I could see my enemy in the innermost  \nsanctuary of my home, and Ascanius and my father and my wife  \nCreusa with them lying sacrificed in each other's blood? Bring  \nme my armour, comrades. Bring it here. This is the last light we  \n670 shall see and it is calling the defeated. Give me back to the  \nGreeks. Let me go back and rejoin the battle. Today we die. But  \nnot all of us shall die unavenged.'\n\nI buckled on my sword again and was fixing my left arm into  \nthe shield. But as I was leaving Creusa suddenly threw herself  \nat my feet in the doorway and held me, stretching out our little  \nson Iulus towards me. 'If you are going to your death,' she cried,  \n'take us with you to share your fate, whatever it is. But if you  \nhave reason to put any hope in arms, your first duty is to guard  \nthis house. If you leave us here, what fate is waiting for little  \nIulus, for your father and for the woman who used to be called  \nyour wife?'\n\n680 Her cries of anguish were filling the whole house, when suddenly  \nthere was a great miracle. At the very moment when we  \nwere both holding Iulus and he was there between our sorrowing  \nfaces, a light began to stream from the top of the pointed cap he  \nwas wearing and the flame seemed to lick his soft hair and feed  \nround his forehead without harming him. We took fright and  \nrushed to beat out the flames in his hair and quench the holy  \nfire with water, but Father Anchises, looking joyfully up to the  \nstars of heaven and raising his hands palms upward, lifted his  \nvoice in prayer: 'O All-powerful Jupiter, if ever you yield to  \n690 prayers, look down upon us, that is all we ask, and if we deserve  \nanything for our devotion, give us help at last, Father Jupiter,  \nand confirm this omen.'\n\nScarcely had he spoken when a sudden peal of thunder rang  \nout on the left and a star fell from the sky, trailing a great torch  \nof light in its course through the darkness. We watched it glide  \nover the topmost pinnacles of the house and bury itself, still  \nbright, in the woods of Mount Ida, leaving its path marked out  \nbehind it, a broad furrow of light, and the whole place smoked  \nall around with sulphur. Now at last my father was truly convinced.  \n700 He rose up and addressed the gods, praying to the sacred  \nstar: 'There is now no more delay. Now I follow, O gods of my  \nfathers. Wherever you lead, there am I. Preserve this house.  \nPreserve my grandson. This is your sign. Troy is in your mighty  \nhands. Anchises yields. I am willing to go with you, my son, and  \nbe your companion.'\n\nHe had spoken. The noise of the fires was growing louder and  \nlouder through the city and the tide of flame was rolling nearer.  \n'Come then, dear father, up on my back. I shall take you on my  \n710 shoulders. Your weight will be nothing to me. Whatever may  \ncome, danger or safety, it will be the same for both of us. Young  \nIulus can walk by my side and my wife can follow in my footsteps  \nat a distance. And you, the slaves of our house, must pay  \nattention to what I am saying. As you leave the city there is a  \nmound with a lonely old temple of Ceres. Near it is an ancient  \ncypress preserved and revered for many long years by our ancestors.  \nWe shall go to that one place by different routes. You,  \nfather, take in your arms the sacraments and the ancestral gods  \nof our home. I am fresh from all the fighting and killing and it  \n720 is not right for me to touch them till I have washed in a running  \nstream.'\n\nWhen I had finished speaking, I put on a tawny lion's skin as  \na covering for my neck and the breadth of my shoulders and  \nthen I bowed down and took up my burden. Little Iulus twined  \nhis fingers in my right hand and kept up with me with his short  \nsteps. Creusa walked behind us and we moved along, keeping  \nto the shadows. This was the man who had been unmoved by  \nall the missiles of the Greeks and had long faced their serried  \nranks without a tremor, but now every breath of wind frightened  \nme and I started at every sound, so anxious was I, so afraid both  \nfor the man I carried and for the child at my side.\n\nI was now coming near the gates and it seemed that our  \n730 journey was nearly over and we had escaped, when I suddenly  \nthought I heard the sound of many marching feet and my father  \nlooking out through the darkness cried: 'Run, my son, run. They  \nare coming this way. I can see the flames reflected on their shields  \nand the bronze glinting.' At that moment some hostile power  \nconfused me and robbed me of my wits. I ran where there was  \nno road, leaving the familiar area of the streets. Then it was that  \nmy wife Creusa was torn from me by the cruelty of Fate \u2013  \n740 whether she stopped or lost her way or sat down exhausted, no  \none can tell. I never saw her again. Nor did I look behind me or  \nthink of her or realize that she was lost till we arrived at the  \nmound and the ancient sanctuary of Ceres. But when at last  \neveryone had gathered there, she was the only one who was not  \nwith us and neither her companions nor her son nor her husband  \nknew how she had been lost. I stormed and raged and blamed  \nevery god and man that ever was. This was the cruellest thing I  \nsaw in all the sack of the city. Leaving Ascanius, my father and  \nthe gods of Troy with my companions and hiding them all away  \nin a winding valley, I put on my flashing armour and went back  \n750 to the city, resolved to face all its dangers again, to go back  \nthrough the whole of Troy and once more put my life at peril.  \nFirst I went back to the walls and the dark gateway by which I  \nhad left the city. I found my route and retraced it, gazing all  \naround me through the darkness. Horror was everywhere and  \nthe very silence chilled the blood. Then I went on to our house,  \nthinking it was possible, just possible, that she had gone there.  \nThe Greeks had come flooding in and were everywhere. Consuming  \nflames, fanned by the winds, were soon rolling to the  \n760 top of the roof and leaping above it as their hot breath raged at  \nthe sky. From there I went on to Priam's palace and the citadel  \nwhere Phoenix and the terrible Ulixes, who had been chosen to  \nkeep watch, were already guarding the loot in the empty porticos  \nof the shrine of Juno. Here Greeks were piling up the treasures  \nof Troy, pillaged from all the burning temples \u2013 the tables of the  \ngods, mixing bowls of solid gold and all the robes they had  \nplundered. Children and frightened mothers stood around in  \nlong lines. I even dared to call her name into the darkness, filling  \n770 the streets with my shouts. Grief-stricken, I called her name  \n'Creusa! Creusa!' again and again, but there was no answer. I  \nwould not give up the search but was still rushing around the  \nhouses of the city when her likeness appeared in sorrow before  \nmy eyes, her very ghost, but larger than she was in life. I was  \nparalysed. My hair stood on end. My voice stuck in my throat.  \nThen she spoke to me and comforted my sorrow with these  \nwords: 'O husband that I love, why do you choose to give  \nyourself to such wild grief? These things do not happen without  \nthe approval of the gods. It is not their will that Creusa should  \ngo with you when you leave this place. The King of High  \n780 Olympus does not allow it. Before you lies a long exile and a  \nvast expanse of sea to plough before you come to the land of  \nHesperia where the Lydian river Thybris flows with smooth  \nadvance through a rich land of brave warriors. There prosperity  \nis waiting for you, and a kingdom and a royal bride. Wipe away  \nthe tears you are shedding for Creusa whom you loved. I shall  \nnot have to see the proud palaces of the Myrmidons and Dolopians.  \nI am a daughter of Dardanus and my husband was the son  \nof Venus, and I shall never go to be a slave to any matron of  \nGreece. The Great Mother of the Gods keeps me here in this  \nland of Troy. Now fare you well. Do not fail in your love for  \nour son.'\n\n790 She spoke and faded into the insubstantial air, leaving me  \nthere in tears and longing to reply. Three times I tried to put my  \narms around her neck. Three times her phantom melted in my  \narms, as weightless as the wind, as light as the flight of sleep.\n\nBy now the night was over. I returned to my comrades without  \nher. Here I found that new companions had streamed in and I  \nwas amazed at the numbers of them, men and women, an army  \ncollected for exile, a pitiable crowd. They had come from all  \ndirections ready to follow me with all their resources and all  \n800 their hearts to whatever land I should wish to lead them. And  \nnow Lucifer was rising above the ridges of Mount Ida and  \nbringing on the day. The Greeks were on guard at the gates and  \nthere was no hope of helping the city. I yielded. I lifted up my  \nfather and set out for the mountains.\n\n##  BOOK 3  \nTHE WANDERINGS\n\nWhen the gods had seen fit to lay low the power of Asia and the  \ninnocent people of Priam, when proud Ilium had fallen and all  \nNeptune's Troy lay smoking on the ground, we were driven by  \nsigns from heaven into distant exile to look for a home in some  \ndeserted land. There, hard by Antandros under the Phrygian  \nmountain range of Ida, we were mustering men and building a  \nfleet without knowing where the Fates were leading us or where  \nwe would be allowed to settle. The summer had barely started  \nand Father Anchises was bidding us hoist sail and put ourselves  \n10 in the hands of the Fates. I wept as I left the shores of my native  \nland and her harbours and the plains where once had stood the  \ncity of Troy. I was an exile taking to the high seas with my  \ncomrades and my son, with the gods of our house and the great  \ngods of our people.\n\nAt some distance from Troy lay the land of Mars, a land  \nof vast plains farmed by Thracians, once ruled by the savage  \nLycurgus. This people had ancient ties with Troy, while the  \nfortunes of Troy remained, and our household gods were linked  \nin alliance. Here I sailed, and using the name Aeneadae, formed  \nafter my own, I laid out my first walls on the curved shore. But  \nthe Fates frowned on these beginnings. I was worshipping my  \n20 mother Venus, the daughter of Dione, and the gods who preside  \nover new undertakings, and sacrificing a gleaming white bull to  \nthe Most High King of the Heavenly Gods. Close by there  \nhappened to be a mound on top of which there grew a thicket  \nbristling with spears of cornel and myrtle wood. I had gone  \nthere and was beginning to pull green shoots out of the ground  \nto cover the altar with leafy branches, when I saw a strange and  \nhorrible sight. As soon as I broke the roots of a tree and was  \npulling it out of the ground dark gouts of blood dripped from it  \n30 and stained the earth with gore. The horror of it chiled me to  \nthe bone, I trembled and my blood congealed with fear.\n\nI went on, pulling up more tough shoots from another tree,  \nsearching for the cause, however deep it might lie, and the dark  \nblood flowed from the bark of this second tree. With my mind  \nin turmoil I began to pray to the country nymphs and to Father  \nMars Gradivus who rules over the fields of the Getae, begging  \nthem to turn what I was seeing to good and to make the omen  \nblessed, but after I had set about the spear-like shoots of a third  \nshrub with greater vigour and was on my knees struggling to  \n40 free it from the sandy soil (shall I speak? Or shall I be silent?) I  \nheard a heart-rending groan emerge from deep in the mound  \nand a voice rose into the air: 'Why do you tear my poor flesh,  \nAeneas?' it cried. 'Take pity now on the man who is buried here  \nand do not pollute your righteous hands. I am no stranger to  \nyou. It was Troy that bore me and this is no tree that is oozing  \nblood. Escape, I beg you, from these cruel shores, from this land  \nof greed. It is Polydorus that speaks. This is where I was struck  \ndown and an iron crop of weapons covered my body. Their  \nsharp points have rooted and grown in my flesh.' At this, fear  \nand doubt oppressed me. My hair stood on end with horror and  \nthe voice stuck in my throat.\n\n50 This was the Polydorus the doomed Priam had once sent in  \nsecret with a great mass of gold, to be brought up by the king  \nof Thrace, when at last he was losing faith in the arms of  \nTroy and saw his city surrounded by besiegers. When Fortune  \ndeserted the Trojans and their wealth was in ruins, the king  \nwent over to the side of the victors and joined the armies  \nof Agamemnon. Breaking all the laws of God, he murdered  \nPolydorus and seized the gold. Greed for gold is a curse. There  \nis nothing to which it does not drive the minds of men. When  \nthe fear had left my bones, I told the chosen leaders of the people  \nand first of all my father about this portent sent by the gods and  \n60 asked what should be done. They were of one mind. We must  \nleave this accursed land where the laws of hospitality had been  \nviolated and let our ships run before the wind. So we gave  \nPolydorus a second burial, heaping the earth high in a mound  \nand raising to his shade an altar dark with funeral wreaths and  \nblack cypress, while the women of Troy stood all around with  \ntheir hair unbound in mourning. With offerings of foaming cups  \nof warm milk and bowls of sacrificial blood we committed his  \nsoul to the grave and lifted up our voices to call his name for  \nthe last time.\n\nThen as soon as we could trust ourselves to the waves, when  \n70 the winds had calmed the swell and a gentle breeze was rattling  \nthe rigging to call us out to sea, my comrades drew the ships  \ndown to the water and crowded the shore. We sailed out of the  \nharbour, and the land and its cities soon fell away behind us. In  \nthe middle of the ocean lies a beautiful island dear to Aegean  \nNeptune and the mother of the Nereids. It used to float from  \nshore to shore until in gratitude the Archer God Apollo moored  \nit to Gyaros and high Myconos, allowing it to stand firm and  \nbe inhabited and mock the winds. Here I sailed, and in this  \npeaceful haven of Delos we came safe to land, weary from the  \nsea. We went ashore and were admiring Apollo's city when its  \n80 king Anius, king of men and priest of the god, came to meet  \nus, his forehead garlanded with ribbons and the sacred laurel.  \nRecognizing Anchises as an old friend, he gave us his hand in  \nhospitality and we entered his house.\n\nThere I gazed in reverence at the god's temple built high  \nof ancient stone and made this prayer to Apollo: 'O god of  \nThymbra, grant us a home of our own. We are weary. Grant us  \nwalls and descendants and a city that will endure. Preserve these  \nremnants that have escaped the Greeks and pitiless Achilles, to  \nbe a second citadel for Troy. Whom are we to follow? Where  \ndo you bid us go? Where are we to settle? Send us a sign, O  \nfather, and steal into our hearts.'\n\n90 I had scarcely spoken when everything seemed to begin to  \ntremble. The threshold of the doors of the god, his laurel  \ntree, and all the mountain round about were shaken. The sanctuary  \nopened and a bellowing came from the bowl on the sacred  \ntripod. We threw ourselves to the ground and these were the  \nwords that came to our ears: 'O much-enduring sons of Dardanus,  \nthe land which first bore you from your parents' stock  \nwill be the land that will take you back to her rich breast. Seek  \nout your ancient mother. For that is where the house of Aeneas  \nand his sons' sons and their sons after them will rule over the  \nwhole earth.'\n\n100 So spoke Phoebus Apollo, and a great joy and tumult arose  \namong us, all asking what city this was, where Apollo was  \ndirecting us in our wanderings, what this land was to which we  \nwere to return. Then spoke my father Anchises who had been  \nturning over in his mind what he had heard from the men of  \nold: 'Listen,' he said, 'you leaders of Troy, and learn what you  \nhave to hope for. In the middle of the ocean lies Crete, the island  \nof great Jupiter, where there is a Mount Ida, the cradle of our  \nrace, and where the Cretans live in a hundred great cities, the  \nrichest of kingdoms. If I remember rightly what I have heard,  \nour first father Teucer sailed from there to Asia, landing at Cape  \nRhoeteum, and chose that place to found his kingdom. Troy  \n110 was not yet standing, nor was the citadel of Pergamum, and  \nthey lived low down in the valleys. This is the origin of the Great  \nMother of Mount Cybele, the bronze cymbals of the Corybants,  \nour grove of Ida, the inviolate silence of our worship and the  \nyoked lions that draw the chariot of the mighty goddess. Come  \nthen, let us follow where we are led by the bidding of the gods.  \nLet us appease the winds and set forth for the kingdoms of  \nCnossus. It is not far to sail. If only Jupiter is with us, the third  \nday will see our ships on the shores of Crete.' So he spoke, and  \n120 made due sacrifice on the altars, a bull to Neptune and a bull to  \nfair Apollo, a black lamb to the storms and a white lamb to  \nfavouring breezes.\n\nRumour as she flew told the tale of the great Idomeneus, how  \nhe had been forced to leave his father's kingdom and how the  \nshores of Crete were now deserted. Here was a place empty of  \nour enemies, their homes abandoned, waiting for us. We left the  \nharbour of Ortygia and flew over the sea to Naxos where  \nBacchants dance on the mountain ridges and to green Donusa,  \nto Olearos, to Paros marble-white and the Cyclades scattered  \non the face of the sea, skimming over an ocean churned up by  \nthe coasts of a hundred islands. The sailors raised all manner of  \nshouts as they vied with one another in their rowing and my  \ncomrades kept urging me to make for Crete and go back to the  \n130 home of their ancestors. The wind rising astern sped us on our  \nway and we came to shore at last on the ancient land of the  \nCuretes. Impatiently I set to work on walls for the city we all  \nlonged for. I called it Pergamea and the people rejoiced in the  \nname. I urged them to love their hearths and homes and raise a  \ncitadel to protect them.\n\nOur ships were soon drawn up on dry land, our young men  \nwere busy with marrying and putting new land under plough  \nand I was giving them homes and laws to live by, when suddenly  \nfrom a polluted quarter of the sky there came a cruel, suppurating  \nplague upon our bodies and upon the trees and crops. It was  \n140 a time of death. Men were losing the lives they loved or dragging  \naround their sickly bodies. The Dogstar burned the fields and  \nmade them barren, the grass dried, the crops were infected and  \ngave us no food. My father bade me retrace our course back  \nacross the sea to Phoebus Apollo and his oracle at Ortygia, to  \npray for his gracious favour and ask when he would put an end  \nto our toil, where we were to look for help in our adversity and  \nwhat course we were to steer.\n\nIt was night and sleep held in its grasp all living things upon  \nthe earth. There as I lay, the holy images of the gods, the  \n150 Phrygian Penates whom I had rescued from the thick of the  \nflames of the burning city of Troy, seemed to be standing bathed  \nin clear light before my eyes, where the full moon streamed in  \nthrough the unshuttered windows. At last they spoke to me and  \ncomforted my sorrow with these words: 'Apollo here speaks the  \nprophecy he will give you if you sail back to Ortygia. By his  \nown will he has sent us here and we stand at your door. We  \nfollowed you and your arms when Troy was burned to ashes.  \nWith you to lead us we have sailed across unmeasured tracts of  \nswelling seas, and in time to come we shall raise your sons to  \n160 the stars and give dominion to your city. Your task is to build  \ngreat walls to guard this great inheritance. You must never flag  \nin the long toil of exile, and you must leave this place. Delian  \nApollo did not send you to these shores. Crete is not where he  \ncommanded you to settle. There is a place \u2013 Greeks call it  \nHesperia \u2013 an ancient land, strong in arms and in the richness  \nof her soil. The Oenotrians lived there, but the descendants of  \nthat race are now said to have taken the name of their king  \nItalus and call themselves Italians. This is our true home. This  \nis where Dardanus sprang from and his father Iasius from whom  \nour race took its beginning. Rise then with cheerful heart and  \n170 pass on these words to Anchises your father, and let him be in  \nno doubt. He must look for Corythus and the lands of Ausonia.  \nJupiter forbids you the Dictaean fields of Crete.'\n\nI was astounded by this vision and by the words of the gods.  \nThis was no sleep. I seemed to be face to face with them and to  \nrecognize their features and the garlands on their heads, and at  \nthe sight my whole body was bathed in cold sweat. Leaping  \nfrom my bed, I raised my hands palms upward to the sky and  \nlifted up my voice in prayer, making pure offerings at the hearth.  \nHaving performed these rites, I went with joyful heart to  \n180 Anchises and told him everything in order. He remembered that  \nour race had two founders, Dardanus and Teucer, a double  \nancestry. He realized that he had fallen into a new mistake about  \nthese ancient places. 'O my son,' he said, 'you who have been  \nso tested by the Fates of Troy, only Cassandra made such a  \nprophecy to me. Now I remember how she used to foretell that  \nthis is what Fate had in store for us and she kept talking about  \nHesperia and about the kingdoms of Italy. But who would have  \nbelieved that Trojans would land on the shores of Hesperia?  \nWho in those days would have believed the prophecies of Cassandra?  \nLet us yield to Phoebus Apollo. We have been advised.  \nLet us follow the better course.' We all accepted his command  \n190 with cries of joy and abandoned this second settlement, leaving  \nonly a few of our number behind, and set sail upon our hollow  \nships to run before the wind over the vast ocean.\n\nWhen we were out at sea and no longer in sight of land, and  \nall around was sky and all around was sea, I saw a dark cloud  \ncome over our heads bringing storm and black night, and the  \nwaves shivered in the darkness. The wind soon whipped up a  \ngreat swell and the storm rose and scattered us all over the  \nocean. A pall of cloud obscured the light, rain fell from a sky  \nwe could not see, and lightning tore the clouds, flash upon flash.  \n200 We were thrown off course and drifted blindly in the waves.  \nUnder that sky even Palinurus said he had lost his bearings in  \nmid-ocean and could not tell day from night. For three long  \ndays, if days they were, of darkness, and three starless nights we  \nran before the storm, until at last on the fourth day we saw the  \nfirst land rising before us and there opened a clear view of  \ndistant mountains and curling smoke. Down came the sails and  \nwe sprang to the oars. The sailors were not slow to sweep the  \n210 blue sea and churn it into foam. I was saved from the ocean and  \nthe shores of the Strophades were the first to receive me.\n\nThis is the Greek name for islands in the great Ionian sea.  \nThis is where the deadly Celaeno and the other Harpies have  \nlived ever since the house of Phineus was barred to them and  \nthey were frightened away from the tables where they used to  \nfeed. These are the vilest of all monsters. No plague or visitation  \nof the gods sent up from the waves of the river Styx has ever  \nbeen worse than these. They are birds with the faces of girls,  \nwith filth oozing from their bellies, with hooked claws for hands  \nand faces pale with a hunger that is never satisfied.\n\nAs soon as we reached the Strophades and entered the harbour,  \n220 there we saw on every side rich herds of cattle on the level  \nground and flocks of goats unguarded on the grass. We drew  \nour swords and rushed upon them, calling on the gods and on  \nJupiter himself to share our plunder. Then we raised couches  \nalong the shore of the bay and were feasting on this rich fare  \nwhen suddenly the Harpies were among us, swooping down  \nfrom the mountains with a fearful clangour of their wings,  \ntearing the food to pieces and polluting everything with their  \nfoul contagion. The stench was rank, and through all this we  \n229 heard their hideous screeching. Once again, in a sheltered spot  \nfar back under an overhanging rock, we relaid our tables and  \nrelit the altar fires. Once again the noisy flock came from some  \nhidden roost in a different quarter of the sky and fluttered round  \ntheir prey, clutching it in their hooked claws and fouling it in  \ntheir mouths. Then it was I ordered my men to arm themselves  \nto make war against this fearsome tribe. They did as ordered,  \nhiding swords and shields here and there in the grass. And so  \nwhen Misenus in his high lookout heard the sound of them  \nswooping down along the whole curved shore of the bay, he  \n240 raised the alarm by blowing on the hollow bronze of his trumpet  \nand my comrades attacked. This was a new kind of battle \u2013  \nswords against filthy sea birds. But these were feathers that felt  \nno violence and backs that could receive no wounds. They  \nsoared in swift flight up towards the stars, leaving behind them  \nthe half-eaten food and their filthy droppings, all but one who  \nremained, perched high on a pinnacle of rock (Celaeno was her  \nname), and from her breast there burst this dire prophecy: 'Is it  \nwar you offer us now, sons of Laomedon, for the slaughter of  \nour bullocks and the felling of our oxen? Is it your plan to make  \nwar against the innocent Harpies and drive us from the kingdom  \n250 of our ancestors? Listen to what I have to say and fix it in your  \nminds. These words were spoken by the Almighty Father of the  \nGods to Phoebus Apollo, and Phoebus Apollo spoke them to  \nme, and now I, the greatest of the Furies, speak them to you.  \nYou are calling upon the winds and trying to sail to Italy. To  \nItaly you will go and you will be allowed to enter its harbours,  \nbut you will not be given a city, and you will not be allowed to  \nbuild walls around it before a deadly famine has come upon  \nyou, and the guilt of our blood drives you to gnaw round the  \nedges of your tables, to put them between your teeth and eat  \nthem.'\n\nWith these words she rose on her wings and flew into the  \n260 forest. In that instant the blood of my comrades was congealed  \nwith fear. Their spirits fell and they lost all desire for fight,  \ntelling me to plead and pray to the creatures for peace, whether  \nthey were goddesses or foul and deadly birds. Then Father  \nAnchises stood on the shore and raised his hands palms upward  \nto heaven, calling upon the great gods and pledging to pay them  \nall the honours that were their due. 'O you gods,' he cried, 'let  \nnot this threat be fulfilled. O gods, turn away this fate from us  \nand graciously preserve your devoted people.' He then gave  \norders to pull in the cables, undo the sail-ropes and let them  \nrun. The south wind filled the canvas, and wind and helmsman  \neach set the same course for us as we flew over the foaming  \n270 waves. Soon there appeared in mid-ocean the woods of  \nZacynthus, and Dulichium, Same and the stone cliffs of Neritos.  \nWe raced away from the rocks of Ithaca, the kingdom of Laertes,  \nand cursed the land that had nurtured the villain Ulixes. In no  \ntime there rose before us the cloudy cap of Mount Leucas and  \nApollo's temple, the terror of sailors. Being weary we set course  \nfor it and came to land at the little city. The anchors ran out  \nfrom the prows and our ships stood to the shore.\n\nSo at last our feet were on dry land again \u2013 more than we had  \ndared to hope for. We performed rites of purification to Jupiter  \n280 and lit altar fires in fulfilment of our vows, crowding the shores  \nof Actium with our Trojan games. My comrades stripped and  \nmade their bodies slippery with oil and wrestled in the style of  \ntheir fathers, as we celebrated our escape and safe voyage past  \nso many Greek cities, right through the middle of our enemies.\n\nIn due course the sun rolled on round the great circle of the  \nyear. Icy winter came and the north winds were roughening the  \nseas. I then took a concave shield of bronze, the armour once  \ncarried by great Abas, and nailed it on the doors of the temple  \nwhere all could see, proclaiming the dedication of it with this  \ninscription:\n\n### AENEAS DEDICATES THESE ARMS  \nTAKEN FROM THE CONQUERING GREEKS\n\nThen I gave orders to leave port and told the rowers to sit to  \n290 their benches. They vied with one another to strike the sea and  \nsweep the surface of it with their oars. We had soon put the  \ncloud-capped citadels of Phaeacia down below the horizon and  \nwe coasted along Epirus until we entered the harbour of Chaonia  \nand then walked up to the lofty city of Buthrotum.\n\nHere there came to our ears a story almost beyond belief, that  \nHelenus, a son of Priam, was king over these Greek cities of  \nEpirus, having succeeded to the throne and the bed of Pyrrhus,  \nson of Achilles and descendant of Aeacus. Andromache, once  \nwife of Hector, had for a second time taken a husband from her  \nown people. I was astounded and the heart within me burned  \nwith love for the man and longing to meet him and find out  \n300 about these great events. I was walking away from the harbour,  \nleaving ships and shore behind me, when I caught sight of  \nAndromache, offering a ritual meal and performing rites to the  \ndead in a grove in front of a city on the banks of a river Simois,  \nbut not the true Simois of Troy. She was pouring a libation to  \nthe ashes of her husband Hector, calling on his shade to come  \nto the empty tomb, a mound of green grass on which she had  \nconsecrated two altars. There she used to go and weep. When  \nshe saw me approaching with armed Trojans all about me, she  \nwas beside herself, numb with fear the moment she saw this  \ngreat miracle, and the warmth of life went out of her bones. She  \nfainted, and only after a long time was she at last able to speak  \n310 to me: 'Is this a true vision? Is it a true messenger that comes to  \nme, son of the goddess? Are you alive? If the light of life has left  \nyou, why are you here? Where is Hector?' As she spoke she  \nburst into tears and her cries filled all the grove. I could hardly  \nfind an answer to these wild words, but stammered a few broken  \nphrases. 'I am indeed alive. After all that has happened I still go  \non living. Do not doubt it. What you see is true. But tell me,  \nwhat fate has overtaken you since you were deprived of such a  \nhusband? What has fallen to the lot of Hector's Andromache?  \nAre you still the wife of Pyrrhus?'\n\n320 She answered, and her voice was low and her eyes downcast:  \n'The happiest of all Trojan women was the virgin daughter of  \nPriam who was made to die by the tomb of her enemy Achilles  \nunder the high walls of Troy. Polyxena did not have to endure  \nthe casting of lots or live to be the slave of a conqueror and lie  \nin a master's bed! But we saw our home burned and sailed over  \nmany seas. We submitted to the arrogance of the house of  \nAchilles and the insolence of his son and bore him a child in  \nslavery. In due course he turned his attention to marrying a  \nSpartan, Hermione, granddaughter of Leda, giving his slave  \nAndromache over to his slave Helenus. But Orestes loved Hermione  \n330 and had hoped to marry her. Incensed at losing her and  \ndriven on by the madness brought upon him by his own crimes,  \nhe caught Pyrrhus where Pyrrhus least expected him and slaughtered  \nhim on the altar he had raised to his father Achilles. At his  \ndeath some of the kingdom he had ruled over came into the  \npossession of Helenus, who then called the plains the Chaonian  \nplains and the whole district Chaonia after Chaon of Troy. He  \nthen built a Pergamum, this Trojan citadel on the ridge. But  \nwhat winds and what fates have given you passage here? Is it  \nsome god that has driven you to these shores that you did not  \nknow were ours? What about your boy Ascanius? Is he alive  \n340 and breathing the air? If he were with you now in Troy...But  \ndoes he ever think of the mother he has lost? Does the old  \ncourage and manliness ever rise in him at the thought of his  \nfather Aeneas and his uncle Hector?'\n\nShe was weeping her useless tears and sobbing bitterly as  \nthese words poured from her when the hero Helenus, son of  \nPriam, arrived from the walls of the city with a great escort. He  \nrecognized his own people and took us gladly to his home. He  \ntoo was weeping and could speak only a few broken words to  \nus between his tears. As I walked I recognized a little Troy, a  \n350 citadel modelled on great Pergamum and a dried-up stream they  \ncalled the Xanthus. There was the Scaean Gate and I embraced  \nit. Nor were my Trojans slow to enjoy this Trojan city with  \nme. The king received them in a broad colonnade and in the  \nmiddle of the courtyard they poured libations of the wine of  \nBacchus and fed off golden dishes and every man had a goblet  \nin his hand.\n\nDay after day wore on with breezes tempting our sails and  \nthe canvas filling and swelling in the south wind, until I went to  \nthe prophet Helenus with this request: 'You are Trojan born.  \n360 You can read the signs sent by the gods. You understand the  \nwill of Phoebus Apollo of Claros, his tripods and his laurels.  \nYou know the meaning of the stars, the cries of birds and the  \nomens of their flight. Come tell me \u2013 for every sign I have  \nreceived from heaven has spoken in favour of this journey, and  \nI am persuaded by all the divine powers to set course for Italy  \nand try to find that distant land. Only the Harpy Celaeno has  \nprophesied a strange and monstrous portent, threatening us  \nwith her deadly anger and all the horrors of famine \u2013 come  \ntell me now, what dangers am I to avoid as I start upon this  \njourney? And as it goes on, what must I do to overcome such  \nadversities?'\n\n370 Before replying Helenus first performed a ritual slaughter of  \nbullocks and asked for the blessing of the gods. He then loosened  \nthe ribbons from his consecrated head, and taking my hand, he  \nled me in anxious expectation into the mighty presence of the  \ngod. In due course he spoke as priest and this was the prophecy  \nthat came from his hallowed lips. 'O son of the goddess, the  \nproof is full and clear that the highest auspices favour your  \nvoyage. This is the fate allotted to you by the King of the Gods.  \nThis is how your fortune rolls and this is the order of its turning.  \nMy words will tell you a small part of all there is to know so  \nthat you may trust yourself more safely to cross the seas that  \nare waiting to receive you, and come to harbour in Ausonia.  \n380 The Fates do not allow Helenus to know the rest and Saturnian  \nJuno forbids it to be spoken. First, you are wrong to imagine  \nthat it is a short voyage to Italy and that there are harbours  \nclose at hand for you to enter. Far and pathless are the ways  \nthat lie between you and that far distant land. You must first  \nbend the oar in the waves of Sicilian seas, then cross the ocean  \nof Ausonia and the lakes of the underworld, and pass Aeaea,  \nthe island of Circe, before you can come to the land which will  \nbe safe for the founding of your city. I shall give you a sign and  \nyou must keep it deep within your heart: when in an hour of  \nperplexity by the flowing waters of a lonely river you find under  \n390 some holm-oaks on the shore a great sow with the litter of thirty  \npiglets she has farrowed, lying there on her side all white, with  \nher young all white around her udders, that will be the place for  \nyour city. There you will find the rest ordained for all your  \nlabours. Nor is there any need for you to shudder at the thought  \nof eating your tables. The Fates will find a way. Call upon  \nApollo and he will come. But you must quickly leave this land  \nof ours and keep well clear of the shore of Italy that lies nearest  \nus bathed by the tide of our sea, for hostile Greeks live in all  \nthese cities. Here Locrians from Narycum have built their walls  \n400 and the army of the Cretan Idomeneus of Lyctos has seized the  \nSallentine plains in Calabria. Here too is the little town of Petelia  \nperching on the wall built for it by Philoctetes, leader of the  \nMeliboeans. And when you have passed all these and your  \nships are moored across the sea, when you have raised altars  \non the shore to fulfil your vows, do not forget to veil your  \nhead in purple cloth so that when the altar fires are burning to  \nhonour the gods, no enemy presence can intrude and spoil the  \nomens. Your comrades and you yourself must keep this mode  \nof sacrifice and your descendants must maintain this purity of  \nworship for ever.\n\n410 'But when you sail on and the wind carries you near the shore  \nof Sicily, and the close-set barriers of Pelorus open before you,  \nmake for the land to the south and the sea to the south, taking  \nthe long way round Sicily and keeping well clear of the breakers  \non the coast to starboard. Men say these lands were originally  \none but were long ago convulsed by some great upheaval and  \ntorn apart. Such changes can occur in the long ageing of time.  \nThe waves of the sea burst in between them and cut Sicily  \nloose from the flank of the land of Hesperia, putting coastlines  \nbetween their fields and cities and flowing in between them in a  \n420 narrow tide. On your right waits Scylla in ambush and on your  \nleft the insatiable Charybdis. Three times a day with the deep  \nvortex of her whirlpool Charybdis sucks great waves into the  \nabyss and then throws them upwards again to lash the stars.  \nBut Scylla lurks in the dark recesses of her cave and shoots out  \nher mouths to seize ships and drag them on to the rocks. She  \nhas a human face and as far as the groin she is a girl with lovely  \nbreasts, but below she is a monstrous sea creature, her womb  \n430 full of wolves, each with a dolphin's tail. It is better to lose time  \nby taking the long course round Cape Pachynus rather than set  \neyes on the hideous Scylla deep in her cave or see those rocks  \nloud with the barking of dogs as blue as the sea.\n\n'One thing more: if the prophet Helenus has any insight into  \nthe future, if there is any reason to believe what I say, if Apollo  \nfills my mind with the truth, there is one prophecy I shall make  \nto you above all others, one counsel I shall repeat to you again  \nand again \u2013 worship the godhead of great Juno first and foremost  \nin your prayers, of your own free will submit your vows to Juno  \nand win over the mighty Queen of Heaven with your offerings  \n440 as you pray. If you do this you will at last leave Sicily behind  \nyou and succeed in reaching the shores of Italy. When you have  \nlanded and come to the city of Cumae and the sacred lakes of  \nAvernus among their sounding forests, there deep in a cave in  \nthe rock you will see a virgin priestess foretelling the future in  \nprophetic frenzy by writing signs and names on leaves. After  \nshe has written her prophecies on these leaves she seals them all  \nup in her cave where they stay in their appointed order. But the  \nleaves are so light that when the door turns in its sockets the  \nslightest breath of wind dislodges them. The draught from  \n450 the door throws them into confusion and the priestess never  \nmakes it her concern to catch them as they flutter round her  \nrocky cave and put them back in order or join up the prophecies.  \nSo men depart without receiving advice and are disappointed in  \nthe house of the Sibyl. No matter how impatient your comrades,  \nno matter how the winds may cry out to your sails to take to sea,  \nthough you know that you could fill the canvas with favouring  \nbreezes, you must not begrudge the time but must stay to visit  \nthe priestess. Approach her oracle with prayers and beg her by  \nher own gracious will to prophesy to you herself, opening her  \n460 lips and speaking to you in her own voice. She will tell you of  \nthe peoples of Italy and the wars that are to come, and how you  \nare to escape or endure all the labours that lie before you. If  \nyou do her reverence she will give you a prosperous voyage.  \nThis is as much as my voice may utter to give you guidance.  \nNow go forward and by your actions raise the greatness of Troy  \nto the skies.'\n\nAfter the prophet Helenus had told us these things in the  \nfriendliness of his heart, he then ordered his people to carry gifts  \nof solid gold and carved ivory down to our ships and stowed a  \ngreat quantity of silver in their hulls with cauldrons from  \nJupiter's temple at Dodona, a breastplate of chain mail interwoven  \nwith triple threads of gold and a noble helmet with crest  \nand streaming plumes once worn by Neoptolemus. There were  \n470 other gifts for my father, and he also gave us horses and leaders  \nof men, rowers to make up the crews and arms for my comrades.\n\nMeanwhile Anchises was ordering us to fit out the ships with  \ntheir sails and not lose the following winds when the priest of  \nApollo addressed him in deep respect: 'Anchises, the gods love  \nyou. You have been thought worthy of the highest of all honours,  \nthe love of Venus. You have been twice rescued from the ruins  \nof Troy, and now before you, look, the land of Ausonia. Sail  \nthere and take possession of it. But you must sail past the  \nopposite coast. The part of Ausonia which Apollo reveals to  \n480 you is far from here. Go then, Anchises, fortunate in the devotion  \nof your son. There is no more to say. Why do I keep you talking  \nwhen the wind is rising?'\n\nAndromache also grieved at this parting that was to be our  \nlast and brought us robes embroidered with gold thread and a  \nPhrygian cloak for Ascanius. She was as generous as Helenus  \nhad been, heaping the gifts of her weaving upon him and saying:  \n'Take these too, my boy, and I hope the work of my hands may  \nremind you of Andromache, wife of Hector, and be a token of  \nmy long-enduring love for you. Accept them. They are the last  \ngifts you will receive from your own people. You are the only  \n490 image left to me of my own son Astyanax. He had just those  \neyes, and just those hands. His face was just like yours. He  \nwould have been growing up now, the same age as yourself.'\n\nThe tears were starting to my eyes as I was leaving them, and  \nI spoke these words. 'Live on and enjoy the blessing of heaven.  \nYour destiny has been accomplished. But we are called from  \nfate to fate. Your rest is won. You do not need to plough tracts  \nof ocean searching for the ever-receding Ausonian fields. You  \nhave before your eyes an image of the river Xanthus and a Troy  \nmade by your own hands, more fortunate, I pray, than the Troy  \n500 that was, and less of a stumbling-block to the Greeks. If ever I  \nreach the river Thybris and the fields through which the Thybris  \nflows and see my people with their own city walls, we shall in  \nsome future age unite our cities and the peoples of Hesperia and  \nEpirus, for we are kith and kin, the same Dardanus is our  \nfounder and the same destiny attends us. We shall make them  \nboth one Troy in spirit. Let that be a duty for our descendants.'\n\nDown the coast we sailed near the Ceraunian rocks where the  \ncrossing to Italy is shortest, and as we sailed the sun set and  \nshadow darkened the mountains. At last we lay down by the  \nwaves of the sea in the lap of earth, and after allotting the next  \n510 day's order of rowing, we took our ease all along the dry beach  \nand sleep washed into our weary limbs.\n\nNight in its chariot drawn by the Hours was not yet coming  \nup to the middle of the sky, but there was no more sleep for  \nPalinurus. He rose from his bed and studied all the winds,  \npricking up his ears to test the air and marking the path of every  \nstar gliding in the silent sky, Arcturus and the rainy Hyades and  \nthe two Triones, the oxen of the Plough, and he looked round  \nto the south at Orion armed in gold, and saw that the whole  \nsky was serene and settled. Clear came his signal from the high  \n520 stern. We broke camp, started our voyage and spread the wings  \nof our sails.\n\nThe stars had been put to flight and dawn was reddening in  \nthe sky when we sighted in the far distance the dim hills and  \nplains of Italy. 'Italy!' \u2013 the first shout was from Achates \u2013 and  \n'Italy!' \u2013 the men took up the cry in cheerful salute. Then Father  \nAnchises, standing on the high stern, garlanded a great mixing  \nbowl, filled it with unwatered wine and called upon the gods:  \n'O you who rule sea, land and storm, give us an easy wind for  \nour voyage. Blow kindly upon us.'\n\n530 His prayer was answered. The breeze freshened and a harbour  \nopened up before us, growing nearer and nearer till we could  \nsee the temple of Minerva on the citadel. My comrades furled  \ntheir sails and pointed their prows to the shore. The harbour  \nwas shaped like a bow, curving away from the swell which came  \nin from the east. The rocks at the mouth were foaming with salt  \nspray but the harbour lay tucked away behind. Towering rocks  \non either side stretched down their arms to form a double wall  \nand the temple stood well back from the shore. The first omen  \nI saw here was four horses white as snow cropping the grass on  \n540 a broad plain and my father Anchises interpreted it: 'This land  \nthat receives us is promising us war! Men arm horses for war  \nand so this troop of horses means threat of war. Yet at other  \ntimes they are harnessed to chariots and accept reins under the  \nyoke in harmony. There is hope of peace also.'\n\nAt that moment we prayed to the sacred godhead of Pallas,  \nclasher of arms, the first goddess to welcome us in this hour of  \nour joy. Standing at the altar we veiled our heads with Phrygian  \ncloth, and in accordance with the instructions which Helenus  \nhad told us to follow before all others, duly paid the prescribed  \nhonour to Juno of Argos with our burnt offerings.\n\nWe did not linger there but as soon as we had performed the  \nrites in due order we raised our sails, swung the yards round  \n550 and left behind us this home of Greeks, this land we could not  \ntrust. Next we saw the bay of Tarentum, the city of Hercules if  \nthe story is true, and over against it rose the temple of the  \ngoddess Juno at Lacinium, the citadel of Caulon and the bay of  \nScylaceum, that great breaker of ships. Then from far out at sea  \nwe sighted Mount Etna in Sicily and heard a loud moaning of  \nwaters and grinding of rocks and the voice of breakers beating  \non the shore, as the sea began to rise and swirl the sand in  \nits surge. Father Anchises cried out: 'This must be the deadly  \nCharybdis. These are the cliffs Helenus warned us against. These  \n560 are the terrible rocks. Use all your strength to save yourselves,  \ncomrades. Keep well in time and rise to the oar.' They did as  \nthey were bidden. Palinurus was the first to wrench his ship to  \nport and out to sea with a loud creaking of the bow, and the  \nwhole fleet with every sail and oar steered to port with him. A  \ngreat arching wave came and lifted us to the sky and a moment  \nlater as the wave was sucked down we plunged into the abyss  \nof hell. Three times the cliffs roared between their hollow rocks.  \nThree times we saw the foam shoot up and spatter the stars.  \nMeanwhile the sun had set, the wind had fallen and we were  \nweary and lost, drifting towards the shore of the Cyclopes.\n\n570 The harbour there is out of the wind. It is still and spacious  \nbut close by Mount Etna thunders and hurls down its deadly  \ndebris. Sometimes it shoots a pitch-black cloud of swirling  \nsmoke and glowing ashes into the sky and tosses up balls of  \nflame to lick the stars. Sometimes it belches boulders, tearing  \nout the bowels of the mountain and throwing molten rock up  \ninto the air, seething and groaning in its very depths. The story  \ngoes that the body of Enceladus, half-consumed by the fire of  \nthe thunderbolt, is crushed under this great mass. Mighty Etna  \n580 lies on top of him breathing fire from its shattered furnaces and  \nevery time he turns over from one weary flank to another the  \nwhole of Sicily trembles and murmurs and wreathes the sky  \nwith smoke. We hid in the woods and lived through a night of  \nhorror, not seeing what was making these monstrous sounds.  \nThe fire of the stars was quenched and the dark bowl of heaven  \nwas denied their radiance. Clouds darkened the sky and  \nunbroken night obscured the moon.\n\nAt last the Morning Star appeared and the next day was  \n590 beginning to rise. The Goddess of the Dawn had dispersed the  \ndank mists from the sky when suddenly we saw a strange sight.  \nComing out of the woods was a man we did not know, in  \npitiable plight and half-dead with hunger, coming towards us  \non the shore with his hands stretched out in supplication. We  \nstared at him. The filth on his body was indescribable. He had  \na straggling beard and the rags he wore were pinned together  \nby thorns, but for all that he was a Greek, one of those who had  \nbeen sent to Troy bearing the arms of his country. When still at  \na distance he saw our Trojan clothes and Trojan armour, he  \nchecked his stride and stood in terror at the sight of us. But he  \n600 soon rushed down to the shore weeping and pleading: 'I beg  \nyou, Trojans, by all the stars, by the gods above, by the bright  \nair of heaven which we breathe, take me aboard your ships.  \nTake me anywhere. That is all I ask. I know I was one of those  \nwho sailed with the Greek fleet. I admit I made war against the  \ngods of your homes in Troy. If that offence is so great, tear me  \nlimb from limb, scatter the pieces on the waves and let them  \nsink into the vastness of the sea. If I am to die, I shall be pleased  \nto die at the hands of men.'\n\nWhen he had spoken he clasped our knees, he grovelled on  \nhis knees, and would not rise. We urged him to explain who he  \n610 was, what family he came from and what misfortune was driving  \nhim to this. Father Anchises himself was not slow to offer his  \nright hand and that assurance gave him courage. He laid aside  \nhis fear and told his story: 'My native land is Ithaca. I am a  \ncomrade of the unfortunate Ulixes. My name is Achaemenides.  \nMy father Adamastus being poor, I went to Troy \u2013 cursed be  \nthe day! My comrades, distraught with fear, forgot me and left  \nme here in the vast cave of the Cyclops when they crossed that  \ncruel threshold to safety. This huge cavern is his home, deep  \n620 and dark and filthy with the gore of his feasts. He himself is so  \ntall that his head knocks against the stars \u2013 O you gods, relieve  \nthe earth of all such monsters. No one dares to look at him or  \nspeak to him. He feeds on the flesh of his victims and drinks the  \nblack blood. I have seen him with my own eyes lolling in the  \nmiddle of his cave with two of our men in one huge hand,  \nbashing their bodies on the rock till the threshold was swimming  \nwith blood. I have seen him chewing arms and legs with black  \ngore oozing from them and the warm limbs twitching between  \nhis teeth. But he met his punishment. The man from Ithaca  \n630 did not submit to this. Whatever happened Ulixes was always  \nUlixes. As soon as the Cyclops had his fill and was sunk in a  \ndrunken stupor, lying there with his head back and his neck  \nexposed, sprawling all over the cave and belching blood and  \nwine and pieces of flesh as he slept, we prayed to the great gods  \nand after casting lots spread ourselves out all round him. Then,  \ntaking a sharp weapon, we drilled the one huge eye that lay, like  \nan Argive shield or the lamp of Apollo's sun, deep set in that  \ndreadful forehead. That was how in the end we took sweet  \nrevenge for the death of our comrades. But you are in danger.  \n640 You must escape and escape now. Cut your moorings and put  \nto sea. You know what Polyphemus is and how huge he is,  \nkeeping his woolly sheep penned there in his hollow cave and  \nsqueezing the milk from their udders, but there are a hundred  \nother horrible Cyclopes living together near this shore and  \nroving the high mountains. This is now the third time I have  \nseen the horns of the moon filling with light as I have dragged  \nout my existence in the woods alone among the dens and lairs  \nof wild beasts, climbing rocks to keep watch on the giant  \n650 Cyclopes and trembling at the sound of their voices and the  \ntread of their feet. My food is miserable. The trees yield me  \nsome berries and the fruit of the cornel, hard as stone, and I tear  \nup herbs by the root and eat them. I have kept constant watch  \nbut this is the first time I have seen ships coming near this shore.  \nI have put myself in your hands, and would have done so  \nwhoever you had been. It is enough for me to escape from this  \nunspeakable people. You can take this life of mine by whatever  \nmeans you please.'\n\nScarcely had he finished speaking when we saw the shepherd  \nPolyphemus himself high up on the mountain among his sheep,  \nheaving his vast bulk down towards the shore he knew so well.  \nHe was a terrifying sight, huge, hideous, blinded in his one eye  \nand using the trunk of a pine tree to guide his hand and give  \n660 him a firm footing. His woolly sheep were coming with him.  \nThey were the only pleasure he had left, his sole consolation in  \ndistress. As soon as he felt the waves deepening and reached the  \nlevel ocean, he washed away with sea water the blood that was  \nstill trickling from his gouged-out eye, grinding his teeth and  \nmoaning, and as he strode now in mid-ocean, the waves still did  \nnot wet his towering flanks.\n\nWe were terrified and lost no time in taking the fugitive  \naboard \u2013 he had suffered enough \u2013 and making our escape.  \nKeeping silence as we cut the cables we churned the surface of  \nthe sea, leaning forward and straining at the oars. He heard us,  \n670 and whirled round in the direction of our voices, but he had no  \nchance of laying a hand on us or keeping up with the current of  \nthe Ionian sea, so he raised a great clamour which set the ocean  \nand all its waves shivering. The whole land of Italy trembled  \nwith fear and the bellowing boomed in the hollow caverns of  \nMount Etna. The tribe of Cyclopes was roused and came rushing  \ndown from their woods and high mountains to the harbour and  \nfilled the shore. We saw the brotherhood of Etna standing there  \n680 helpless, each with his one eye glaring and head held high in the  \nsky, a fearsome gathering, standing like high-topped mountain  \noaks or cone-bearing cypresses in Jupiter's soaring forest or the  \ngrove of Diana. With terror driving us along we let the sheets  \nfull out and filled our sails with whatever wind was blowing.  \nThis is what Helenus had told us not to do. He had advised us  \nthat it was a narrow passage between Scylla and Charybdis with  \ndeath on either side if I did not hold a steady course. I resolved  \nto turn about, and sure enough the north wind came to our  \nrescue and blew down the narrow strait from Cape Pelorus. I  \nsailed south past the mouth of the river Pantagias with its  \nharbour of natural rock, past the bay of Megara and low-lying  \n690 Thapsus. Achaemenides pointed out such places to us as we took  \nhim back along the shores he had once sailed in his wanderings as  \na comrade of the unfortunate Ulixes.\n\nAt the entrance to the bay of Syracuse, opposite the wave-beaten  \nheadland of Plemyrium, there stands an island which  \nmen of old called Ortygia. The story goes that the river-god  \nAlpheus of Elis forced his way here by hidden passages under  \nthe sea and now mingles with Sicilian waters at the mouth of  \nArethusa's fountain. Obeying the instructions we had received,  \nwe worshipped the great gods of the place and I then sailed on  \nleaving behind the rich lands around the marshy river Helorus.  \n700 From here we rounded Cape Pachynus, Keeping close in to its  \njutting cliffs of rock, and Camerina came in to view in the  \ndistance, the place the Fates forbade to move, and then the  \nGeloan plains and Gela itself, called after its turbulent river.  \nThen in the far distance appeared the great walls of Acragas on  \nits crag, once famous for the breeding of high-mettled horses.  \nNext the winds carried me past Selinus, named after the parsley  \nit gave to crown the victors in Greek games, and I steered past  \nthe dangerous shoals and hidden rocks of Lilybaeum.\n\nI then put into port at Drepanum, but had little joy of that  \n710 shore. This was the place where weary as I was with all these  \nbatterings of sea and storm, to my great grief I lost my father  \nAnchises who had been my support in every difficulty and  \ndisaster. This is where you left me, O best of fathers, whom I  \nrescued from so many dangers and all to no purpose. Neither  \nHelenus for all his fearsome predictions nor the Harpy Celaeno  \ngave me any warning of this sorrow. This was the last of my  \nlabours. With this my long course was run. From here I sailed,  \nand God drove me upon your shores.'\n\nIn these words did Father Aeneas recount his wanderings and  \nthe fates the gods had sent him, and they all listened. At last he  \nwas silent. Here he made an end and was at peace.\n\n## BOOK 4  \nDIDO\n\nBut the queen had long since been suffering from love's deadly  \nwound, feeding it with her blood and being consumed by its  \nhidden fire. Again and again there rushed into her mind thoughts  \nof the great valour of the man and the high glories of his line.  \nHis features and the words he had spoken had pierced her heart  \nand love gave her body no peace or rest. The next day's dawn  \nwas beginning to traverse the earth with the lamp of Phoebus'  \nsunlight and had moved the dank shadow of night from the sky  \nwhen she spoke these words from the depths of her affliction to  \n10 her loved and loving sister: 'O Anna, what fearful dreams I have  \nas I lie there between sleeping and waking! What a man is this  \nwho has just come as a stranger into our house! What a look on  \nhis face! What courage in his heart! What a warrior! I do believe,  \nand I am sure it is true, he is descended from the gods. If there  \nis any baseness in a man, it shows as cowardice. Oh how cruelly  \nhe has been hounded by the Fates! And did you hear him tell  \nwhat a bitter cup of war he has had to drain? If my mind had  \nnot been set and immovably fixed against joining any man in  \nthe bonds of marriage ever since death cheated me of my first  \nlove, if I were not so utterly opposed to the marriage torch and  \n20 bed, this is the one temptation to which I could possibly have  \nsuccumbed. I will admit it, Anna, ever since the death of my  \npoor husband Sychaeus, since my own brother spilt his blood  \nand polluted the gods of our home, this is the only man who  \nhas stirred my feelings and moved my mind to waver: I sense  \nthe return of the old fires. But I would pray that the earth open  \nto its depths and swallow me or that the All-powerful Father of  \nthe Gods blast me with his thunderbolt and hurl me down to  \nthe pale shades of Erebus and its bottomless night before I go  \nagainst my conscience and rescind its laws. The man who first  \njoined himself to me has carried away all my love. He shall keep  \nit for himself, safe in his grave.'\n\n30 The tears came when she had finished speaking, and streamed  \ndown upon her breast. But Anna replied: 'O sister, dearer to me  \nthan the light of life, are you going to waste away, living alone  \nand in mourning all the days of your youth, without knowing  \nthe delight of children and the rewards of love? Do you believe  \nthis is what the dead care about when they are buried in the  \ngrave? Since your great sadness you have paid no heed to any  \nman in Libya, or before that in Tyre. You have rejected Iarbas  \nand other chiefs bred in Africa, this rich home of triumphant  \nwarriors. Will you now resist even a love your heart accepts?  \nHave you forgotten what sort of people these are in whose land  \n40 you have settled? On the one side you are beset by invincible  \nGaetulians, by Numidians, a race not partial to the bridle, and  \nthe inhospitable Syrtes; on the other, waterless desert and fierce  \nraiders from Barca. I do not need to tell you about the war being  \nraised against you in Tyre and your brother's threats. I for my  \npart believe that it is with the blessing of the gods and the favour  \nof Juno that the Trojan ships have held course here through the  \nwinds. Just think, O my sister, what a city and what a kingdom  \nyou will see rising here if you are married to such a man! To  \nwhat a pinnacle of glory will Carthage be raised if Trojans are  \n50 marching at our side! You need only ask the blessing of the gods  \nand prevail upon them with sacrifices. Indulge your guest. Stitch  \ntogether some reasons to keep him here while stormy seas and  \nthe downpours of Orion are exhausting their fury, while his  \nships are in pieces and it is no sky to sail under.'\n\nWith these words Anna lit a fire of wild love in her sister's  \nbreast. Where there had been doubt she gave hope and Dido's  \nconscience was overcome. First they approached the shrines and  \nwent round the altars asking the blessing of the gods. They  \npicked out yearling sheep, as ritual prescribed, and sacrificed  \nthem to Ceres the Lawgiver, to Phoebus Apollo, to Bacchus the  \n60 Releaser and above all to Juno, the guardian of the marriage  \nbond. Dido in all her beauty would hold a sacred dish in her  \nright hand and would pour wine from it between the horns of  \na white cow or she would walk in state to richly smoking  \naltars before the faces of the gods, renewing her offerings all  \nday long, and when the bellies of the victims were opened she  \nwould stare into their breathing entrails to read the signs. But  \npriests, as we know, are ignorant. What use are prayers and  \nshrines to a passionate woman? The flame was eating the soft  \nmarrow of her bones and the wound lived quietly under her  \nbreast. Dido was on fire with love and wandered all over the  \n70 city in her misery and madness like a wounded doe which a  \nshepherd hunting in the woods of Crete has caught off guard,  \nstriking her from long range with steel-tipped shaft; the arrow  \nflies and is left in her body without his knowing it; she runs  \naway over all the wooded slopes of Mount Dicte, and sticking  \nin her side is the arrow that will bring her death.\n\nSometimes she would take Aeneas through the middle of  \nCarthage, showing him the wealth of Sidon and the city waiting  \nfor him, and she would be on the point of speaking her mind to  \nhim but checked the words on her lips. Sometimes, as the day  \nwas ending, she would call for more feasting and ask in her  \ninfatuation to hear once more about the sufferings of Troy and  \n80 once more she would hang on his lips as he told the story. Then,  \nafter they had parted, when the fading moon was dimming her  \nlight and the setting stars seemed to speak of sleep, alone and  \nwretched in her empty house she would cling to the couch  \nAeneas had left. There she would lie long after he had gone and  \nshe would see him and hear him when he was not there for her  \nto see or hear. Or she would keep back Ascanius and take him  \non her knee, overcome by the likeness to his father, trying to  \nbeguile the love she could not declare. The towers she was  \nbuilding ceased to rise. Her men gave up the exercise of war and  \nwere no longer busy at the harbours and fortifications making  \nthem safe from attack. All the work that had been started, the  \nthreatening ramparts of the great walls and the cranes soaring  \nto the sky, all stood idle.\n\n90 As soon as Saturnian Juno, the dear wife of Jupiter, realized  \nthat Dido was infected by this sickness and that passion was  \nsweeping away all thought for her reputation, she went and  \nspoke to Venus: 'You are covering yourselves with glory. These  \nare the supreme spoils you are bringing home, you and that boy  \nof yours \u2013 and what a noble and notable specimen of the divine  \nhe is \u2013 one woman has been overthrown by the arts of two gods!  \nI do not fail to see that you have long been afraid of our walls  \nand looked askance at the homes of lofty Carthage. But how is  \nthis going to end? Where is all this rivalry going to lead us now?  \n100 Why do we not instead agree to arrange a marriage and live at  \npeace for ever? You have achieved what you have set your whole  \nheart on: Dido is passionately in love and the madness is working  \nthrough her bones. So let us make one people of them and share  \nauthority equally over them. Let us allow her to become the  \nslave of a Phrygian husband and to hand over her Tyrians to  \nyou as a dowry!'\n\nVenus realized this was all pretence in order to divert the  \nempire of Italy to the shores of Libya, and made this response  \nto the Queen of Heaven: 'Who would be so insane as to reject  \nsuch an offer and choose instead to contend with you in war? If  \n110 only a happy outcome could attend the plan you describe! But  \nI am at the mercy of the Fates and do not know whether Jupiter  \nwould wish there to be one city for the Tyrians and those who  \nhave come from Troy or whether he would approve the merging  \nof their peoples and the making of alliances. You are his wife.  \nIt could not be wrong for you to approach him with prayers  \nand test his purpose. You proceed and I shall follow.'\n\n'That will be my task,' replied Juno. 'But now listen and I  \nshall explain in a few words how the first part of the plan may  \nbe carried out. Aeneas and poor Dido are preparing to go  \nhunting together in the forest as soon as tomorrow's sun first  \nrises and the rays of the Titan unveil the world. When the beaters  \n120 are scurrying about and putting nets round copses, I shall pour  \ndown a dark storm of rain and hail on them and shake the  \nwhole sky with thunder. Their companions will run away and  \nbe lost to sight in a pall of darkness. Dido and the leader of the  \nTrojans will both take refuge in the same cave. I shall be there,  \nand if your settled will is with me in this, I shall join them in  \nlasting marriage and make her his. This will be their wedding.'  \nThis was what Juno asked and Venus of Cythera did not refuse  \nher but nodded in assent. She saw through the deception and  \nlaughed.\n\nMeanwhile Aurora rose from the ocean and when her light  \n130 came up into the sky, a picked band of men left the gates  \nof Carthage carrying nets, wide-meshed and fine-meshed, and  \nbroad-bladed hunting spears, and with them came Massylian  \nhorsemen at the gallop and packs of keen-scented hounds. The  \nqueen was lingering in her chamber and the Carthaginian leaders  \nwaited at her door. There, resplendent in its purple and gold,  \nstood her loud-hoofed, high-mettled horse champing its foaming  \nbit. She came at last with a great entourage thronging round  \nher. She was wearing a Sidonian cloak with an embroidered  \nhem. Her quiver was of gold. Gold was the clasp that gathered  \nup her hair and her purple tunic was fastened with a golden  \n140 brooch. Nor was the Trojan company slow to move forward,  \nAscanius with them in high glee. Aeneas himself marched at  \ntheir head, the most splendid of them all, as he brought his men  \nto join the queen's. He was like Apollo leaving his winter home  \nin Lycia and the waters of the river Xanthus to visit his mother  \nat Delos, there to start the dancing again, while all around the  \naltars gather noisy throngs of Cretans and Dryopes and painted  \nAgathyrsians; the god himself strides the ridges of Mount  \nCynthus, his streaming hair caught up and shaped into a soft  \ngarland of green and twined round a band of gold, and the  \n150 arrows sound on his shoulders \u2013 with no less vigour moved  \nAeneas and his face shone with equal radiance and grace. When  \nthey had climbed high into the mountains above the tracks of  \nmen where the animals make their lairs, suddenly some wild  \ngoats were disturbed on the top of a crag and came running  \ndown from the ridge. Then on the other side there were deer  \nrunning across the open plain. They had gathered into a herd  \nand were raising the dust as they left the high ground far behind  \nthem. Down in the middle of the valley young Ascanius was  \nriding a lively horse and revelling in it, galloping past the deer  \nand the goats and praying that among these flocks of feeble  \ncreatures he could come across a foaming boar or that a tawny  \nlion would come down from the mountains.\n\n160 While all this was happening a great rumble of thunder began  \nto stir in the sky. Down came the rain and the hail, and Tyrian  \nhuntsmen, men of Troy and Ascanius of the line of Dardanus  \nand grandson of Venus, scattered in fright all over the fields,  \nmaking for shelter as rivers of water came rushing down the  \nmountains. Dido and the leader of the Trojans took refuge  \ntogether in the same cave. The sign was first given by Earth and  \nby Juno as matron of honour. Fires flashed and the heavens  \nwere witness to the marriage while nymphs wailed on the mountain  \n170 tops. This day was the beginning of her death, the first cause  \nof all her sufferings. From now on Dido gave no thought to  \nappearance or her good name and no longer kept her love as a  \nsecret in her own heart, but called it marriage, using the word  \nto cover her guilt.\n\nRumour did not take long to go through the great cities of  \nLibya. Of all the ills there are, Rumour is the swiftest. She thrives  \non movement and gathers strength as she goes. From small and  \ntimorous beginnings she soon lifts herself up into the air, her  \nfeet still on the ground and her head hidden in the clouds. They  \n180 say she is the last daughter of Mother Earth who bore her in  \nrage against the gods, a sister for Coeus and Enceladus. Rumour  \nis quick of foot and swift on the wing, a huge and horrible  \nmonster, and under every feather of her body, strange to tell,  \nthere lies an eye that never sleeps, a mouth and a tongue that  \nare never silent and an ear always pricked. By night she flies  \nbetween earth and sky, squawking through the darkness, and  \nnever lowers her eyelids in sweet sleep. By day she keeps watch  \nperched on the tops of gables or on high towers and causes fear  \nin great cities, holding fast to her lies and distortions as often as  \n190 she tells the truth. At that time she was taking delight in plying  \nthe tribes with all manner of stories, fact and fiction mixed in  \nequal parts: how Aeneas the Trojan had come to Carthage and  \nthe lovely Dido had thought fit to take him as her husband; how  \nthey were even now indulging themselves and keeping each  \nother warm the whole winter through, forgetting about their  \nkingdoms and becoming the slaves of lust. When the foul goddess  \nhad spread this gossip all around on the lips of men, she  \nthen steered her course to king Iarbas to set his mind alight and  \nfuel his anger.\n\nJupiter had ravished a Garamantian nymph and Iarbas was  \n200 his son. Over his broad realm he had erected a hundred huge  \ntemples to the god and set up a hundred altars on which he  \nhad consecrated ever-burning fires to keep undying holy vigil,  \nenriching the earth with the blood of slaughtered victims and  \ndraping the doors with garlands of all kinds of flowers. Iarbas,  \nthey say, was driven out of his mind with anger when he heard  \nthis bitter news. Coming into the presence of the gods before  \ntheir altars in a passion of rage, he offered up prayer upon  \nprayer to Jupiter, raising his hands palms upward in supplication:  \n'Jupiter All-powerful, who now receive libations of wine  \nfrom the Moorish people feasting on their embroidered couches,  \ndo you see all this? Or are we fools to be afraid of you, Father,  \n210 when you hurl your thunderbolts? Are they unaimed, these fires  \nin the clouds that cow our spirits? Is there no meaning in the  \nmurmur of your thunder? This woman was wandering about  \nour land and we allowed her at a price to found her little city.  \nWe gave her a piece of shore to plough and laid down the laws  \nof the place for her and she has spurned our offer of marriage  \nand taken Aeneas into her kingdom as lord and master, and  \nnow this second Paris, with eunuchs in attendance and hair  \ndripping with perfume and Maeonian bonnet tied under his  \nchin, is enjoying what he has stolen while we bring gifts to  \ntemples we think are yours and keep warm with our worship  \nthe reputation of a useless god.'\n\n220 As Iarbas prayed these prayers with his hand on the altar, the  \nAll-powerful god heard him and turned his eyes towards the  \nroyal city and the lovers who had lost all recollection of their  \ngood name. Then he spoke to Mercury and gave him these  \ninstructions: 'Up with you, my son. Call for the Zephyrs, glide  \ndown on your wings and speak to the Trojan leader who now  \nlingers in Tyrian Carthage without a thought for the cities  \ngranted him by the Fates. Take these words of mine down to  \nhim through the swift winds and tell him that this is not the  \nman promised us by his mother, the loveliest of the goddesses.  \nIt was not for this that she twice rescued him from the swords  \n230 of the Greeks. She told us he would be the man to rule an Italy  \npregnant with empire and clamouring for war, passing the high  \nblood of Teucer down to his descendants and subduing the  \nwhole world under his laws. If the glory of such a destiny does  \nnot fire his heart, if he does not strive to win fame for himself,  \nask him if he grudges the citadel of Rome to his son Ascanius.  \nWhat does he have in mind? What does he hope to achieve  \ndallying among a hostile people and sparing not a thought for  \nthe Lavinian fields and his descendants yet to be born in  \nAusonia? He must sail. That is all there is to say. Let that be  \nour message.'\n\nJupiter had finished speaking and Mercury prepared to obey  \nthe command of his mighty father. First of all he fastened on his  \n240 feet the golden sandals whose wings carry him high above land  \nand sea as swiftly as the wind. Then, taking the rod which  \nsummons pale spirits out of Orcus or sends them down to  \ngloomy Tartarus, which gives sleep and takes it away and opens  \nthe eyes of men in death, he drove the winds before him and  \nfloated through the turbulent clouds till in his flight he saw the  \ncrest and steep flanks of Atlas whose rocky head props up the  \nsky. This is the Atlas whose head, covered in pine trees and  \n250 beaten by wind and rain, never loses its dark cap of cloud. The  \nsnow falls upon his shoulders and lies there, then rivers of water  \nroll down the old man's chin and his bristling beard is stiff with  \nice. This is where Mercury the god of Mount Cyllene first  \nlanded, fanning out his wings to check his flight. From here he  \nlet his weight take him plummeting to the wave tops, like a bird  \nskimming the sea as it flies along the shore, among the rocks  \nwhere it finds the fish. So flew the Cyllenian god between earth  \nand sky to the sandy beaches of Libya, cleaving the winds as he  \nswooped down from the mountain that had fathered his own  \nmother, Maia.\n\nAs soon as his winged feet touched the roof of a Carthaginian  \n260 hut, he caught sight of Aeneas laying the foundations of the  \ncitadel and putting up buildings. His sword was studded with  \nyellow stars of jasper, and glowing with Tyrian purple there  \nhung from his shoulders a rich cloak given him by Dido into  \nwhich she had woven a fine cross-thread of gold. Mercury  \nwasted no time: 'So now you are laying foundations for the high  \ntowers of Carthage and building a splendid city to please your  \nwife? Have you entirely forgotten your own kingdom and your  \n270 own destiny? The ruler of the gods himself, by whose divine will  \nthe heavens and the earth revolve, sends me down from bright  \nOlympus and bids me bring these commands to you through  \nthe swift winds. What do you have in mind? What do you hope  \nto achieve by idling your time away in the land of Libya? If the  \nglory of such a destiny does not fire your heart, spare a thought  \nfor Ascanius as he grows to manhood, for the hopes of this Iulus  \nwho is your heir. You owe him the land of Rome and the  \nkingdom of Italy.'\n\nNo sooner had these words passed the lips of the Cyllenian  \ngod than he disappeared from mortal view and faded far into  \n280 the insubstantial air. But the sight of him left Aeneas dumb and  \nsenseless. His hair stood on end with horror and the voice stuck  \nin his throat. He longed to be away and leave behind him this  \nland he had found so sweet. The warning, the command from  \nthe gods, had struck him like a thunderbolt. But what, oh what,  \nwas he to do? What words dare he use to approach the queen  \nin all her passion? How could he begin to speak to her? His  \nthoughts moved swiftly now here, now there, darting in every  \npossible direction and turning to every possible event, and as he  \npondered, this seemed to him a better course of action: he called  \nMnestheus, Sergestus and brave Serestus and ordered them to  \nfit out the fleet and tell no one, to muster the men on the shore  \n290 with their equipment at the ready, and keep secret the reason  \nfor the change of plan. In the meantime, since the good queen  \nknew nothing and the last thing she expected was the shattering  \nof such a great love, he himself would try to make approaches  \nto her and find the kindest time to speak and the best way to  \nhandle the matter. They were delighted to receive their orders  \nand carried them out immediately.\n\nBut the queen \u2013 who can deceive a lover? \u2013 knew in advance  \nsome scheme was afoot. Afraid where there was nothing to fear,  \nshe was the first to catch wind of their plans to leave, and while  \nshe was already in a frenzy, that same wicked Rumour brought  \nword that the Trojans were fitting out their fleet and preparing  \n300 to sail away. Driven to distraction and burning with passion,  \nshe raged and raved round the whole city like a Bacchant stirred  \nby the shaking of the sacred emblems and roused to frenzy when  \nshe hears the name of Bacchus at the biennial orgy and the  \nshouting on Mount Cithaeron calls to her in the night. At last  \nshe went to Aeneas, and before he could speak, she cried: 'You  \ntraitor, did you imagine you could do this and keep it secret?  \nDid you think you could slip away from this land of mine and  \nsay nothing? Does our love have no claim on you? Or the pledge  \nyour right hand once gave me? Or the prospect of Dido dying a  \n310 cruel death? Why must you move your fleet in these winter  \nstorms and rush across the high seas into the teeth of the north  \nwind? You are heartless. Even if it were not other people's fields  \nand some home unknown you were going to, if old Troy were  \nstill standing, would any fleet set sail even for Troy in such  \nstormy seas? Is it me you are running away from? I beg you, by  \nthese tears, by the pledge you gave me with your own right hand  \n\u2013 I have nothing else left me now in my misery \u2013 I beg you by  \nour union, by the marriage we have begun \u2013 if I have deserved  \nany kindness from you, if you have ever loved anything about  \nme, pity my house that is falling around me, and I implore you,  \n320 if it is not too late for prayers, give up this plan of yours. I am  \nhated because of you by the peoples of Libya and the Numidian  \nkings. My own Tyrians are against me. Because of you I have  \nlost all conscience and self-respect and have thrown away the  \ngood name I once had, my only hope of reaching the stars. My  \nguest is leaving me to my fate and I shall die. \"Guest\" is the only  \nname I can now give the man who used to be my husband. What  \nam I waiting for? For my brother Pygmalion to come and raze  \nmy city to the ground? For the Gaetulian Iarbas to drag me off  \nin chains? Oh if only you had given me a child before you  \nabandoned me! If only there were a little Aeneas to play in my  \npalace! In spite of everything his face would remind me of yours  \n330 and I would not feel utterly betrayed and desolate.'\n\nShe had finished speaking. Remembering the warnings of  \nJupiter, Aeneas did not move his eyes and struggled to fight  \ndown the anguish in his heart. At last he spoke these few words:  \n'I know, O queen, you can list a multitude of kindnesses you  \nhave done me. I shall never deny them and never be sorry to  \nremember Dido while I remember myself, while my spirit still  \ngoverns this body. Much could be said. I shall say only a little.  \nIt never was my intention to be deceitful or run away without  \nyour knowing, and do not pretend that it was. Nor have I ever  \n340 offered you marriage or entered into that contract with you. If  \nthe Fates were leaving me free to live my own life and settle all  \nmy cares according to my own wishes, my first concern would  \nbe to tend the city of Troy those of my dear people who survive.  \nA lofty palace of Priam would still be standing and with my  \nown hands I would have built a new citadel at Pergamum for  \nthose who have been defeated. But now Apollo of Gryneum has  \ncommanded me to claim the great land of Italy and \"Italy\" is  \nthe word on the lots cast at his Lycian oracle. That is my love,  \nand that is my homeland. You are a Phoenician from Asia and  \nyou care for the citadel of Carthage and love the very sight of  \n350 this city in Libya; what objection can there be to Trojans settling  \nin the land of Ausonia? How can it be a sin if we too look for  \ndistant kingdoms? Every night when the earth is covered in mist  \nand darkness, every time the burning stars rise in the sky, I see  \nin my dreams the troubled spirit of my father Anchises coming  \nto me with warnings and I am afraid. I see my son Ascanius and  \nthink of the wrong I am doing him, cheating him of his kingdom  \nin Hesperia and the lands the Fates have decreed for him. And  \nnow even the messenger of the gods has come down through  \nthe swift winds \u2013 I swear it by the lives of both of us \u2013 and  \nbrought commands from Jupiter himself. With my own eyes I  \nhave seen the god in the clear light of day coming within the  \nwalls of your city. With my own ears I have listened to his voice.  \n360 Do not go on causing distress to yourself and to me by these  \ncomplaints. It is not by my own will that I search for Italy.'\n\nAll the time he had been speaking she was turned away from  \nhim, but looking at him, speechless and rolling her eyes, taking  \nin every part of him. At last she replied on a blaze of passion:  \n'You are a traitor. You are not the son of a goddess and Dardanus  \nwas not the first founder of your family. It was the Caucasus  \nthat fathered you on its hard rocks and Hyrcanian tigers offered  \nyou their udders. Why should I keep up a pretence? Why should  \nI hold myself in check in order to endure greater suffering in the  \nfuture? He did not sigh when he saw me weep. He did not even  \n370 turn to look at me. Was he overcome and brought to tears? Had  \nhe any pity for the woman who loves him? Where can I begin  \nwhen there is so much to say? Now, after all this, can mighty  \nJuno and the son of Saturn, the father of all, can they now look  \nat this with the eyes of justice? Is there nothing we can trust in  \nthis life? He was thrown helpless on my shores and I took him  \nin and like a fool settled him as partner in my kingdom. He had  \nlost his fleet and I found it and brought his companions back  \nfrom the dead. It drives me to madness to think of it. And now  \nwe hear about the augur Apollo and lots cast in Lycia and now  \nto crown all the messenger of the gods is bringing terrifying  \ncommands down through the winds from Jupiter himself, as  \n380 though that is work for the gods in heaven, as though that is an  \nanxiety that disturbs their tranquillity. I do not hold you or  \nbandy words with you. Away you go. Keep on searching for  \nyour Italy with the winds to help you. Look for your kingdom  \nover the waves. But my hope is that if the just gods have any  \npower, you will drain a bitter cup among the ocean rocks,  \ncalling the name of Dido again and again, and I shall follow you  \nnot in the flesh but in the black fires of death and when its cold  \nhand takes the breath from my body, my shade shall be with  \nyou wherever you may be. You will receive the punishment you  \ndeserve, and the news of it will reach me deep among the dead.'\n\nAt these words she broke off and rushed indoors in utter  \n390 despair, leaving Aeneas with much to say and much to fear. Her  \nattendants caught her as she fainted and carried her to her bed  \nin her marble chamber. But Aeneas was faithful to his duty.  \nMuch as he longed to soothe her and console her sorrow, to  \ntalk to her and take away her pain, with many a groan and with  \na heart shaken by his great love, he nevertheless carried out the  \ncommands of the gods and went back to his ships.\n\nBy then the Trojans were hard at work. All along the shore  \nthey were hauling the tall ships down to the sea. They set the  \nwell-caulked hulls afloat and in their eagerness to be away they  \nwere carrying down from the woods unworked timber and  \n400 green branches for oars. You could see them pouring out of  \nevery part of the city, like ants plundering a huge heap of  \nwheat and storing it away in their home against the winter, and  \ntheir black column advances over the plain as they gather  \nin their booty along a narrow path through the grass, some  \nputting their shoulders to huge grains and pushing them along,  \nothers keeping the column together and whipping in the stragglers,  \nand the whole track seethes with activity. What were your  \n410 feelings, Dido, as you looked at this? Did you not moan as you  \ngazed out from the top of your citadel and saw the broad shore  \nseething before your eyes and confusion and shouting all over  \nthe sea? Love is a cruel master. There are no lengths to which it  \ndoes not force the human heart. Once again she had recourse to  \ntears, once again she was driven to try to move his heart with  \nprayers, becoming a suppliant and making her pride submit to  \nher love, in case she should die in vain, leaving some avenue  \nunexplored. 'You see, Anna, the bustle all over the shore. They  \nare all gathered there, the canvas is calling for the winds, the  \nsailors are delighted and have set garlands on the ships' sterns.  \n420 I was able to imagine that this grief might come; I shall be able  \nto endure it. But Anna, do this one service for your poor sister.  \nYou are the only one the traitor respected. To you he entrusted  \nhis very deepest feelings. You are the only one who knew the  \nright time to approach him and the right words to use. Go to  \nhim, sister. Kneel before our proud enemy and tell him I was  \nnot at Aulis and made no compact with the Greeks to wipe out  \nthe people of Troy. I sent no fleet to Pergamum. I did not tear  \nup the ashes of his dead father Anchises. Why are his cruel ears  \nclosed to what I am saying? Where is he rushing away to? Ask  \nhim to do this last favour to the unhappy woman who loves him  \n430 and wait till there is a following wind and his escape is easy. I  \nam no longer begging for the marriage which we once had and  \nwhich he has now betrayed. I am not pleading with him to do  \nwithout his precious Latium and abandon his kingdom. What I  \nam asking for is some time, nothing more, an interval, a respite  \nfor my anguish, so that Fortune can teach me to grieve and to  \nendure defeat. This is the last favour I shall beg. O Anna, pity  \nyour sister. I shall repay it in good measure at my death.'\n\nThese were Dido's pleas. These were the griefs her unhappy  \nsister brought and brought again. But no griefs moved Aeneas.  \n440 He heard but did not heed her words. The Fates forbade it and  \nGod blocked his ears to all appeals. Just as the north winds off  \nthe Alps vie with one another to uproot the mighty oak whose  \ntimber has hardened over long years of life, blowing upon it  \nfrom this side and from that and howling through it; the trunk  \nfeels the shock and the foliage from its head covers the ground,  \nbut it holds on to the rocks with roots plunged as deep into the  \nworld below as its crown soars towards the winds of heaven \u2013  \njust so the hero Aeneas was buffeted by all this pleading on this  \nside and on that, and felt the pain deep in his mighty heart but  \nhis mind remained unmoved and the tears rolled in vain.\n\n450 Then it was that unhappy Dido prayed for death. She had  \nseen her destiny and was afraid. She could bear no longer to  \nlook up to the bowl of heaven, and her resolve to leave the  \nlight was strengthened when she was laying offerings on the  \nincense-breathing altars and saw to her horror the consecrated  \nmilk go black and the wine, as she poured it, turn to filthy gore.  \nNo one else saw it and she did not tell even her sister. There  \nwas more. She had in her palace a marble shrine dedicated to  \nSychaeus, who had been her husband. This she used to honour  \nabove all things, hanging it with white fleeces and sacred  \n460 branches. When the darkness of night covered the earth, she  \nthought she heard, coming from this shrine, the voice of her  \nhusband and the words he uttered as he called to her, and all  \nthe while the lonely owl kept up its long dirge upon the roof,  \ndrawing out its doleful song of death. And there was more.  \nShe kept remembering the predictions of ancient prophets that  \nterrified her with their dreadful warnings, and as she slept  \nAeneas himself would drive her relentlessly in her madness, and  \nshe was always alone and desolate, always going on a long road  \nwithout companions, looking for her Tyrians in an empty land.  \nShe would be like Pentheus in his frenzy when he was seeing  \n470 columns of Furies and a double sun and two cities of Thebes; or  \nlike Orestes, son of Agamemnon, driven in flight across the stage  \nby his own mother armed with her torches and black snakes,  \nwhile the avenging Furies sat at the door.\n\nAnd so Dido was overwhelmed by grief and possessed by  \nmadness. She decided to die and planned in her mind the time  \nand the means. She went and spoke to her sorrowing sister with  \nher face composed to conceal her plan and her brow bright with  \nhope. 'My dear Anna, rejoice with your sister. I have found a  \n480 way to bring him back to me in love or else to free me from him.  \nNear Oceanus and the setting of the sun is the home of the  \nEthiopians, the most distant part of our earth, where mightiest  \nAtlas turns on his shoulders the axis of the sky, studded with its  \nburning stars. From here, they say, there comes a Massylian  \npriestess who was the guardian of the temple of the Hesperides.  \nShe used to keep watch over the branches of the sacred tree and  \nbring rich foods for the serpent, spreading the oozing honey and  \nsprinkling the sleep-bringing seeds of the poppy. She undertakes  \nto free by her spells the mind of anyone she wishes and to send  \ncruel cares to others, to stop the flow of rivers and turn stars  \n490 back in their courses. At night she raises the spirits of the dead  \nand you will see the ash trees coming down from the mountains  \nand hear the earth bellow beneath your feet. I call the gods and  \nyour own sweet self to witness, O my dearest sister, that it is  \nnot by my own will that I have recourse to magic arts. Go now,  \ntelling no one, and build up a pyre under the open sky in the  \ninner courtyard of the palace and lay on it the armour this  \ntraitor has left hanging on the walls of my room, everything  \nthere is of his remaining, and the marriage bed on which I was  \ndestroyed. I want to wipe out everything that can remind me of  \nsuch a man and that is what the priestess advises.'\n\n500 She spoke, and spoke no more. Her face grew pale, but Anna  \ndid not understand that these strange rites were a pretence and  \nthat her sister meant to die. She had no inkling that such madness  \nhad seized Dido, no reason to fear that she would suffer more  \nthan she had at the death of Sychaeus. She did what she was  \nasked.\n\nBut the queen knew what the future held. As soon as the pine  \ntorches and the holm-oak were hewn and the huge pyre raised  \nunder the open sky in the very heart of the palace, she hung the  \nplace with garlands and crowned the pyre with funeral branches.  \nThen she laid on a bed an effigy of Aeneas with his sword and  \neverything of his he had left behind. There were altars all around  \n510 and the priestess with hair streaming called with a voice of  \nthunder upon three hundred gods, Erebus, Chaos, triple Hecate  \nand virgin Diana of the three faces. She had also sprinkled water  \nto represent the spring of Lake Avernus. She also sought out  \npotent herbs with a milk of black poison in their rich stems and  \nharvested them by moonlight with a bronze sickle. She found,  \ntoo, a love charm, torn from the forehead of a new-born foal  \nbefore the mare could bite it off. Dido herself took meal in her  \nhands and worshipped, standing by the altars with one foot  \nfreed from all fastenings and her dress unbound, calling before  \n520 she died to gods and stars to be witnesses to her fate and praying  \nto whatever just and mindful power there is that watches over  \nlovers who have been betrayed.\n\nIt was night and weary living things were peacefully taking  \ntheir rest upon the earth. The woods and wild waves of ocean  \nhad been stilled. The stars were rolling on in mid-course. Silence  \nreigned over field and flock and all the gaily coloured birds were  \nlaid to sleep in the quiet of night, those that haunt broad lakes  \nand those that crowd the thickets dotted over the countryside.  \n530 But not Dido. Her heart was broken and she found no relief in  \nsleep. Her eyes and mind would not accept the night, but her  \ntorment redoubled and her raging love came again and again in  \ngreat surging tides of anger. These are the thoughts she dwelt  \nupon, this is what she kept turning over in her heart: 'So then,  \nwhat am I to do? Shall I go back to those who once wooed me  \nand see if they will have me? I would be a laughing stock. Shall  \nI beg a husband from the Numidians after I have so often  \nscorned their offers of marriage? Shall I then go with the Trojan  \nfleet and do whatever the Trojans ask? I suppose they would be  \ndelighted to take me after all the help I have given them! They  \nare sure to remember what I have done and be properly grateful!  \n540 No: even if I were willing to go with them, they will never allow  \na woman they hate to come aboard their proud ships. There is  \nnothing left for you, Dido. Do you not know, have you not yet  \nnoticed, the treacheries of the race of Laomedon? But if they did  \nagree to take me, what then? Shall I go alone into exile with a  \nfleet of jubilant sailors? Or shall I go in force with all my Tyrian  \nbands crowding at my side? It was not easy for me to uproot  \nthem from their homes in the city of Sidon. How can I make  \nthem take to the sea again and order them to hoist sail into the  \nwinds? No, you must die. That is what you have deserved. Let  \nthe sword be the cure for your suffering. You could not bear,  \nAnna, to see your sister weeping. When the madness was taking  \nme, you were the first to lay this load upon my back and put me  \n550 at the mercy of my enemy. I was not allowed to live my life  \nwithout marriage, in innocence, like a wild creature, and be  \nuntouched by such anguish as this \u2013 I have not kept faith with  \nthe ashes of Sychaeus.'\n\nWhile these words of grief were bursting from Dido's heart,  \nAeneas was now resolved to leave and was taking his rest on the  \nhigh stern of his ship with everything ready for sailing. There,  \nas he slept, appeared before him the shape of the god, coming  \nto him with the same features as before and once again giving  \nadvice, in every way like Mercury, the voice, the radiance, the  \n560 golden hair, the youthful beauty of his body: 'Son of the goddess,  \nhow can you lie there sleeping at a time like this? Do you not  \nsee danger all around you at this moment? Have you lost your  \nwits? Do you not hear the west wind blowing off the shore?  \nHaving decided to die, she is turning her schemes over in her  \nmind and planning some desperate act, stirring up the storm  \ntides of her anger. Why do you not go now with all speed  \nwhile speed you may? If morning comes and finds you loitering  \nhere, you will soon see her ships churning the sea and deadly  \ntorches blazing and the shore seething with flames. Come  \nthen! No more delay! Women are unstable creatures, always  \nchanging.'\n\n570 When he had spoken he melted into the blackness of night  \nand Aeneas was immediately awake, terrified by the sudden  \napparition. There was no more rest for his men, as he roused  \nthem to instant action: 'Wake up and sit to your benches,' he  \nshouted. 'Let out the sails and quick about it. A god has been  \nsent down again from the heights of heaven \u2013 I have just seen  \nhim \u2013 spurring us on to cut our plaited ropes and run from here.  \nWe are following you, O blessed god, whoever you are. Once  \nagain we obey your commands and rejoice. Stand beside us and  \ngraciously help us. Put favouring stars in the sky for us.'\n\n580 As he spoke he drew his sword from its scabbard like a flash  \nof lightning and struck the mooring cables with the naked steel.\n\nIn that instant they were all seized by the same ardour and set  \nto, hauling and hustling. The shore was emptied. The sea could  \nnot be seen for ships. Bending to the oars they whipped up the  \nfoam and swept the blue surface of the sea.\n\nAurora was soon leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus and  \nbeginning to sprinkle new light upon the earth. The queen saw  \nfrom her high tower the first light whitening and the fleet moving  \nout to sea with its sails square to the following winds. She saw  \nthe deserted shore and harbour and not an oarsman in sight.  \n590 Three times and more she beat her lovely breasts and tore her  \ngolden hair, crying, 'O Jupiter! Will this intruder just go, and  \nmake a mockery of our kingdom? Why are they not running to  \narms and coming from all over the city to pursue him? And  \nothers should be rushing ships out of the docks. Move! Bring  \nfire and quick about it! Give out the weapons! Heave on the  \noars! \u2013 What am I saying? Where am I? What madness is this  \nthat changes my resolve? Poor Dido, you have done wrong and  \nit is only now coming home to you. You should have thought  \nof this when you were offering him your sceptre. So much for  \nhis right hand! So much for his pledge, the man who is supposed  \nto be carrying with him the gods of his native land and to have  \n600 lifted his weary old father up on to his shoulders! Could I not  \nhave taken him and torn him limb from limb and scattered the  \npieces in the sea? Could I not have put his men to the sword,  \nand Ascanius, too, and served his flesh at his father's table? I  \nknow the outcome of a battle would have been in doubt. So it  \nwould have been in doubt! Was I, who am about to die, afraid  \nof anyone? I would have taken torches to his camp and filled  \nthe decks of his ships with fire, destroying the son and the father  \nand the whole Trojan people before throwing myself on the  \nflames. O heavenly Sun whose fires pass in review all the works  \nof this earth, and you, Juno, who have been witness and party  \nto all the anguish of this love, and Hecate whose name is heard  \nin nightly howling at crossroads all over our cities, and the  \n610 avenging Furies and you, the gods of dying Dido, listen to these  \nwords, give a hearing to my sufferings, for they are great, and  \nheed my prayers. If that monster of wickedness must reach  \nharbour, if he must come to shore and that is what the Fates of  \nJupiter demand, if the boundary stone is set and may not be  \nmoved, then let him be harried in war by a people bold in arms;  \nmay he be driven from his own land and torn from the embrace  \nof Iulus; may he have to beg for help and see his innocent people  \ndying. Then, after he has submitted to the terms of an unjust  \npeace, let him not enjoy the kingdom he longs for or the life he  \n620 longs to lead, but let him fall before his time and lie unburied  \non the broad sand. This is my prayer. With these last words I  \npour out my life's blood. As for you, my Tyrians, you must  \npursue with hatred the whole line of his descendants in time to  \ncome. Make that your offering to my shade. Let there be no  \nlove between our peoples and no treaties. Arise from my dead  \nbones, O my unknown avenger, and harry the race of Dardanus  \nwith fire and sword wherever they may settle, now and in the  \nfuture, whenever our strength allows it. I pray that we may  \nstand opposed, shore against shore, sea against sea and sword  \nagainst sword. Let there be war between the nations and between  \ntheir sons for ever.'\n\n630 Even as she spoke Dido was casting about in her mind how  \nshe could most quickly put an end to the life she hated. She then  \naddressed these few words to Sychaeus' nurse, Barce, for the  \nblack ashes of her own now lay far away in her ancient homeland:  \n'My dear nurse, send my sister Anna quickly to me, telling  \nher to sprinkle her body with river water and take with her the  \nanimals and the other offerings as instructed. That is how she is  \nto come, and your own forehead must be veiled with a sacred  \nribbon. I have prepared with due care offerings to Jupiter of the  \nStyx and I am now of a mind to complete them and put an end  \n640 to the pain of love by giving the pyre of this Trojan to the  \nflames.'\n\nThe old woman bustled away leaving Dido full of wild fears  \nat the thought of what she was about to do. Her cheeks trembling  \nand flecked with red, her bloodshot eyes rolling, she was pale  \nwith the pallor of approaching death. Rushing through the door  \ninto the inner courtyard, she climbed the high pyre in a frenzy  \nand unsheathed the Trojan sword for which she had asked \u2013  \nthough not for this purpose. Then her eyes lit on the Trojan  \nclothes and the bed she knew so well, and pausing for a moment  \n650 to weep and to remember, she lay down on the bed and spoke  \nthese last words: 'These are the possessions of Aeneas which I  \nso loved while God and the Fates allowed it. Let them receive  \nmy spirit and free me from this anguish. I have lived my life and  \ncompleted the course that Fortune has set before me, and now  \nmy great spirit will go beneath the earth. I have founded a  \nglorious city and lived to see the building of my own walls. I  \nhave avenged my husband and punished his enemy who was my  \nbrother. I would have been happy, more than happy, if only  \nTrojan keels had never grounded on our shores.' She then buried  \nher face for a moment in the bed and cried: 'We shall die  \n660 unavenged. But let us die. This, this, is how it pleases me to go  \ndown among the shades. Let the Trojan who knows no pity  \ngaze his fill upon this fire from the high seas and take with him  \nthe omen of my death.'\n\nSo she spoke and while speaking fell upon the sword. Her  \nattendants saw her fall. They saw the blood foaming on the  \nblade and staining her hands, and filled the high walls of the  \npalace with their screaming. Rumour ran raving like a Bacchant  \nthrough the stricken city. The palace rang with lamentation and  \ngroaning and the wailing of women and the heavens gave back  \nthe sound of mourning. It was as though the enemy were within  \n670 the gates and the whole of Carthage or old Tyre were falling  \nwith flames raging and rolling over the roofs of men and gods.  \nAnna heard and was beside herself. She came rushing in terror  \nthrough the middle of the crowd, tearing her face and beating  \nher breast, calling out her sister's name as she lay dying: 'So this  \nis what it meant? It was all to deceive your sister! This was the  \npurpose of the pyre and the flames and the altars! You have  \nabandoned me. I do not know how to begin to reproach you.  \nDid you not want your sister's company when you were dying?  \nYou could have called me to share your fate and we would both  \n680 have died in the same moment of the same grief. To think it was  \nmy hands that built the pyre, and my voice that called upon the  \ngods of our fathers, so that you could be so cruel as to lay  \nyourself down here to die without me. It is not only yourself  \nyou have destroyed, but also your sister and your people, their  \nleaders who came with you from Sidon and the city you have  \nbuilt. Give me water. I shall wash her wounds and catch any  \nlast lingering breath with my lips.'\n\nSaying these words, she had climbed to the top of the pyre  \nand was now holding her dying sister to her breast and cherishing  \nher, sobbing as she dried the dark blood with her own  \ndress. Once more Dido tried to raise her heavy eyes, but failed.  \n690 The wound hissed round the sword beneath her breast. Three  \ntimes she raised herself on her elbow. Three times she fell back  \non the bed. With wavering eyes she looked for light in the heights  \nof heaven and groaned when she found it.\n\nAll-powerful Juno then took pity on her long anguish and  \ndifficult death and sent Iris down from Olympus to free her  \nstruggling spirit and loosen the fastenings of her limbs. For since  \nshe was dying not by the decree of Fate or by her own deserts  \nbut pitiably and before her time, in a sudden blaze of madness,  \nProserpina had not yet taken a lock of her golden hair or  \n700 consigned her to Stygian Orcus. So Iris, bathed in dew, flew  \ndown on her saffron wings, trailing all her colours across the  \nsky opposite the sun, and hovered over Dido's head to say: 'I  \nam commanded to take this lock of hair as a solemn offering to  \nDis, and now I free you from your body.'\n\nWith these words she raised her hand and cut the hair, and  \nas she cut, all warmth went out of Dido's body and her life  \npassed into the winds.\n\n## BOOK 5  \nFUNERAL GAMES\n\nMeanwhile Aeneas, without slackening in his resolve, kept his  \nfleet on course in mid-ocean, as he cut through waves darkened  \nby the north wind and looked back at the walls of Carthage,  \nglowing now in the flames of poor Dido's pyre. No one understood  \nwhat had lit such a blaze, but since they well knew what  \nbitter suffering is caused when a great love is desecrated and  \nwhat a woman is capable of when driven to madness, the minds  \nof the Trojans were filled with dark foreboding. The ships were  \nnow in mid-ocean, with no land in sight. All around was sky  \n10 and all around was sea, when there came a cloud like lead and  \nstood over Aeneas bringing storm and black night and the waves  \nshivered in the darkness. Even Palinurus himself called out from  \nthe high stern: 'What can be the meaning of these great clouds  \nfilling the sky? What have you in mind for us, Father Neptune?'  \nNot till then did he give orders to shorten sail and bend to the  \nstout oars. Then, setting the canvas aslant to the winds, he  \nturned to Aeneas and said: 'Great-hearted Aeneas, not if Jupiter  \nhimself gave me his guarantee, would I expect to reach Italy  \n20 under a sky like this. The wind has changed and is freshening,  \nhowling across us from the west where the sky is black. We  \ncannot struggle against it or make any real headway. Since  \nFortune is too strong for us to resist, let us follow her. Let us  \nchange course and go where she calls. I do not think we are far  \nfrom the safety of the shores of your brother Eryx and the  \nharbours of Sicily, if only my memory serves me right, and I  \nplot our course back by the stars I observed on the way out.'\n\nThe good Aeneas then replied: 'That is what the wind wants.  \nI have seen it myself for some time and watched you fighting it  \nto no effect. Change course then and adjust the sails. There is  \nno land that would please me more, nowhere I would rather put  \n30 in with our weary ships, than the place that gives a home to the  \nTrojan Acestes and holds the bones of my father Anchises in the  \nlap of earth.' As soon as this was said they set course for harbour  \nand the wind blew from astern and stretched their sails. The  \nfleet raced over the sea and the sailors were delighted to have  \ntheir prows pointing at last towards a beach they knew.\n\nFar away, on the top of a high mountain, Acestes saw his  \nfriends' ships arriving and was amazed. He came down to meet  \nthem bristling with javelins and the shaggy fur of a Libyan  \nshe-bear. Acestes had been born of a Trojan mother to the  \nriver-god Crinisus and he had not forgotten his ancestry, but  \n40 welcomed the returning Trojans and gladly received them with  \nall the treasures of the countryside, comforting their weariness  \nwith his loving care.\n\nAs soon as the next day had risen bright in the east and put  \nthe stars to flight, Aeneas called his men from all along the shore  \nto a council and addressed them from a raised mound: 'Great  \nsons of Dardanus, who draw your high blood from the gods,  \nthe months have passed and the cycle of the year is now complete  \nsince we laid in the ground the bones that were all that remained  \nof my divine father and consecrated an altar of mourning. This  \nis now the day, if I am right, which I shall always find bitter and  \n50 always hold in honour, for so the gods have willed. If I were  \nspending this day as an exile in the Syrtes among the Gaetulians,  \nor if I had been caught in Greek waters and were a prisoner in  \nthe city of Mycenae, I would still offer up these annual vows,  \nperform these processions in ritual order and lay due offerings  \non altars. Today we find ourselves near the very place where the  \nbones and ashes of my father lie (I for one do not believe this is  \nwithout the wish and will of the gods), and the sea has taken us  \ninto this friendly harbour. Come then, let us all celebrate these  \n60 rites with joy. Let us ask for favouring winds and may it be his  \nwill that we found a city and offer him this worship in it every  \nyear in temples dedicated to his name. Trojan-born Acestes is  \ngiving you two head of oxen for each ship. Call to your feast  \nthe Penates, the gods of your ancestral home, and those of your  \nhost Acestes. After all this, when in nine days the dawn, god  \nwilling, lifts up her life-giving light among men and the round  \nearth is revealed in her rays, I shall hold games for the Trojans,  \nfirst a race for the ships, then for those who are fleet of foot,  \nand a contest for those who take the arena in the boldness of  \ntheir strength to compete with the javelin or the flying arrow,  \n70 for those too who dare to do battle in rawhide gauntlets. Let  \nthem all come and see who wins the prizes of victory. Keep  \nholy silence, all of you, and crown your heads with shoots of  \nliving green.'\n\nWhen he had spoken he shaded his temples with a garland of  \nhis mother's myrtle. So did Helymus. So did old Acestes. So did  \nthe boy Ascanius and all the men, while Aeneas, and many  \nthousands with him, left the council and walked to the tomb in  \nthe middle of this great escort. Here he offered a libation, duly  \npouring two goblets of unmixed wine upon the ground with  \ntwo of fresh milk and two of sacrificial blood. Then, scattering  \n80 red flowers, he spoke these words: 'Once more I greet you, my  \ndivine father. I come to greet your sacred ashes, the spirit and  \nthe shade of a father rescued in vain. Without you I must search  \nfor the land of Italy, for the fields decreed by Fate and for the  \nThybris of Ausonia, whatever that may be.'\n\nWhen he had finished speaking, a snake slithered from under  \nthe shrine. Moving gently forward in seven great curves and  \nseven great coils, it glided between the altars and twined itself  \nround the tomb, its back flecked with blue and its scales flashing  \nmottled gold like the thousand different colours cast by a rainbow  \n90 on the clouds opposite the sun. Aeneas was struck dumb  \nat the sight. At last it dragged its long length among the polished  \nbowls and goblets and tasted the offerings, then, harming no  \none, it left the altars where it had fed and went back under the  \ntomb. Encouraged by this, Aeneas renewed the rites he had  \nbegun for his father, not knowing whether to think of the snake  \nas the genius of the place or as his father's attendant spirit. He  \nslew a pair of yearling sheep as ritual prescribed, two swine,  \nand as many black-backed bullocks, pouring wine from bowls  \nand calling repeatedly upon the spirit of great Anchises and his  \n100 shade released from Acheron. His comrades, too, each brought  \nwhat gifts he could and gladly offered them. They heaped the  \naltars and slaughtered bullocks while others laid out bronze  \nvessels in due order, and all over the grass there was lighting of  \nfires under spits and roasting of flesh.\n\nThe long-awaited day had come and the horses of Phaethon  \nwere now drawing the ninth dawn through a cloudless sky.  \nRumour and the famous name of Acestes had brought out all  \nthe surrounding peoples and a joyful crowd had filled the shore,  \nsome coming only to see Aeneas and his men, some also to  \n110 compete. First the prizes were displayed before their eyes in the  \nmiddle of the arena, sacred tripods, crowns of green, palm leaves  \nfor the victors, arms, purple-dyed garments and talents of silver  \nand gold. The trumpet gave the signal from a mound of earth  \nin the middle. The games had started.\n\nThe first event was for four heavy-oared ships of the same  \nclass picked out of the fleet. The _Pristis_ was a fast ship with a  \nkeen crew commanded by Mnestheus. He was soon to become  \nthe Italian Mnestheus, from whom the family of the Memmii  \ntake their name. The huge _Chimaera_ was a great hulk of a ship  \n120 the size of a city, commanded by Gyas, and to drive her through  \nthe water the Trojans sat in three tiers and plied three banks of  \noars one above the other. Sergestus sailed the great _Centaur_ (he  \nit was who gave his name to the Sergii), and Cloanthus, the  \nfounder of the Roman Cluentii, was in the blue-green _Scylla_.\n\nWell out to sea off a wave-beaten shore there stands a rock  \nwhich in winter, when the north-westerly winds are darkening  \nthe stars, is often submerged and battered by the swell. But in  \ncalm weather all is quiet and the level top of it stands up from  \n130 a glassy sea and gulls love to bask on it. Here Father Aeneas set  \nup a green branch of holm-oak as a mark round which the  \nsailors would know they had to turn to begin the long row  \nhome. They then drew lots for their starting positions, and the  \ncaptains stood on the high sterns gleaming in the splendour of  \npurple and gold. The crews wore garlands of poplar leaves and  \nthe oil they had poured on their shoulders glistened on the naked  \nskin. There they sat at the thwarts, straining their arms at  \nthe oars and their ears to hear the starting signal. They were  \nshuddering with fear and their hearts were leaping and pumping  \nthe blood for the sheer love of glory. When the shrill trumpet  \n140 sounded, in that one instant the ships all surged forward from  \nthe line and the shouting of the sailors rose and struck the  \nheavens. Their arms drew the oars back and the water was  \nchurned to foam. Side by side they ploughed their furrows and  \ntore open the whole sea to its depths with their oars and triple  \nbeaks, like two-horse chariots streaming full-pelt from the starting  \ngates and racing over the ground, or like charioteers at full  \ngallop cracking the rippling reins on their horses' backs and  \nhanging forward over them to use the whip. All the woods  \nresounded with the din and cheers and roars of encouragement.  \n150 The echo of the shouting rolled round the curve of the shore  \nand bounced back off the hills.\n\nIn all this noise and excitement Gyas shot out in front and  \ntook the lead over the first stretch of water. Cloanthus was next.  \nHis rowers were better but he was slowed down by the weight of  \nhis ship. Behind them the _Pristis_ and the _Centaur_ were contesting  \nthird place. Now the _Pristis_ has it. Now the huge _Centaur_ moves  \ninto the lead, and now they are level, bow by bow, ploughing  \nthe salt sea with their long keels. They were soon getting near  \n160 the rock, almost at the turning point, when Gyas, still in the  \nlead at this half-way stage, called out to his helmsman: 'Where  \nare you going, Menoetes? Who told you to steer to starboard?  \nYour line is over here, to port! Hug the shore. The oars on the  \nport side should be scraping the rocks. Leave the deep water to  \nthe others!' These were his orders, but Menoetes was afraid of  \nhidden rocks and pulled the bows round to the open sea. 'You're  \noff course!' shouted Gyas, correcting his line. 'Where do you  \nthink you're going? Make for the rocks, Menoetes!' and even  \nas he was shouting, he saw Cloanthus close behind him and  \n170 cutting in, just scraping past on the port side between Gyas' ship  \nand the roaring rocks. He was past in a moment, safe in clear  \nwater and sailing away from the mark. Young Gyas was  \nincensed. The rage burned in his bones and tears ran down his  \ncheeks. Without a thought for his own dignity or the safety of  \nhis crew he took the sluggard Menoetes and threw him off the  \nhigh stern head first into the sea. He then took over the tiller  \nhimself and became his own helmsman, urging on the rowers  \nand pulling the rudder round to make for the shore. Menoetes  \nwas no lightweight and was no longer young. He went straight  \n180 to the bottom and it was some time before he surfaced. At last  \nhe climbed to the top of the dry rock and sat there with the  \nwater streaming out of his clothes. The Trojans had laughed as  \nhe fell and as he swam and they laughed as he spewed up waves  \nof salt water from his stomach.\n\nSergestus and Mnestheus in the last two boats were both  \ndelighted that Gyas was losing time and both saw a hope of  \novertaking him. Sergestus took the lead as they came up to the  \nrock, but not by a whole ship's length. His bow was out in front  \nbut the _Pristis_ was pressing him hard and her beak was ahead  \nof his stern. Her captain Mnestheus was pacing the gangway  \nbetween the rowers, urging them on on either side: 'Now is the  \n190 time!' he cried. 'Now you must rise to your oars. You are the men  \nwho stood with Hector. You are the men I chose as comrades in  \nthe last hours of Troy. Now let us see the courage and the heart  \nyou showed off Gaetulia in the shoals of the Syrtes and in the  \nIonian sea when the waves were driving us on to Cape Malea. I  \nam no longer hoping to be first. It is not victory that Mnestheus  \nis fighting for, though who knows?...But let victory go to  \nwhom Neptune has given it. The disgrace would be to be last.  \nPrevent that shame, my fellow-Trojans, and that will be our  \nvictory.' At this they bent to the oars and strove with all their  \nmight. The bronzed ship shuddered at their great thrusts and the  \nsurface of the water sped away beneath them. Their breathing  \n200 quickened, chests heaved, mouths dried and the sweat poured  \noff their bodies in rivers. It was pure chance that brought them  \nthe honour they longed for. Sergestus was desperately forcing  \nthe bow of his ship close to the rocks and cutting inside into  \ndangerous water when all ended in disaster as he ran aground  \non a projecting reef. The rock quivered at the impact, the flailing  \noars grated on its jagged edges and the shattered prow was left  \nhanging in mid-air. The crew leapt up and stood there shouting.  \nSome busied themselves with iron-tipped poles and their pointed  \nboat-hooks. Some were salvaging broken oars from the surf.  \n210 Mnestheus was exultant and success only made him more determined.  \nThe oars pulled fast and true. He called upon the winds  \nand as he set course for the homeward stretch and ran shoreward  \nover the open sea, he was like a dove startled out of the cave  \nwhere it has its home and its beloved nestlings in the secret  \nhoneycombs of the rock; it flies off in terror to the fields with a  \ngreat explosion of wings inside the cave, but it soon swoops  \ndown through the quiet air and glides along in the bright light;  \nits wings are swift but they scarcely move \u2013 just so was Mnestheus.  \nJust so was the _Pristis_ as she cut through the last stretch  \nof water. Just so did she fly along under her own impetus.\n\n220 First Mnestheus left Sergestus struggling behind him, stuck  \non his rock high out of the water. There he was in the shallows,  \nshouting in vain for help and learning how to row with broken  \noars. Next Mnestheus went after Gyas and the huge _Chimaera_  \nwhich soon fell behind for lack of its helmsman. Now, at  \nthe very end of the race, only Cloanthus was in front of him.  \nHe took up the pursuit and pressed him hard, straining every  \nnerve.\n\nThe shouting grew twice as loud. They all cheered him on as  \nhe gave chase and the heavens rang with the noise. Cloanthus  \nand his men on the _Scylla_ saw the honour as theirs by right.  \n230 They had already won the victory and had no intention of giving  \nit up. They would rather have lost their lives than lose the glory.  \nMnestheus and his men on the _Pristis_ were feeding on success.  \nThey could win because they thought they could. They drew  \nlevel and would perhaps have taken the prize if Cloanthus had  \nnot stretched out his arms to the sea, pouring out his prayers  \nand calling on the gods to witness his vows: 'O you gods who  \nrule the sea and over whose waters I now race, this is my vow  \nand gladly will I keep it: I shall come to your altars on this shore  \nwith a gleaming white bull. On the salt waves of the sea I shall  \n240 scatter its entrails and pour streams of wine.' He spoke and was  \nheard by the sea nymph Panopaea and all the dancing bands of  \nthe Nereids and of Phorcys. As he sailed on, Father Portunus  \npushed the ship with his own great hand and it flew landward  \nswifter than the wind from the south or the flight of an arrow,  \ntill it arrived safe in the deep waters of the harbour.\n\nThen the son of Anchises called them all together in due order  \nand bade the herald loudly proclaim Cloanthus the victor, and  \nveiled his head with the green leaves of the laurel. For each ship  \nthere was a gift of wine, three bullocks of their choice and a  \ngreat talent of silver. In addition the captains were singled out  \n250 for special honours. The victor received a cloak embroidered  \nwith gold round which there ran a broad double meander of  \nMeliboean purple, and woven into it was the royal prince running  \nwith his javelin and wearying the swift stags on the leafy  \nslopes of Mount Ida. There he was, eager and breathless, so it  \nseemed, and down from Ida plunged the bird that carries the  \nthunderbolt of Jupiter and carried him off in its hooked talons  \nhigh into the heavens while the old men who were there as his  \nguards stretched their hands in vain towards the stars and the  \ndogs barked furiously up into the air. To Mnestheus, whose  \n260 courage had in the end won him second place, Aeneas gave a  \nbreastplate interwoven with burnished mail and triple threads  \nof gold, which he had stripped with his own hands from the  \ndefeated Demoleos on the banks of the swift Simois under the  \nhigh walls of Troy. For Mnestheus this was to be a proud  \npossession and his protection in battle. His attendants Phegeus  \nand Sagaris hoisted it up on to their shoulders, all the many  \nlayers of it, but they could hardly carry it away, yet Demoleos  \nused to wear it while running all over the battlefield in pursuit  \nof Trojans. The third prize was a pair of bronze drinking cauldrons  \nand some embossed drinking cups of solid silver.\n\nAt last they had all received rich gifts and were glorying in  \nthem as they walked, their foreheads bound with purple ribbons,  \nwhen Sergestus appeared, taking in the boat that was the object  \n270 of all their laughter and had missed all the honours. He had  \nprised her off the cruel rock with great difficulty and no mean  \nskill, but she had lost oars and was limping in with only one  \nbank of them. Like a snake caught crossing a raised road, as  \nthey often are, and run over by a bronze wheel or battered by a  \ntraveller with a heavy stone and left mangled and half-dead, it  \ntries in vain to escape by twisting its body into long curves, part  \nof it still fierce, the blazing eyes, the hissing, high-uplifted head,  \nbut the wounded part holds it back as it writhes and coils and  \n280 twines itself into knots \u2013 this is how the _Centaur_ moved, rowing  \nslowly along. But she put up sails and came into the harbour  \nmouth under full canvas. Aeneas, delighted that Sergestus had  \nsaved his ship and brought his men to port, gave him a prize, as  \npromised, the Cretan slave woman Pholoe, good with her hands  \nand with two sons at the breast.\n\nAfter the boat race, dutiful Aeneas strode to a piece of grassy  \nlevel ground. All around it stood wooded hills and in the middle  \nof the valley there was a circle for a theatre. When he reached  \n290 this place \u2013 and many thousands went with him \u2013 Aeneas sat  \ndown on a raised platform in the middle of the concourse. Here  \nhe offered prizes for any men who might wish to take part in a  \nfoot race, whetting their ambition with rewards, and Trojans  \nand Sicanians flocked in from all sides. Nisus and Euryalus were  \nfirst, Euryalus standing out for the bloom of his youthful beauty  \nand Nisus for the loving care he showed to him. Then came  \nDiores, a prince of the noble line of Priam, and after him Salius  \nand Patron together, one an Acarnanian, the other an Arcadian  \n300 of Tegean stock. Then came two young Sicilians, Helymus and  \nPanopes, men of the woods, attendants of old Acestes, and many  \nmore whose names are buried in oblivion. When they had  \ngathered, Aeneas spoke in the middle of them: 'Give your minds  \nto what I have to say. Mark it well and be of good cheer. No  \nman of you will leave without winning a prize from my hand.  \nTwo Cretan arrows I shall give, their steel tips burnished and  \ngleaming, and a two-headed axe embossed with silver. These  \nrewards will be the same for all of you, but there will be other  \nprizes for the first three in the race and crowns woven of golden  \n310 olive for their heads. The winner will have a horse with splendid  \ntrappings, the second an Amazonian quiver full of Thracian  \narrows, slung on a belt with a broad gold band and the clasp  \nthat fastens it is a polished jewel. The third can leave the field  \ncontent with an Argive helmet.'\n\nWhen he had finished speaking, they took their places, the  \nsignal sounded and they were off, streaming away from the  \nstarting-point in one great cloud. But as soon as they came in  \nsight of the finish, Nisus shot out a long way in front of all of  \nthem, swifter than the wind and the wings of the lightning.  \n320 Second, but a long way behind, was Salius. Then, after a gap,  \ncame Euryalus in third place. Behind him was Helymus, then,  \nimmediately behind him and hard on his heels, was Diores  \nleaning over his shoulder, and if there had been more course to  \nrun, he would have overtaken and passed him or they would  \nhave run a dead heat.\n\nThey were soon almost at the end of the course and tiring as  \nthey came up to the line, when the unlucky Nisus slid and fell  \n330 on a slippery patch of blood that had been spilt where they had  \nkilled bullocks and wet the earth and the green grass that grew  \nupon it. Here, as he pounded the track exulting in the very  \nmoment of victory, he lost his footing and fell on his face in the  \nfilthy dung and blood from the sacrifice. But he was not the man  \nto forget Euryalus and the love he bore him. He rose from the  \nslime and threw himself in the path of Salius and knocked him  \nhead over heels, sprawling on the hard-packed sand. Euryalus  \nflashed past. Thanks to his friend he was in the lead and speeding  \nalong to loud applause and cheers, Helymus behind him with  \n340 Diores now winning the third prize. But Salius stood up before  \nthe faces of the fathers in the front rows and filled the whole  \nbowl of the huge assembly with loud clamour, demanding the  \nhonour of which he had been cheated. On the side of Euryalus  \nwere the favour in which he was held, his beauty as he stood  \nthere weeping and the manly spirit growing in that lovely body.  \nOn his side too was Diores, protesting at the top of his voice.  \nHe had come in third but there would be no third prize for him  \nif the first were to be given to Salius. Father Aeneas then spoke:  \n'You young men will all keep your prizes. The awards have been  \n350 made and no one changes that. Let it be my task to offer  \nconsolation to our friend for the downfall he did nothing to  \ndeserve.' With these words he gave Salius the hide of a huge  \nGaetulian lion, weighed down with gilded claws and mane. This  \nwas too much for Nisus, who burst out: 'If losers win prizes like  \nthis and you take pity on people who fall, what gift will be  \nenough to give to Nisus? I would have won the victor's crown  \nof glory and deserved it if the same bad luck as brought down  \nSalius had not disposed of me,' and as he spoke he pointed to  \nthe filthy wet dung on his face and body. Good Father Aeneas  \nlaughed and ordered them to bring out a shield made by the  \n360 hand of Didymaon which had been dedicated to Neptune and  \ntaken down from the doorposts of his temple by Greeks, and he  \ngave this superb gift to the noble young Nisus.\n\nThe race was over and the prizes finally awarded. Then spoke  \nAeneas: 'If there is any courage here, any man with a heart in  \nhis breast, now is the time for him to come forward with gloves  \non his hands and his guard up,' and he set out two prizes for the  \nfight, for the victor a bullock with its head shadowed by ribbons  \nand its horns plated with gold, and a sword and splendid helmet  \nas a consolation prize for the loser. Dares did not hesitate.  \nImmediately that great face of his appeared and all his mighty  \nstrength, and the people murmured as he hoisted himself to his  \n370 feet. He had been the only man who used to stand against Paris.  \nHe was the man who had felled the huge Butes and stretched  \nhim out to die on the yellow sand by the mound where great  \nHector lay, when Butes came as champion from the Bebrycian  \nrace of Amycus. This was the Dares who stood there with his  \nhead held high to begin the battle, flexing his shoulders, throwing  \nlefts and rights and thrashing the air. They looked around  \nfor an opponent, but no one in all that company dared go near  \n380 him or put on the gloves. Thinking that no one was challenging  \nhim for the prize, he went straight up to Aeneas and stood there  \nin front of him. Without more ado he took one of the bull's  \nhorns in his left hand and said: 'Son of the goddess, if no one  \ndares trust himself to battle, how long are we going to stand  \nhere? What is the point of keeping me waiting? Tell them I can  \ntake away my prize,' and all the Trojans to a man murmured  \nand told Aeneas to award the prize as promised.\n\nAt this Acestes had hard words for Entellus, sitting next him  \non a bank of green turf. 'Entellus,' he said, 'I have seen the day  \nwhen you were the bravest of the heroes. Is it all in the past?  \n390 Are you going to sit there meekly when a prize like this is lifted  \nand no opposition offered? Tell me, where is Eryx now, the god  \nthey say was once your teacher? Has all that come to nothing?  \nWhat about that reputation of yours that used to ring round  \nthe whole island of Sicily? And what about the great trophies  \nhanging in your house?' 'I am not afraid,' replied Entellus. 'I  \nhave still my pride and my love of honour. But old age is slowing  \nme down. The blood is cold and sluggish. My strength is gone  \nand my body is worn out. But if I were what I once was, if I had  \nthe youth that makes that puppy so full of himself, prancing  \nabout there, I would not have needed the reward of a pretty  \n400 bullock to bring me to my feet. I am not interested in prizes.' At  \nthese last words he threw into the middle the pair of prodigiously  \nheavy gauntlets in which Eryx used to raise his guard, carrying  \nthem into battle with the hard leather stretched over his forearms.  \nThey were amazed. The hides of seven huge oxen were  \nthere, stiffened by lead and iron sewn into them. Dares was  \nmore amazed than anyone and stood well back at the sight of  \nthem, but the great-hearted son of Anchises picked them up and  \nfelt their weight, turning over the great folds of the jointed  \nhides from one hand to another. Then spoke old Entellus, his  \n410 voicedeep in his chest: 'What would you have thought, any of  \nyou, if you had seen the gauntlets that were the armour of  \nHercules himself and the cruel battle these two fought on this  \nvery shore? This, Aeneas, is the armour your brother Eryx used  \nto wear. You see it is still caked with blood and spattered brains.  \nWith these he stood that day against great Hercules. With these  \nI used to fight while there was still good blood in me to give me  \nstrength, before old age came to tangle with me and sprinkled  \nboth my temples with grey. But if Trojan Dares recoils from this  \narmour of ours, and if good Aeneas is satisfied and my patron  \nAcestes approves, let us level the odds. There's nothing to be  \n420 afraid of, Dares. For you I give up the boxing leathers of Eryx,  \nand you take off your Trojan gauntlets,' and as he spoke he  \nthrew the double cloak off his shoulders and stripped to show  \nthe great joints of his limbs, the great bones and muscles on his  \narms, and stood there a giant in the middle of the arena.\n\nThen the son of Anchises took out two matching pairs of  \ngauntlets, and tied armour of equal weight on the hands of both  \nmen. There was no more delay. Each man took up his stance,  \npoised on his toes, stretching to his full height, guard held high  \nin the air and no sign of fear. They kept their towering heads  \nwell back from the punches and fist struck fist as they warmed  \n430 to their work. Dares had youth on his side and speed of foot.  \nEntellus had the reach and the weight, but his knees were going.  \nHe was slow and shaky and his whole huge body heaved with  \nthe agony of breathing. Blow upon blow they threw at each  \nother and missed. Blow upon blow drummed on the hollow rib  \ncage, boomed on the chest and showered round the head and  \nears, and the cheekbones rattled with the weight of the punches.  \nEntellus, being the heavier man, held firm in his stance, keeping  \nwatchful eyes on his opponent and swaying away from the  \n440 bombardment. For Dares it was like attacking some massive  \nhigh-built city or besieging a mountain fortress. This way and  \nthat he tried, covering all the ground in his manoeuvres, pressing  \nhard with all manner of assaults and all to no avail. Then  \nEntellus drew himself up and showed his right hand raised for  \nthe blow, but Dares was quick to see it coming down and backed  \naway smartly. Entellus' full force was in the blow and it met the  \nempty air. Great was his weight and great was the fall of that  \nhuge body. He fell as a hollow pine tree falls, torn up by  \n450 the roots on great Mount Ida or on Erymanthus. Trojans and  \nSicilians leapt to their feet as one man in their excitement and  \nthe shouting rose to high heaven. Acestes was the first to run to  \ncomfort his old friend and help him from the ground. But the  \nhero Entellus did not slow down or lose heart because of a fall.  \nHe returned to the fray with his ferocity renewed and anger  \nrousing him to new heights of violence. His strength was kindled  \nby shame at his fall and pride in his prowess, and in a white  \nheat of fury he drove Dares before him all over the arena,  \nhammering him with rights and lefts and allowing him no rest  \nor respite. Like hailstones from a dark cloud rattling down on  \n460 roofs, Entellus battered Dares with a shower of blows from  \nboth hands and sent him spinning.\n\nAt this point Father Aeneas did not allow the anger of Entellus  \nto go any further but checked his savage passion and put an end  \nto the fight. As he rescued the exhausted Dares he comforted  \nhim with these words: 'Unlucky Dares, what madness is this  \nthat has taken possession of you? Do you not see that your  \nstrength is not as his and the divine will has turned against you?  \nYield to God.' He spoke and his voice parted the combatants,  \nand Dares was led back to the ships by his faithful comrades,  \ndragging his weary legs, shaking his head from side to side and  \n470 spitting out a mixture of gore and teeth. His men were then  \ncalled and given the helmet and the sword, leaving the palm of  \nvictory and the bull to Entellus. Then spoke the victor in all his  \npride of spirit, glorying in the bull he had won: 'Son of the  \ngoddess, know this, and you too, men of Troy: this is the  \nstrength there used to be in my body when I was in my prime  \nand this is the death from which you have rescued Dares.' With  \nthese words he took up his stance in front of the bullock's head  \nas it stood there as the prize of battle, then, drawing back his  \n480 right hand and rising to his full height, he swung the brutal  \ngauntlet straight down between its horns, shattering the brains  \nand grinding them into the bone. The ox fell and lay full out on  \nthe ground, dead and twitching, and these are the words Entellus  \nspoke and spoke them from the heart: 'The life of this ox is  \nworth more than the life of Dares, and with it, Eryx, I pay my  \ndebt to you in full, and here and now in the moment of victory,  \nI lay down my gauntlets and my art.'\n\nAeneas immediately summoned all those who wished to take  \npart in an archery contest and announced the prizes. With his  \ngreat hand he set up the mast taken from Serestus' ship and put  \na cord round a fluttering dove to hang it from the top of the  \n490 mast as a target for the steel-tipped arrows. The contestants  \ngathered. Lots were thrown into a bronze helmet, and the first  \nto leap out, to loud acclaim, gave the first place to Hippocoon,  \nson of Hyrtacus. Next came Mnestheus, fresh from his triumph  \nin the boat race, Mnestheus with the green olive binding his  \nhair. Third was Eurytion, brother of the famous Pandarus who  \nin days long past had been ordered to break the truce, and had  \nbeen the first to shoot an arrow into the middle of the Greeks.  \nLast of all, at the bottom of the helmet, was Acestes. He too  \n500 dared to try his hand at the test of warriors. Soon they were  \nbending their bows with all their strength and taking the arrows  \nout of their quivers. A string twanged and the first arrow, from  \nyoung Hippocoon, cut through the breezes of heaven to strike  \nhome full in the wood of the mast. The mast quivered, there  \nwas a flash of wings from the frightened bird and all around  \nrang out the loud applause. Next the eager Mnestheus took his  \nstand and drew, aiming high, straining both eye and bow, but  \n510 to his dismay he failed to hit the bird, cutting the knot in the  \nlinen cords which bound her feet as she hung there at the top  \nof the mast. She made off, flying south towards some dark  \nclouds. Eurytion lost no time (his bow had long been bent and  \nhis arrow at the ready), but called upon his brother Pandarus as  \nhe prayed, and took aim at the dove now glorying in the freedom  \nof the sky. As she beat her wings just beneath the black cloud,  \nthe arrow struck her and she fell dead, leaving her life among  \nthe stars of heaven and bringing back as she fell the arrow that  \nhad pierced her.\n\nFather Acestes alone remained and the victor's palm was lost  \n520 to him, but he aimed an arrow high into the breezes of the air  \nto display his old skill and let the sound of his bow be heard. At  \nthis a sudden miracle appeared before their eyes, a mighty sign  \nof what the future held in store. In times to come was the  \ngreat fulfilment revealed and awesome prophets interpreted the  \nomens to future ages. As it flew through the vaporous clouds,  \nthe arrow burst into flames and marked its path with fire till it  \nwas consumed and faded into thin air, like those stars that leave  \ntheir appointed places and race across the sky trailing their  \n530 blazing hair behind them as they fly. Sicilians and Trojans stood  \nstock still in amazement, praying to the gods above, but the  \nmighty Aeneas welcomed the omen and embraced the exultant  \nAcestes, heaping great gifts on him and saying these words:  \n'Accept these, Father Acestes, for the Great King of Olympus  \nhas shown by this sign that he has willed you to receive honours  \nbeyond the lot of other men. Here is a gift from my old father  \nAnchises himself, a mixing bowl engraved with figures which  \nhe once received as a great tribute from Thracian Cisseus to be  \na memorial and pledge of his love.' With these words he put a  \n540 wreath of green laurel round Acestes' temples and declared him  \nfirst victor above all the others. Nor did good Eurytion grudge  \nhim the highest honour although he alone had brought down  \nthe dove from the heights of heaven. Next in order for the prizes  \ncame the archer who had cut the cord, and last the one who had  \npierced the mast with his flying arrow.\n\nBut before the end of the archery contest Father Aeneas was  \nalready calling to his side Epytides, the trusty comrade and  \nguardian of young Iulus, to speak a word in his ear: 'Go now,  \nand if Ascanius has with him his troop of boys all ready and the  \n550 horses drawn up and prepared to move, tell him to lead on his  \nsquadrons in honour of his grandfather and show himself in  \narms.' The people had all flooded into the circus, so Aeneas  \nordered them to clear the whole long track and leave the level  \nground free. Then came the boys, riding in perfect order on their  \nbridled mounts, resplendent in full view of their parents, and all  \nthe men of Sicily and of Troy murmured in admiration as they  \nrode. They wore their hair close bound in trimmed garlands in  \nceremonial style and each carried a pair of cornel-wood spears  \ntipped with steel. Some of them had polished quivers hanging  \nfrom their shoulders with circlets of twisted gold round neck  \n560 and chest. They spread out into three separate squadrons of  \nhorse, each with its own leader at the head of a dozen boys in  \ntwo separate files of six, each squadron with its own trainer, all  \nof them gleaming in the sunlight. The first of these three squadrons  \nof young warriors was led in triumph by a little Priam, the  \nnoble son of Polites who bore the name of his grandfather and  \nwas destined to give increase to the Italian race. His horse was  \na piebald Thracian with white above its hooves and a white  \nforehead carried high. The second squadron was led by Atys,  \nthe founder of the Atii of Latium. Young Atys was a dear friend  \n570 of the boy Iulus, and Iulus was last and comeliest of them all,  \nriding on a Sidonian horse given to him by the lovely Dido as a  \nmemorial and pledge of her love. The other youngsters rode  \nSicilian mounts presented by old Acestes. They were daunted  \nby the praise they received as the Trojans feasted their eyes  \nupon them, tracing in their features the features of their distant  \nancestors.\n\nAfter they had paraded happily on horseback round the whole  \ngathering and shown themselves to their loved ones, when they  \nwere all ready, Epytides, standing at a distance, gave the signal  \n580 with a loud call and a crack of his whip and the warriors wheeled  \napart into two separate sections, each of the three troops dividing  \nits ranks equally. At a second command the two new formations  \nturned and advanced on each other with spears at the  \nlevel. All over the arena they charged and turned and charged  \nagain, winding in circles now in one direction now in the other,  \nfighting out in full armour the very image of a battle, now  \nexposing their backs in flight, now turning to point their spears  \nat the enemy and now when peace is made riding along side by  \nside. They say there was a labyrinth once in the hills of Crete  \nwhere the way weaved between blind walls and lost itself in a  \n590 thousand treacherous paths; there was no following of tracks in  \nthis maze, no finding of a way and no retracing of steps \u2013 such  \nwas the pattern woven by the paths of the sons of the Trojans  \nas they wound their movements of mock battle and retreat, like  \ndolphins swimming in the waters of the sea, cleaving the waves  \noff Carpathos or Libya. The tradition of these manoeuvres and  \nbattles was first renewed by Ascanius, who taught the native  \nLatins to celebrate it as he was building his walls round Alba  \n600 Longa. The Albans taught their sons to do as Ascanius himself  \nand the Trojans had done with him when they were boys. In  \ndue course great Rome itself received this tradition from Alba  \nand preserved it. It is now called 'Troy' and the boys are called  \n'the Trojan Troop'. Here ended the games held in honour of the  \ndivine father of Aeneas.\n\nAt this moment Fortune first changed and turned against  \nthem. While they were paying to the tomb the solemn tribute of  \nall these games, Saturnian Juno sent Iris down from the sky to  \nthe Trojan fleet and breathed favouring winds upon her as she  \nwent. Juno had many schemes in her mind and her ancient  \n610 bitterness remained unsatisfied. Unseen by human eye the virgin  \ngoddess ran her swift course down her bow of a thousand  \ncolours till she came within sight of the great assembly. She  \nthen passed along the shore and saw the empty harbour and  \nunattended ships. But there, far apart on the deserted beach,  \nwere the women of Troy, weeping for the loss of Anchises and  \nweeping, all of them, as they looked out over the unfathomable  \nsea. How weary they were, how numberless the breakers and  \nhow vast the sea that still remained for them to cross! These  \nwere the words on all their lips. What they were praying for was  \na city \u2013 they were heart sick of toiling with the sea. Iris knew  \nhow to cause mischief. She rushed into the middle of them,  \n620 laying aside her divine form and dress and appearing as Beroe,  \nthe aged wife of Doryclus of Tmaros, a woman of good birth,  \nwho had borne sons and been held in high regard. In this guise  \nshe mingled with the mothers of Troy and spoke these words:  \n'Our sadness is that Greek hands did not drag us off to our  \ndeaths in war under the walls of our native city. O my unhappy  \npeople, for what manner of destruction is Fortune preserving  \nyou? This is the seventh summer since the fall of Troy that we  \nhave been driven by the winds and have measured every sea and  \nland, every inhospitable rock and every angry star, rolling for  \never on the waves as we search the mighty ocean for an Italy  \n630 that ever recedes. Here we are in the land of our brother Eryx  \nand Acestes is our host. Who is to prevent us from laying down  \nthe foundations of walls and giving a city to our people? I call  \nupon our native land and household gods snatched from the  \nhands of our enemies to no purpose, tell us, will there never  \nagain be walls that will be called the walls of Troy? Shall I never  \nsee a place with the rivers that Hector knew, the Xanthus and  \nthe Simois? It is too much to endure. Come with me now and set  \nfire to these accursed ships and destroy them. I have seen in a  \ndream the image of the priestess Cassandra putting blazing  \ntorches in my hands and saying: \"This is your home. This is  \nwhere you must find your Troy.\" Now is the time to act. Portents  \n640 like these brook no delay. Look at these four altars of Neptune.  \nThe god himself is giving us the torches and the courage.' While  \nstill speaking she took the lead and snatched up the deadly fire,  \nbrandished it in her right hand and threw it with all her force.  \nThe minds of the women of Troy were roused and their hearts  \nwere bewildered, but one of the many, the oldest of them all,  \nPyrgo, who had been royal nurse to all the sons of Priam, called  \nout: 'This is not Beroe speaking to you, women of Troy. This is  \nnot the wife of Doryclus from Rhoeteum. Look at the marks of  \ndivine beauty, the blazing eyes. Look at her proud bearing, her  \n650 features, the sound of her voice, her walk. I have just left Beroe  \nsick and fretting because she was the only one who could not  \ncome to this ceremony and would not be paying due honour to  \nAnchises.'\n\nThese were the words of Pyrgo and at first the women were  \nat a loss, looking at the ships with loathing in their eyes, torn  \nbetween their pitiable desire to stay where they were on land,  \nand the kingdom to which destiny was calling them, when the  \ngoddess soared through the heavens on poised wings, cutting in  \nher flight a great rainbow beneath the clouds. This portent  \n660 overwhelmed them. Driven at last to madness they began to  \nscream and snatch flames from the innermost hearths of the  \nencampment or rob the altar fires, hurling blazing branches and  \nbrushwood and torches. The God of Fire raged with unbridled  \nfury over oars and benches and the fir wood of the painted  \nsterns.\n\nIt was Eumelus who brought the news to the Trojans while  \nthey were still in the wedge-shaped blocks of seats in the theatre  \nnear the tomb of Anchises, and they could see for themselves  \nthe dark ash flying in a cloud. Ascanius was happily leading the  \ncavalry manoeuvres, so he made off to the troubled camp at full  \ngallop although the breathless trainers tried in vain to hold him  \n670 back. 'What strange madness is this?' he cried. 'Where, oh where  \nis this leading you, you unhappy women of Troy? This is not  \nthe camp of your Greek enemies. What you are burning is your  \nown hopes for the future! Look at me! I am your own Ascanius!'  \nHe had been wearing a helmet as he stirred the images of war  \nin the mock battle and now he took it off and threw it on the  \nground at his feet. At this moment Aeneas came rushing up and  \ncolumns of Trojans with him, but the women took to flight and  \nscattered all over the shore making for the woods and caves in  \nthe rocks, wherever they could hide. They were ashamed of  \nwhat they had done and ashamed to look upon the light of day.  \nTheir wits were restored now and they recognized their own  \npeople. Juno was cast out of their hearts.\n\n680 But that did not cause the fire and flame to abate their  \nunquenchable fury. The pitch was still smouldering beneath the  \nwet timbers, oozing slow smoke, and a consuming heat was  \ncreeping along the hulls. The canker was sinking deep into the  \nbodies of the ships and all the exertions of men and the pouring  \non of water were achieving nothing. This was when the devout  \nAeneas tore the cloak off his shoulders and called upon the gods  \nfor help, stretching out his hands and praying: 'All-powerful  \nJupiter, if you do not yet abhor the whole race of Trojans, if  \nyour loving-kindness still looks as of old on the labours of men,  \n690 grant now, O Father, that our fleet escape the flames. Save from  \ndestruction what little remains to the Trojans, or else with your  \nown angry thunder cast the remnants of us down to death and,  \nif that is what I deserve, overwhelm us here with your own right  \nhand.' Scarcely had he spoken, when a black deluge of torrential  \nrain came lashing down, mountain peak and plain trembled at  \nthe thunder and from the whole sky streamed the wild tempest  \nof rain, dark with the cloud-bearing winds of the south. It  \npoured down and filled the ships and soaked the charred timbers  \ntill all the fire was quenched and, except for four that were lost,  \nall the ships were saved from destruction.\n\n700 But this was a bitter blow for Aeneas, and his heart was heavy  \nas he turned his thoughts this way and that, wondering whether  \nhe should forget about his destiny and settle in the fields of  \nSicily, or whether he ought to make for the shores of Italy. Then  \nspoke old Nautes. He was the one man Tritonian Pallas had  \nchosen to instruct and make pre-eminent in his art, providing  \nhim with responses to explain what the great anger of the gods  \nportended and what the settled order of the Fates demanded.  \nThese were the words of comfort he now began to address to  \nAeneas: 'Son of the goddess, let us follow the Fates, whether  \n710 they lead us on or lead us back. Whatever fortune may be ours,  \nwe must at all times rise above it by enduring it. Acestes is by  \nyour side and he is a Trojan, offspring of the gods. Take him  \ninto your counsels. Be one with him. He is willing. Hand over  \ninto his care the people from the ships that are lost and those who  \nare heart-weary of your great enterprise and destiny. Choose the  \nold men, the women who are worn out by the sea, all of your  \ncompany who are frail and have no stomach for danger, and  \nweary as they are, here in this land let them have their city.  \nAcestes will give them his name and they will call it Acesta.'\n\n720 Aeneas was fired by these words from his old friend, but his  \nheart was divided between all his cares as never before. Dark  \nnight had risen in her chariot to command the vault of heaven,  \nwhen suddenly there appeared the form of his father Anchises  \ngliding down from the sky and these were the words that came  \npouring from him: 'O my son, dearer to me than life itself in the  \ndays when life remained to me, O my son, who has been tested  \nby the Fates of Troy, I come here in fulfilment of the command  \nof Jupiter. He it was who drove the fire from your ships and has  \nat last looked down from the sky and pitied you. Follow now  \nthis most wise advice which old Nautes is giving you and choose  \nwarriors from your people, the bravest hearts among them, to  \n730 take to Italy. There in Latium is a wild and hardy people whom  \nyou have to overcome in war. But first you must come to the  \nhome of Dis in the underworld and go through the depths of  \nhell to seek a meeting with me. I am not confined in the grim  \nshades of impious Tartarus but live in Elysium in the radiant  \ncouncils of the just. A chaste Sibyl will lead you to this place,  \nshedding the blood of many black cattle in sacrifice. Then you  \nwill learn about all the descendants who will come after you  \nand the city walls you are to be given. But now farewell. The  \ndewy night is turning her chariot in mid-course. The cruel sun  \nis beginning to rise in the east and I have felt the breath of his  \n740 panting horses.' As he finished speaking he fled into thin air like  \nsmoke dissolving. 'Where are you going in such haste? Who are  \nyou escaping from? Who is there to keep you from my arms?'  \nSo cried Aeneas, and he stirred the smouldering ashes of the fire  \nto worship the Lar of Pergamum and the shrine of white-haired  \nVesta with a ritual offering of coarse meal and incense from a  \nfull censer.\n\nImmediately then he called his allies, Acestes first of all, and  \nexplained the command of Jupiter, the instructions of his own  \ndear father and the resolve now firm in his own mind. There  \nwas no time lost in words and no dissent from Acestes. They  \n750 transferred the mothers to the city and put ashore those who  \nwished it, those spirits that felt no need for glory, while they  \nthemselves repaired the rowing benches, replaced the charred  \ntimbers and fitted out the ships with oars and ropes. They were  \na small band but their hearts were high for war. Meanwhile,  \nAeneas was ploughing the city bounds and allotting homes to  \nhis people. This was to be Ilium, and this was to be Troy. Trojan  \nAcestes was delighting in his kingdom, choosing a site for his  \nforum, summoning a senate and laying down a code of laws.  \n760 Then they founded a temple to Venus of Ida, soaring to the stars  \non the peak of Mount Eryx, and appointed a priest to tend the  \ntomb of Anchises, consecrating to his name a great grove all  \naround it.\n\nAnd now the whole people had feasted for nine days and  \nperformed their rites at the altars. A gentle breeze had calmed  \nthe waves and the breath of a steady south wind was calling  \nthem again to sea. Loud was the weeping along the curved shore  \nof the bay as they lingered for a night and a day in their  \nlast embraces. Even the women, even the men who had been  \nshuddering at the sight of the sea and unable to face its god,  \nwere now eager to sail and endure to the end the whole agony  \n770 of exile, but good Aeneas comforted them with words of love  \nand wept as he entrusted them to their kinsman Acestes. At last  \ncame the command to sacrifice three calves to Eryx and a lamb  \nto the Storms and to cast off their moorings in due order. There  \nstood Aeneas alone on the prow, his head bound with a wreath  \nof trimmed olive leaves and holding a goblet in his hands as he  \nscattered the sacrificial entrails and poured the streaming wine  \ninto the salt sea. His men vied with one another to strike the  \nwaves, sweeping them with their oars as a freshening wind from  \nastern helped them on their way.\n\nBut Venus, never resting all this time from her cares, went to  \n780 Neptune and poured out to him these words of complaint from  \nher heart: 'It is the deadly anger of Juno, her implacable fury,  \nthat forces me to use every prayer I can. No man's piety can  \nsoften her, nor does the long passage of time. Her will is not  \nbroken by the Fates nor by the command of Jupiter and she  \nknows no rest. In black hatred she has eaten the city of the  \nPhrygians out of the heart of their race and dragged the Trojans  \nwho survive through every form of suffering, but she is still not  \nsatisfied. She is still persecuting the dead bones and ashes of the  \ncity she has destroyed. She alone can understand her reasons for  \n790 this terrible rage. You yourself, I know, were a witness of the  \nturmoil she has just created in the waves of the Libyan ocean,  \nstirring up sea and sky to no avail with the help of Aeolus'  \nwinds. To think she took all this upon herself in your kingdom!  \nAnd now this! Look how she has driven the mothers of the  \nTrojans to wrong-doing. It is her cruelty that has burned out  \ntheir ships, lost them their fleet and forced them to abandon  \ntheir own dear ones in a strange land. As for what is to come, if  \nwhat I am asking is readily conceded, if the Fates are giving  \nthem a city in that land, I beg of you to allow them a safe  \ncrossing and let them reach the Laurentine Thybris.'\n\nThen Neptune, son of Saturn and master of the ocean depths,  \n800 answered in these words: 'O Venus of Cythera, it is wholly right  \nthat you should put your trust in the sea, which is my kingdom,  \nfor you are born from it. I also have deserved your trust, for I  \nhave often checked the wild fury of the sea and sky and my care  \nfor your Aeneas has been no less on land \u2013 I call the rivers  \nXanthus and Simois to testify to this. During Achilles' pursuit  \nof the broken army of Troy, when he was driving them against  \ntheir own walls and killing them in their thousands, when the  \nrivers were choked and groaning with corpses and Xanthus  \ncould find no way to roll down to the sea, there was Aeneas  \nstanding against the might of Achilles, his strength not equal to  \n810 it and the gods opposed, and it was I who caught him up in a  \nhollow cloud, although my own desire was to take these walls  \nthat I had built with my own hands for the treacherous Trojans  \nand turn them over from top to bottom. As my mind was then,  \nso is it even now. Put away your fears. He will arrive safely  \nwhere you wish, at the harbour of Avernus. One only will be  \nlost. One only will you look for in vain upon the sea, and that  \none life will be given for many.' When these words had soothed  \nand gladdened the heart of the goddess, Father Neptune put a  \ngolden yoke on the necks of his horses and bits between their  \nwild and foaming jaws and gave them full rein. As his blue-green  \n820 chariot skimmed the surface of the sea, the waves were stilled,  \nthe swell subsided beneath his thundering axle and the rain  \nclouds fled from the vast vault of heaven. Then all his retinue  \nappeared, the huge sea beasts, Glaucus and his band of ageing  \ndancers, Palaemon, son of Ino, the swift Tritons and all the  \nranks of Phorcys' army, while there on the left was Thetis with  \nMelite and the maiden Panopaea, Nisaee and Spio, Thalia and  \nCymodoce.\n\nNow all indecision was past and it was the turn of glad joy to  \n830 capture the heart of Aeneas. Instantly he ordered all masts to be  \nput up and canvas stretched from the yard-arms. As one man  \nthey all set their sails, letting them out in time, first to port and  \nthen to starboard. As one man they swung round the high ends  \nof the yard-arms and swung them round again as fair winds  \ncarried the fleet on its way. They were sailing close, in line ahead  \nwith Palinurus in the lead, and their orders were to make all  \nspeed and take their course from him.\n\nThe dank night was near the mid-point of the sky. The sailors  \nwere taking their rest in peace and quiet, stretched out under  \ntheir oars along the hard benches, when the God of Sleep,  \nparting the dark and misty air, came gliding lightly down from  \n840 the stars of heaven. He was coming to you, Palinurus, bringing  \ndeadly dreams you did not deserve. The god took the shape of  \nPhorbas and sat on the high poop pouring these soft words into  \nthe ears of Palinurus: 'Son of Iasius, the sea is carrying the ships  \nalong itself. The breeze is gentle and steady. This is an hour for  \nsleep. Put down your head and steal a little time from your  \nlabours to rest your tired eyes. I'll take over a short watch for  \nyou myself.'\n\nScarcely lifting his eyes, Palinurus replied: 'Are you asking me  \nto forget what I know about the calm face of the sea and quiet  \nwaters? There is a strange power in the sea and I would never  \n850 rely on it. Winds are liars and, believe me, I would never trust  \nthem with Aeneas, I who have so often been betrayed by a clear  \nsky.' This was his answer, and he stood by the tiller, gripping it  \nwith no intention of letting it go or taking his eyes off the stars.  \nBut look! The god takes a branch dripping with the water of  \nLethe for forgetfulness and the water of Styx for sleep. He shakes  \nit over Palinurus, first one temple, then the other, and for all his  \nstruggles it closes his swimming eyes. As soon as this sudden  \nsleep came upon him and his limbs began to relax, the god  \nleaned over him, broke off a part of the poop, tiller and all, and  \n860 threw him with it into the waves of the sea. Down fell Palinurus,  \ncalling again and again on his comrades, but they did not hear.  \nThe god then rose on his wings and flew off into the airy breezes,  \nwhile the ships sped on their way none the worse, sailing safely  \non in accordance with the promises of Father Neptune.\n\nThey were soon coming near the Sirens' rocks, once a difficult  \ncoast and white with the bones of drowned men, and at that  \nmoment sounding far with the endless grinding of breaker upon  \nrock, when Father Aeneas sensed that he was adrift without a  \nhelmsman. In mid-ocean in the dead of night he took control of  \nthe ship himself, and grieving to the heart at the loss of his  \n870 friend, he cried out: 'You trusted too much, Palinurus, to a clear  \nsky and a calm sea, and your body will lie naked on an unknown  \nshore.'\n\n## BOOK 6  \nTHE UNDERWORLD\n\nSo spoke Aeneas, weeping, and gave the ships their head and at  \nlong last they glided to land at the Euboean colony of Cumae.  \nThe prows were turned out to sea, the teeth of the anchors held  \nand they moored with their curved sterns fringing the shore.  \nGleaming in the sun, an eager band of warriors rushed out on  \nto the shore of the land of Hesperia, some searching for the  \nseeds of flame hidden in the veins of flint, some raiding the dense  \nwoods, the haunts of wild beasts, and pointing the way to rivers  \nthey had found. But the devout Aeneas made for the citadel  \n10 where Apollo sits throned on high and for the vast cave standing  \nthere apart, the retreat of the awesome Sibyl, into whom Delian  \nApollo, the God of Prophecy, breathes mind and spirit as he  \nreveals to her the future. They were soon coming up into the  \ngrove of Diana Trivia and Apollo's golden shrine.\n\nThey say that when Daedalus was fleeing from the kingdom  \nof Minos, he dared to trust his life to the sky, floating off on  \nswiftly driving wings towards the cold stars of the north, the  \nGreater and Lesser Bears, by a route no man had ever gone  \nbefore, until at last he was hovering lightly in the air above the  \ncitadel of Chalcidian Cumae. Here he first returned to earth,  \ndedicating to Phoebus Apollo the wings that had oared him  \n20 through the sky, and founding a huge temple. On its doors were  \ndepicted the death of Androgeos, son of Minos, and then the  \nAthenians, the descendants of Cecrops, ordered to pay a cruel  \npenalty and yield up each year the living bodies of seven of their  \nsons. The lots are drawn and there stands the urn. Answering  \nthis on the other door are Cnossus and the land of Crete rising  \nfrom the sea. Here can be seen the loving of the savage bull and  \nPasiphae laid out to receive it and deceive her husband Minos.  \nHere too is the hybrid offspring, the Minotaur, half-man and  \nhalf-animal, the memorial to a perverted love, and here is its  \nhome, built with such great labour, the inextricable Labyrinth.  \nBut Daedalus takes pity on the great love of the princess Ariadne  \n30 and unravels the winding paths of his own baffling maze, guiding  \nthe blind steps of Theseus with a thread. You too, Icarus, would  \nhave taken no small place in this great work had the grief of  \nDaedalus allowed it. Twice your father tried to shape your fall  \nin gold and twice his hands fell helpless. The Trojans would  \nhave gone on gazing and read the whole story through, but  \nAchates, who had been sent ahead, now returned bringing with  \nhim Deiphobe, the daughter of Glaucus, priestess of Phoebus  \nand Trivia, who spoke these words to the king: 'This is no time  \nfor you to be looking at sights like these. Rather at this moment  \nyou should be sacrificing seven bullocks from a herd the yoke  \nhas never touched and seven yearling sheep as ritual prescribes.'  \n40 So she addressed Aeneas. Nor were the Trojans slow to obey,  \nand when the sacrifices were performed she called them into the  \nlofty temple.\n\nThis rocky citadel had been colonized by Chalcidians from  \nEuboea, and one side of it had been hollowed out to form a  \nvast cavern into which led a hundred broad shafts, a hundred  \nmouths, from which streamed as many voices giving the  \nresponses of the Sibyl. They had reached the threshold of the  \ncavern when the virgin priestess cried: 'Now is the time to ask  \nyour destinies. It is the god. The god is here.' At that moment,  \nas she spoke in front of the doors, her face was transfigured, her  \ncolour changed, her hair fell in disorder about her head and she  \nstood there with heaving breast and her wild heart bursting in  \n50 ecstasy. She seemed to grow in stature and speak as no mortal  \nhad ever spoken when the god came to her in his power and  \nbreathed upon her. 'Why are you hesitating, Trojan Aeneas?'  \nshe cried. 'Why are you so slow to offer your vows and prayers?  \nUntil you have prayed the great mouths of my house are dumb  \nand will not open.' She spoke and said no more. A cold shiver  \nran through the very bones of the Trojans and their king poured  \nout the prayers from the depths of his heart: 'Phoebus Apollo,  \nyou have always pitied the cruel sufferings of the Trojans. You  \nguided the hands of Trojan Paris and the arrow he sent into the  \nbody of Achilles. You were my leader as I set out upon all  \nthe oceans that lap the great lands of the earth and reached the  \n60 far-flung peoples of Massylia and the fields that lie out to sea in  \nfront of the Syrtes. Now at long last we lay hold upon the shores  \nof Italy that have so often receded before us. I pray that from  \nthis moment the fortunes of Troy may follow us no further. You  \ntoo, you gods and goddesses who could not endure Troy and  \nthe great glory of the race of Dardanus, it is now right that you  \nshould have mercy upon the people of Pergamum. And you, O  \nmost holy priestess, you who know in advance what is to be,  \ngrant my prayer, for the kingdom I ask for is no more than what  \nis owed me by the Fates, and allow the Trojans and their  \n70 homeless and harried gods to settle in Latium. Then I shall  \nfound a temple of solid marble to Phoebus and Trivia, and holy  \ndays in the name of Phoebus. And for you too there will be a  \ngreat shrine in our kingdom. Here I shall establish your oracle  \nand the riddling prophecies you have given my people and I  \nshall dedicate chosen priests to your gracious service, only do not  \nconsign your prophecies to leaves to be confused and mocked by  \nevery wind that blows. Sing them in your own voice, I beg of  \nyou.' He said no more.\n\nBut the priestess, not yet submissive, was still in wild frenzy  \nin her cave. The more she tried to shake her body free of the  \n80 great god the harder he strained upon her foaming mouth,  \ntaming that wild heart and moulding her by his pressure. And  \nnow the hundred huge doors of her house opened of their own  \naccord and gave her answer to the winds: 'At long last you have  \ndone with the perils of the ocean, but worse things remain for  \nyou to bear on land. The sons of Dardanus shall come into their  \nkingdom in Lavinium (put that fear out of your mind), but it is  \na coming they will wish they had never known. I see wars,  \ndeadly wars, I see the Thybris foaming with torrents of blood.  \nThere you will find a Simois and a Xanthus. There, too, will be  \na Greek camp. A second Achilles is already born in Latium, and  \n90 he too is the son of a goddess. Juno too is part of Trojan destiny  \nand will never be far away when you are a suppliant begging in  \ndire need among all the peoples and all the cities of Italy. Once  \nagain the cause of all this Trojan suffering will be a foreign  \nbride, another marriage with a stranger. You must not give way  \nto these adversities but must face them all the more boldly  \nwherever your fortune allows it. Your road to safety, strange as  \nit may seem, will start from a Greek city.'\n\nWith these words from her shrine the Sibyl of Cumae sang  \nher fearful riddling prophecies, her voice booming in the cave  \n100 as she wrapped the truth in darkness, while Apollo shook the  \nreins upon her in her frenzy and dug the spurs into her flanks.  \nThe madness passed. The wild words died upon her lips, and  \nthe hero Aeneas began to speak: 'O virgin priestess, suffering  \ncannot come to me in any new or unforeseen form. I have  \nalready known it. Deep in my heart I have lived it all before.  \nOne prayer I have. Since they say the gate of the king of the  \nunderworld is here and here too in the darkness is the swamp  \nwhich the tide of Acheron floods, I pray to be allowed to go and  \nlook upon the face of my dear father. Show me the way and  \n110 open the sacred doors for me. On these shoulders I carried him  \naway through the flames and a hail of weapons and rescued  \nhim from the middle of his enemies. He came on my journey  \nwith me over all the oceans and endured all the threats of sea  \nand sky, feeble as he was but finding a strength beyond his years.  \nBesides, it was my father himself who begged and commanded  \nme to come to you as a suppliant and approach your doors. Pity  \nthe father, O gracious one, and pity the son, I beg of you. All  \nthings are within your power and Hecate had her purpose in  \ngiving you charge of the grove of Avernus. Was not Orpheus  \n120 allowed to summon the shade of his wife with the sound of the  \nstrings of his Thracian lyre? And since Pollux was allowed to  \nredeem his brother by sharing his death, does he not often travel  \nthat road and often return? Do I need to speak of Theseus? Or  \nof great Hercules? I too am descended from highest Jupiter.'\n\nWhile he was still speaking these words of prayer with his  \nhand upon the altar, the prophetess began her answer: 'Trojan,  \nson of Anchises, sprung from the blood of the gods, it is easy to  \ngo down to the underworld. The door of black Dis stands open  \nnight and day. But to retrace your steps and escape to the upper  \nair, that is the task, that is the labour. Some few have succeeded,  \n130 sons of the gods, loved and favoured by Jupiter or raised to the  \nheavens by the flame of their own virtue. The middle of that  \nworld is filled with woods and the river Cocytus glides round  \nthem, holding them in its dark embrace. But if your desire is so  \ngreat, if you have so much longing to sail twice upon the pools  \nof Styx and twice to see black Tartarus, if it is your pleasure to  \nindulge this labour of madness, listen to what must first be done.  \nHidden in a dark tree, there is a golden bough. Golden are its  \nleaves and its pliant stem and it is sacred to Proserpina, the Juno  \nof the underworld. A whole grove conceals it and the shades of  \n140 a dark, encircling valley close it in. But no man may enter the  \nhidden places of the earth before plucking the golden foliage  \nand fruit from this tree. The beautiful Proserpina has ordained  \nthat this is the offering that must be brought to her. When one  \ngolden branch has been torn from that tree, another comes to  \ntake its place and the stem puts forth leaves of the same metal.  \nSo then, lift up your eyes and look for it, and when in due time  \nyou find it, take it in your hand and pluck it. If you are a man  \ncalled by the Fates, it will come easily of its own accord. But if  \nnot, no strength will prevail against it and hard steel will not be  \n150 able to hack it off. Besides, you have a friend lying dead. Of this  \nyou know nothing, but his body is polluting the whole fleet  \nwhile you linger here at our door asking for oracles. First you  \nmust carry him to his place of rest and lay him in a tomb. Then  \nyou must bring black cattle to begin the purification. When all  \nthis is done, you will be able to see the groves of Styx and the  \nkingdom where no living man may set his foot.' So she spoke  \nand no other word would cross her lips.\n\nWith downcast eyes and sorrowing face Aeneas walked from  \nthe cave, revolving in his mind the fulfilment of these dark  \nprophecies. With him stride for stride went the faithful Achates,  \n160 and his heart was no less heavy. Long did they talk and many  \ndifferent thoughts they shared. Who was this dead comrade of  \nwhom the priestess spoke? Whose body was this that had to be  \nburied? And when they came to the shore, there above the tide  \nline they found the body of Misenus, who had died a death he  \nhad not deserved. Misenus, son of Aeolus, who had no equal at  \nsummoning the troops with his trumpet and kindling the God  \nof War with his music, had been the comrade of great Hector,  \nand by Hector's side had borne the brunt of battle, excelling not  \nonly with the trumpet but also with the spear. But after Achilles  \nhad defeated Hector and taken his life, the brave Misenus had  \n170 found no less a hero to follow by joining Aeneas of the stock of  \nDardanus. Then one day in his folly he happened to be blowing  \ninto a sea shell, sending the sound ringing over the waves, and  \nchallenged the gods to play as well as he. At this his rival Triton,  \nif the tale is to be believed, had caught him up and drowned him  \nin the surf among the rocks. So then they raised around his  \nbody a loud noise of lamentation, not least the dutiful Aeneas.  \nWithout delay they hastened, still weeping, to obey the commands  \nof the Sibyl, gathering trees to build an altar which would  \nbe his tomb and striving to raise it to the skies. Into the ancient  \n180 forest they went among the deep lairs of wild beasts. Down  \ncame the pines. The ilex rang under the axe. Beams of ash and  \noak were split along the grain with wedges, and they rolled great  \nmanna ashes down from the mountains.\n\nAeneas took the lead in all this work, urging on his comrades  \nand carrying at his side the same tools as they, but he was always  \ngloomily turning one thought over in his mind as he looked at  \nthe measureless forest and he chanced to utter it in this prayer:  \n'If only that golden bough would now show itself to us in this  \ngreat grove, since everything the priestess said about Misenus  \n190 has proved only too true.' No sooner had he spoken than two  \ndoves chanced to come flying out of the sky and settle there on  \nthe grass in front of him. Then the great Aeneas knew they were  \nhis mother's birds and he was glad. 'Be my guides,' he prayed,  \n'if there is a way, and direct your swift flight through the air  \ninto the grove where the rich branch shades the fertile soil.  \nAnd you, goddess, my mother, do not fail me in my time of  \nuncertainty.' So he spoke and waited to see what signs they  \nwould give and in what direction they would move. They flew  \n200 and fed and flew again, always keeping in sight of those who  \nfollowed. Then, when they came to the evil-smelling throat of  \nAvernus, first they soared and then they swooped down through  \nthe clear air and settled where Aeneas had prayed they would  \nsettle, on the top of the tree that was two trees, from whose  \ngreen there gleamed the breath of gold along the branch. Just as  \nthe mistletoe, not sown by the tree on which it grows, puts out  \nfresh foliage in the woods in the cold of winter and twines its  \nyellow fruit round slender tree trunks, so shone the golden  \nfoliage on the dark ilex, so rustled the golden foil in the gentle  \n210 breeze. Aeneas seized the branch instantly. It resisted, but he  \nbroke it off impatiently and carried it into the house of the  \npriestess, the Sibyl.\n\nAll this time the Trojans on the shore did not cease to weep  \nfor Misenus and pay their last tributes to his ungrateful ashes.  \nFirst they built a huge pyre with rich pine torches and oak logs,  \nand wove dark-leaved branches into its sides, setting up funeral  \ncypresses in front of it and crowning it with his shining armour.  \nSome prepared hot water in cauldrons and when it was seething  \nover the flames, they washed and anointed the cold body and  \n220 raised their lament. When they had wept their fill, they placed  \nhim on the bier and draped him in his familiar purple robes.  \nOthers then performed their sad duty of carrying the bier and  \nheld their torches to the bottom of the pyre with averted faces,  \nafter the practice of their ancestors. Then all the heaped-up  \nofferings burned \u2013 the incense, the sacrificial food, the bowls  \nfilled with oil. After the embers had collapsed and the flames  \ndied down, they washed with wine the thirsty ashes that were  \nall that remained of him and Corynaeus collected his bones and  \nsealed them in a bronze casket. Three times he carried them in  \n230 solemn ritual round the comrades of Misenus and sprinkled the  \nheroes lightly with pure water from the branch of a fruitful olive  \ntree, uttering words of farewell as he performed the lustration.  \nBut dutiful Aeneas raised a great mound as a tomb and set on it  \nthe hero's arms, the oars he rowed with and the trumpet he had  \nblown, there near the airy top of Mount Misenus which bears  \nhis name now and for ever through all years to come.\n\nAs soon as this was done he hastened to carry out the commands  \nof the Sibyl. There was a huge, deep cave with jagged  \npebbles underfoot and a gaping mouth guarded by dark woods  \n240 and the black waters of a lake. No bird could wing its flight over  \nthis cave and live, so deadly was the breath that streamed out  \nof that black throat and up into the vault of heaven. Hence the  \nGreek name, 'Aornos', 'the place without birds'. Here first of  \nall the priestess stood four black-backed bullocks and poured  \nwine upon their foreheads. She then plucked the bristles from  \nthe peak of their foreheads between their horns to lay upon the  \naltar fires as a first offering and lifted up her voice to call on  \nHecate, mighty in the sky and mighty in Erebus. Attendants put  \n250 the knife to the throat and caught the warm blood in bowls.  \nAeneas himself took his sword and sacrificed a black-fleeced  \nlamb to Night, the mother of the Furies, and her sister Earth,  \nand to Proserpina a barren cow. Then he set up a night altar for  \nthe worship of the Stygian king and laid whole carcasses of bulls  \non its flames and poured rich oil on the burning entrails. Then  \nsuddenly, just before the sun had crossed his threshold in the  \nsky and begun to rise, the earth bellowed underfoot, the wooded  \nridges quaked and dogs could be heard howling in the darkness.  \nIt was the arrival of the goddess. 'Stand apart, all you who are  \nunsanctified,' cried the priestess. 'Stand well apart. The whole  \n260 grove must be free of your presence. You, Aeneas, must enter  \nupon your journey. Draw your sword from the sheath. Now  \nyou need your courage. Now let your heart be strong.' With  \nthese words she moved in a trance into the open cave and step  \nfor step Aeneas strode fearlessly along behind her.\n\nYou gods who rule the world of the spirits, you silent shades,  \nand Chaos, and Phlegethon, you dark and silent wastes, let it be  \nright for me to tell what I have been told, let it be with your  \ndivine blessing that I reveal what is hidden deep in the mists  \nbeneath the earth.\n\nThey walked in the darkness of that lonely night with shadows  \nall about them, through the empty halls of Dis and his desolate  \n270 kingdom, as men walk in a wood by the sinister light of a fitful  \nmoon when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade and black night  \nhas robbed all things of their colour. Before the entrance hall of  \nOrcus, in the very throat of hell, Grief and Revenge have made  \ntheir beds and Old Age lives there in despair, with white-faced  \nDiseases and Fear and Hunger, corrupter of men, and squalid  \nPoverty, things dreadful to look upon, and Death and Drudgery  \nbesides. Then there are Sleep, Death's sister, perverted Pleasures,  \n280 murderous War astride the threshold, the iron chambers of the  \nFuries and raving Discord with blood-soaked ribbons binding  \nher viperous hair. In the middle a huge dark elm spreads out its  \nancient arms, the resting-place, so they say, of flocks of idle  \ndreams, one clinging under every leaf. Here too are all manner  \nof monstrous beasts, Centaurs stabling inside the gate, Scyllas \u2013  \nhalf-dogs, half-women \u2013 Briareus with his hundred heads, the  \nHydra of Lerna hissing fiercely, the Chimaera armed in fire,  \n290 Gorgons and Harpies and the triple phantom of Geryon. Now  \nAeneas drew his sword in sudden alarm to meet them with  \nnaked steel as they came at him, and if his wise companion had  \nnot warned him that this was the fluttering of disembodied  \nspirits, a mere semblance of living substance, he would have  \nrushed upon them and parted empty shadows with steel.\n\nHere begins the road that leads to the rolling waters of  \nAcheron, the river of Tartarus. Here is a vast quagmire of boiling  \nwhirlpools which belches sand and slime into Cocytus, and  \nthese are the rivers and waters guarded by the terrible Charon  \n300 in his filthy rags. On his chin there grows a thick grey beard,  \nnever trimmed. His glaring eyes are lit with fire and a foul cloak  \nhangs from a knot at his shoulder. With his own hands he plies  \nthe pole and sees to the sails as he ferries the dead in a boat the  \ncolour of burnt iron. He is no longer young but, being a god,  \nenjoys rude strength and a green old age. The whole throng of  \nthe dead was rushing to this part of the bank, mothers, men,  \ngreat-hearted heroes whose lives were ended, boys, unmarried  \n310 girls and young men laid on the pyre before the faces of their  \nparents, as many as are the leaves that fall in the forest at the  \nfirst chill of autumn, as many as the birds that flock to land  \nfrom deep ocean when the cold season of the year drives them  \nover the sea to lands bathed in sun. There they stood begging to  \nbe allowed to be the first to cross and stretching out their arms  \nin longing for the further shore. But the grim boatman takes  \nsome here and some there, and others he pushes away far back  \nfrom the sandy shore.\n\nAeneas, amazed and distressed by all this tumult, cried out:  \n'Tell me, virgin priestess, what is the meaning of this crowding  \n320 to the river? What do the spirits want? Why are some pushed  \naway from the bank while others sweep the livid water with  \ntheir oars?' The aged Sibyl made this brief reply: 'Son of  \nAnchises, beyond all doubt the offspring of the gods, what you  \nare seeing is the deep pools of the Cocytus and the swamp of  \nthe Styx, by whose divine power the gods are afraid to swear  \nand lie. The throng you see on this side are the helpless souls of  \nthe unburied. The ferryman there is Charon. Those sailing the  \nwaters of the Styx have all been buried. No man may be ferried  \nfrom fearful bank to fearful bank of this roaring current until  \nhis bones are laid to rest. Instead they wander for a hundred  \n330 years, fluttering round these shores until they are at last allowed  \nto return to the pools they have so longed for.' The son of  \nAnchises checked his stride and stood stock still with many  \nthoughts coursing through his mind as he pitied their cruel fate,  \nwhen there among the sufferers, lacking all honour in death, he  \ncaught sight of Leucaspis, and Orontes, the captain of the Lycian  \nfleet, men who had started with him from Troy, sailed the  \nwind-torn seas and been overwhelmed by gales from the south  \nthat rolled them in the ocean, ships and crews.\n\nNext he saw coming towards him his helmsman Palinurus  \nwho had fallen from the ship's stern and plunged into the sea  \nwhile watching the stars on the recent crossing from Libya.  \n340 Aeneas recognized this sorrowing figure with difficulty in the  \ndark shadow and was the first to speak: 'What god was it,  \nPalinurus, that took you from us and drowned you in mid-ocean?  \nCome tell me, for this is the one response of Apollo  \nthat has misled me. I have never found him false before. He  \nprophesied that you would be safe upon the sea and would  \nreach the boundaries of Ausonia. Is this how he has kept his  \npromise?' 'O great leader, son of Anchises,' replied Palinurus,  \n'the bowl on the tripod of Apollo has not deceived you and no  \ngod drowned me in the sea. While I was holding course and  \n350 gripping the tiller which it was my charge to guard, it was  \nbroken off by some mighty force and I dragged it down with me  \nas I fell. I swear by the wild sea that I felt no fear for myself to  \nequal my fear that your ship might come to grief, stripped of its  \nsteering and with its pilot pitched into the sea and that great  \nswell rising. Three long winter nights the wind blew hard from  \nthe south and carried me over seas I could not measure, till,  \nwhen light came on the fourth day, and a wave lifted me to its  \ncrest, I could just make out the land of Italy. I swam slowly to  \nshore and was on the point of reaching safety when a tribe of  \nruffians set upon me with their knives, weighed down as I was  \n360 by my wet clothes and clinging by my finger tips to the jagged  \nrocks at the foot of a cliff. Knowing nothing of me they made  \nme their plunder, and now I am at the mercy of the winds, and  \nthe waves are turning my body over at the water's edge. But I  \nbeg of you, by the joyous light and winds of heaven, by your  \nfather, by your hopes of Iulus as he grows to manhood, you  \nwho have never known defeat, rescue me from this anguish.  \nEither throw some earth on my body \u2013 you can do that. Just  \nsteer back to the harbours of Velia. Or else if there is a way and  \nthe goddess who gave you life shows it to you \u2013 for I do not  \nbelieve you are preparing to sail these great rivers and the swamp  \n370 of the Styx unless the blessing of the gods is with you \u2013 take pity  \non me, give me your right hand, take me aboard and carry me  \nwith you over the waves, so that in death at least I can be at  \npeace in a place of quiet.' These were the words of Palinurus  \nand this was the reply of the Sibyl: 'How did you conceive this  \nmonstrous desire, Palinurus? How can you, who are unburied,  \nhope to set eyes on the river Styx and the pitiless waters of the  \nFuries? How can you come near the bank unbidden? You must  \ncease to hope that the Fates of the gods can be altered by prayers.  \nBut hear my words, remember them and find comfort for your  \nsad case. The people who live far and wide in all their cities  \nround the place where you died, will be driven by signs from  \n380 heaven to consecrate your bones. They will raise a burial mound  \nfor you and to that mound will pay their annual tribute and the  \nplace will bear the name of Palinurus for all time to come.' At  \nthese words his sorrows were removed and the grief was driven  \nfrom that sad heart for a short time. He rejoiced in the land that  \nwas to bear his name.\n\nAnd so they carried on to the end of the road on which they  \nhad started, and at last came near the river. When the boatman,  \nnow in mid-stream, looked ashore from the waves of the Styx  \nand saw them coming through the silent wood towards the  \nbank, he called out and challenged them: 'You there, whoever  \nyou are, making for our river with a sword by your side, come  \ntell us why you are here. Speak to us from where you stand.  \n390 Take not another step. This place belongs to the shades, to Sleep  \nand to Night, the bringer of Sleep. Living bodies may not be  \ncarried on the boat that plies the Styx. It gave me little enough  \npleasure to take even Hercules aboard when he came, or  \nTheseus, or Pirithous, although they said they were born of gods  \nand their strength was irresistible. It was Hercules whose hand  \nput chains on the watchdog of Tartarus and dragged him shivering  \nfrom the very throne of our king. The others had taken it  \nupon themselves to steal the queen, my mistress, from the  \nchamber of Dis.' The answer of the Amphrysian Sibyl was brief:  \n'Here there are no such designs. You have no need for alarm.  \n400 These weapons of his bring no violence. The monstrous keeper  \nof the gate can bark in his cave and frighten the bloodless shades  \ntill the end of time and Proserpina can stay chaste behind her  \nuncle's doors. Trojan Aeneas, famous for his devotion and his  \nfeats of arms, is going down to his father in the darkest depths  \nof Erebus. If the sight of such devotion does not move you, then  \nlook at this branch,' she said, showing the branch that had been  \nhidden in her robes, 'and realize what it is.' At this the swelling  \nanger subsided in his heart. No more words were needed. Seeing  \nit again after a long age, and marvelling at the fateful branch,  \n410 the holy offering, he turned his dark boat and steered towards  \nthe bank. He then drove off the souls who were on board with  \nhim sitting all along the cross benches, and cleared the gangways.  \nIn the same moment he took the huge Aeneas into the hull of  \nhis little boat. Being only sewn together, it groaned under his  \nweight, shipping great volumes of stagnant water through the  \nseams, but in the end it carried priestess and hero safely over  \nand landed them on the foul slime among the grey-green reeds.\n\nThe kingdom on this side resounded with barking from the  \nthree throats of the huge monster Cerberus lying in a cave in  \nfront of them. When the priestess was close enough to see the  \n420 snakes writhing on his neck, she threw him a honey cake steeped  \nin soporific drugs. He opened his three jaws, each of them rabid  \nwith hunger, and snapped it up where it fell. The massive back  \nrelaxed and he sprawled full length on the ground, filling his  \ncave. The sentry now sunk in sleep, Aeneas leapt to take command  \nof the entrance and was soon free of the bank of that river  \nwhich no man may recross.\n\nIn that instant they heard voices, a great weeping and wailing  \nof the souls of infants who had lost their share of the sweetness  \nof life on its very threshold, torn from the breast on some black  \n430 day and drowned in the bitterness of death. Next to them were  \nthose who had been condemned to death on false charges, but  \nthey did not receive their places without the casting of lots and  \nthe appointment of juries. Minos, the president of the court,  \nshakes the lots in the urn, summoning the silent dead to act as  \njurymen, and holds inquiry into the lives of the accused and the  \ncharges against them. Next to them were those unhappy people  \nwho had raised their innocent hands against themselves, who  \nhad so loathed the light that they had thrown away their own  \nlives. But now how they would wish to be under high heaven,  \nenduring poverty and drudgery, however hard! That cannot be,  \nfor they are bound in the coils of the hateful swamp of the  \nwaters of death, trapped in the ninefold windings of the river  \n440 Styx. Not far from here could be seen what they call the Mourning  \nPlains, stretching away in every direction. Here are the  \nvictims of unhappy love, consumed by that cruel wasting sickness,  \nhidden in the lonely byways of an encircling wood of  \nmyrtle trees, and their suffering does not leave them even in  \ndeath. Here Aeneas saw Phaedra, and Procris, and Eriphyle in  \ntears as she displayed the wounds her cruel son had given her.  \nHere he saw Evadne and Pasiphae with Laodamia walking by  \ntheir side, and Caeneus, once a young man, but now a woman  \nrestored by destiny to her former shape.\n\n450 Wandering among them in that great wood was Phoenician  \nDido with her wound still fresh. When the Trojan hero stopped  \nbeside her, recognizing her dim form in the darkness, like a man  \nwho sees or thinks he has seen the new moon rising through the  \nclouds at the beginning of the month, in that instant he wept  \nand spoke sweet words of love to her: 'So the news they brought  \nme was true, unhappy Dido? They told me you were dead and  \nhad ended your life with the sword. Alas! Alas! Was I the cause  \nof your dying? I swear by the stars, by the gods above, by  \n460 whatever there is to swear by in the depths of the earth, it was  \nagainst my will, O queen, that I left your shore. It was the stern  \nauthority of the commands of the gods that drove me on, as it  \ndrives me now through the shades of this dark night in this foul  \nand mouldering place. I could not have believed that my leaving  \nwould cause you such sorrow. Do not move away. Do not leave  \nmy sight. Who are you running from? Fate has decreed that I  \nshall not speak to you again.' With these words Aeneas, shedding  \ntears, tried to comfort that burning spirit, but grim-faced  \n470 she kept her eyes upon the ground and did not look at him. Her  \nfeatures moved no more when he began to speak than if she had  \nbeen a block of flint or Parian marble quarried on Mount  \nMarpessus. Then at last she rushed away, hating him, into  \nthe shadows of the wood where Sychaeus, who had been her  \nhusband, answered her grief with grief and her love with love.  \nAeneas was no less stricken by the injustice of her fate and long  \ndid he gaze after her with tears, pitying her as she went.\n\nFrom here they continued on their appointed road and they  \nwere soon on the most distant of these fields, the place set  \n480 apart for brave warriors. Here Tydeus came to meet him, and  \nParthenopaeus, famous for his feats of arms, and the pale phantom  \nof Adrastus. Here he saw and groaned to see standing in  \ntheir long ranks all the sons of Dardanus who had fallen in  \nbattle and been bitterly lamented in the upper world, Glaucus,  \nMedon and Thersilochus, the three sons of Antenor, and  \nPolyboetes, the consecrated priest of Ceres, and Idaeus still  \nkeeping hold of Priam's chariot, still keeping hold of his armour.  \nThe shades crowded round him on the right and on the left and  \nit was not enough just to see him, they wished to delay him, to  \nwalk with him, to learn the reasons for his coming. But when the  \nGreek leaders and the soldiers of Agamemnon in their phalanxes  \n490 saw the hero and his armour gleaming through the shadows, a  \nwild panic seized them. Some turned and ran as they had run  \nonce before to get back to their ships, while others lifted up  \ntheir voices and raised a tiny cry, which started as a shout from  \nmouth wide open, but no shout came.\n\nHere too he saw Deiphobus, son of Priam, his whole body  \nmutilated and his face cruelly torn. The face and both hands  \nwere in shreds. The ears had been ripped from the head. He was  \nnoseless and hideous. Aeneas, barely recognizing him as he tried  \nfrantically to hide the fearsome punishment he had received,  \nwent up to him and spoke in the voice he knew so well:  \n500 'Deiphobus, mighty warrior, descended from the noble blood  \nof Teucer, who could have wished to inflict such a punishment  \nupon you? And who was able to do this? I was told that on that  \nlast night you wore yourself out killing the enemy and fell on a  \nhuge pile of Greek and Trojan dead. At that time I did all I  \ncould do, raising an empty tomb for you on the shore of Cape  \nRhoeteum and lifting up my voice to call three times upon your  \nshade. Your name and your arms mark the place but you I could  \nnot find, my friend, to bury your body in our native land as I  \nwas leaving it.'\n\nTo this the son of Priam answered: 'You, my friend, have left  \n510 nothing undone. You have paid all that is owed to Deiphobus  \nand to his dead shade. It is my own destiny and the crimes of  \nthe murderess from Sparta that have brought me to this. These  \nare reminders of Helen. You know how we spent that last night  \nin false joy. It is our lot to remember it only too well. When the  \nhorse that was the instrument of Fate, heavy with the brood of  \narmed men in its belly, leapt over the high walls of Pergamum,  \nHelen was pretending to be worshipping Bacchus, leading the  \nwomen of Phrygia around the city, dancing and shrieking their  \nritual cries. There she was in the middle of them with a huge  \ntorch, signalling to the Greeks from the top of the citadel, and  \n520 all the time I was sleeping soundly in our accursed bed, worn  \nout by all I had suffered and sunk in a sleep that was sweet and  \ndeep and like the peace of death. Meanwhile this excellent wife  \nof mine, after moving all my armour out of the house and taking  \nthe good sword from under my head, called in Menelaus and  \nthrew open the doors, hoping no doubt that her loving husband  \nwould take this as a great favour to wipe out the memory of her  \npast sins. You can guess the rest. They burst into the room,  \ntaking with them the man who had incited them to their crimes,  \ntheir comrade Ulixes \u2013 they say he is descended from Aeolus.  \n530 You gods, if the punishment I ask is just, grant that a fate like  \nmine should strike again and strike Greeks. But come, it is now  \ntime for you to tell me what chance has brought you here alive.  \nIs it your sea wanderings that have taken you here? Are you  \nunder the instructions of the gods? What fortune is dogging  \nyou, that you should come here to our sad and sunless homes  \nin this troubled place?'\n\nWhile they were speaking to one another, Dawn's rosy chariot  \nhad already run its heavenly course past the mid-point of the  \nvault of the sky, and they might have spent all the allotted  \ntime in talking but for Aeneas' companion. The Sibyl gave her  \nwarning in few words: 'Night is running quickly by, Aeneas,  \n540 and we waste the hours in weeping. This is where the way  \ndivides. On the right it leads up to the walls of great Dis. This is  \nthe road we take for Elysium. On the left is the road of punishment  \nfor evil-doers, leading to Tartarus, the place of the  \ndamned.' 'There is no need for anger, great priestess,' replied  \nDeiphobus. 'I shall go to take my place among the dead and  \nreturn to darkness. Go, Aeneas, go, great glory of our Troy,  \nand enjoy a better fate than mine.' These were his only words,  \nand as he spoke he turned on his heel and strode away.\n\nAeneas looked back suddenly and saw under a cliff on his left  \n550 a broad city encircled by a triple wall and washed all round by  \nPhlegethon, one of the rivers of Tartarus, a torrent of fire and  \nflame, rolling and grinding great boulders in its current. There  \nbefore him stood a huge gate with columns of solid adamant so  \nstrong that neither the violence of men nor of the heavenly gods  \nthemselves could ever uproot them in war, and an iron tower  \nrose into the air where Tisiphone sat with her blood-soaked  \ndress girt up, guarding the entrance and never sleeping, night or  \nday. They could hear the groans from the city, the cruel crack  \n560 of the lash, the dragging and clanking of iron chains. Aeneas  \nstood in terror, listening to the noise. 'What kinds of criminal are  \nhere? Tell me, virgin priestess, what punishments are inflicted on  \nthem? What is this wild lamentation in the air?' The Sibyl  \nreplied: 'Great leader of the Trojans, the chaste may not set foot  \nupon the threshold of that evil place, but when Hecate put me  \nin charge of the groves of Avernus, she herself explained the  \npunishments the gods had imposed and showed me them all.  \nHere Rhadamanthus, king of Cnossus, holds sway with his  \nunbending laws, chastising men, hearing all the frauds they have  \npractised and forcing them to confess the undiscovered crimes  \nthey have gloated over in the upper world \u2013 foolishly, for they  \n570 have only delayed the day of atonement till after death. Immediately  \nthe avenging Tisiphone leaps upon the guilty and flogs  \nthem till they writhe, waving fearful serpents over them in her  \nleft hand and calling up the cohorts of her savage sisters, the  \nFuries. Then at last the gates sacred to the gods below shriek in  \ntheir sockets and open wide. You see what a watch she keeps,  \nsitting in the entrance? What a sight she is guarding the  \nthreshold? Inside, more savage still, the huge, black-throated,  \nfifty-headed Hydra has its lair. And then there is Tartarus itself,  \nstretching sheer down into its dark chasm twice as far as we  \n580 look up to the ethereal Olympus in the sky. Here, rolling in the  \nbottom of the abyss, is the ancient brood of Earth, the army of  \nTitans, hurled down by the thunderbolt. Here too I saw the  \nhuge bodies of the twin sons of Aloeus who laid violent hands  \non the immeasurable sky to wrench it from its place and tear  \ndown Jupiter from his heavenly kingdom. I saw too Salmoneus  \nsuffering cruel punishment, still miming the flames of Jupiter and  \nthe rumblings of Olympus. He it was who, riding his four-horse  \nchariot and brandishing a torch, used to go in glory through the  \npeoples of Greece and the city of Olympia in the heart of Elis,  \n590 laying claim to divine honours for himself \u2013 fool that he was to  \ncopy the storm and the inimitable thunderbolt with the rattle of  \nthe horn of his horses' hooves on bronze. Through the thick  \nclouds the All-powerful Father hurled his lightning \u2013 no smoky  \nlight from pitchy torches for him \u2013 and sent him spinning deep  \ninto the abyss. Tityos too I could see, the nurseling of Earth,  \nmother of all, his body sprawling over nine whole acres while a  \nhuge vulture with hooked beak cropped his immortal liver and  \n600 the flesh that was such a rich supplier of punishment. Deep in  \nhis breast it roosts and forages for its dinners, while the filaments  \nof his liver know no rest but are restored as soon as they are  \nconsumed. I do not need to speak of the Lapiths, of Ixion or  \nPirithous, over whose heads the boulder of black flint is always  \nslipping, always seeming to be falling. The gold gleams on the  \nhigh supports of festal couches and a feast is laid in regal  \nsplendour before the eyes of the guilty, but the greatest of the  \nFuries is reclining at table and allows no hand to touch the food,  \nbut leaps up brandishing a torch and shouting with a voice of  \nthunder. Immured in this place and waiting for punishment  \nare those who in life hated their brothers, beat their fathers,  \n610 defrauded their dependants, found wealth and brooded over it  \nalone without setting aside a share for their kinsmen \u2013 these are  \nmost numerous of all \u2013 men caught and killed in adultery, men  \nwho took up arms against their own people and did not shrink  \nfrom abusing their masters' trust. Do not ask to know what  \ntheir punishments are, what form of pain or what misfortune  \nhas engulfed them. Some are rolling huge rocks, or hang spreadeagled  \non the spokes of wheels. Theseus is sitting there dejected,  \nand there he will sit until the end of time, while Phlegyas, most  \nwretched of them all, shouts this lesson for all men at the top of  \n620 his voice in the darkness: \"Learn to be just and not to slight the  \ngods. You have been warned.\" Here is the man who has sold  \nhis native land for gold, and set a tyrant over it, putting up  \ntablets with new laws for a price and for a price removing them.  \nHere is the man who forced his way into his daughter's bed  \nand a forbidden union. They have all dared to attempt some  \nmonstrous crime against the gods and have succeeded in their  \nattempt. If I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths and a  \nvoice of iron, I could not encompass all their different crimes or  \nspeak the names of all their different punishments.'\n\nWhen the aged priestess of Apollo had finished her answer,  \nshe added these words: 'But come now, you must take the road  \n630 and complete the task you have begun. Let us hasten. I can see  \nthe high walls forged in the furnaces of the Cyclopes and the  \ngates there in front of us in the arch. This is where we have been  \ntold to lay the gift that is required of us.' After these words they  \nwalked the dark road together, soon covering the distance and  \ncoming close to the doors. There Aeneas leapt on the threshold,  \nsprinkled his body with fresh water and fixed the bough full in  \nthe doorway.\n\nWhen this rite was at last performed and his duty to the  \ngoddess was done, they entered the land of joy, the lovely glades  \n640 of the fortunate woods and the home of the blest. Here a broader  \nsky clothes the plains in glowing light, and the spirits have their  \nown sun and their own stars. Some take exercise on grassy  \nwrestling-grounds and hold athletic contests and wrestling  \nbouts on the golden sand. Others pound the earth with dancing  \nfeet and sing their songs while Orpheus, the priest of Thrace,  \naccompanies their measures on his seven-stringed lyre, plucking  \nthe notes sometimes with his fingers, sometimes with his ivory  \nplectrum. Here was the ancient line of Teucer, the fairest of  \n650 all families, great-hearted heroes born in a better time, Ilus,  \nAssaracus and Dardanus, the founder of Troy. Aeneas admired  \nfrom a distance their armour and empty chariots. Their swords  \nwere planted in the ground and their horses wandered free on  \nthe plain cropping the grass. Reposing there below the earth,  \nthey took the same joy in their chariots and their armour as  \nwhen alive, and the same care to feed their sleek horses. Then  \nsuddenly he saw others on both sides of him feasting on the  \ngrass, singing in a joyful choir their paean to Apollo all through  \na grove of fragrant laurels where the mighty river Eridanus rolls  \n660 through the forest to the upper world. Here were armies of men  \nbearing wounds received while fighting for their native land,  \npriests who had been chaste unto death and true prophets whose  \nwords were worthy of Apollo; then those who have raised  \nhuman life to new heights by the skills they have discovered and  \nthose whom men remember for what they have done for men.  \nAll these with sacred ribbons of white round their foreheads  \ngathered round Aeneas and the Sibyl, and she addressed these  \nwords to them, especially to Musaeus, for the whole great  \nthrong looked up to him as he stood there in the middle, head  \nand shoulders above them all: 'Tell me, blessed spirits, and you,  \n670 best of poets, which part of this world holds Anchises? Where  \nis he to be found? It is because of Anchises that we have come  \nhere and crossed the great rivers of Erebus.' The hero returned  \na short answer: 'None of us has a fixed home. We live in these  \ndensely wooded groves and rest on the soft couches of the river  \nbank and in the fresh water-meadows. But if that is the desire  \nof your hearts, come climb this ridge and I shall soon set you on  \nan easy path.' So saying, he walked on in front of them to a  \nplace from where they could see the plains below them bathed  \nin light, and from that point Aeneas and the Sibyl came down  \nfrom the mountain tops.\n\nFather Anchises was deep in a green valley, walking among  \n680 the souls who were enclosed there and eagerly surveying them  \nas they waited to rise into the upper light. It so happened that  \nat that moment he was counting the number of his people,  \nreviewing his dear descendants, their fates and their fortunes,  \ntheir characters and their courage in war. When he saw Aeneas  \ncoming towards him over the grass, he stretched out both hands  \nin eager welcome, with the tears streaming down his cheeks,  \nand these were the words that broke from his mouth: 'You have  \ncome at last,' he cried. 'I knew your devotion would prevail  \nover all the rigour of the journey and bring you to your father.  \nAm I to be allowed to look upon your face, my son, to hear the  \n690 voice I know so well and answer it with my own? I never  \ndoubted it. I counted the hours, knowing you would come, and  \nmy love has not deceived me. I understand how many lands you  \nhave travelled and how many seas you have sailed to come to  \nme here. I know the dangers that have beset you. I so feared the  \nkingdom of Libya would do you harm.' 'It was my vision of  \nyou,' replied Aeneas, 'always before my eyes and always stricken  \nwith sorrow, that drove me to the threshold of this place. The  \nfleet is moored in the Tyrrhenian sea on the shores of Italy.  \nGive me your right hand, father. Give it me. Do not avoid my  \nembrace.' As he spoke these words his cheeks were washed with  \n700 tears and three times he tried to put his arms around his father's  \nneck. Three times the phantom melted in his hands, as weightless  \nas the wind, as light as the flight of sleep.\n\nAnd now Aeneas saw in a side valley a secluded grove with  \ncopses of rustling trees where the river Lethe glided along past  \npeaceful dwelling houses. Around it fluttered numberless races  \nand tribes of men, like bees in a meadow on a clear summer  \nday, settling on all the many-coloured flowers and crowding  \nround the gleaming white lilies while the whole plain is loud  \n710 with their buzzing. Not understanding what he saw, Aeneas  \nshuddered at the sudden sight of them and asked why this was,  \nwhat was that river in the distance and who were all those  \ncompanies of men crowding its banks. 'These are the souls to  \nwhom Fate owes a second body,' replied Anchises. 'They come  \nto the waves of the river Lethe and drink the waters of serenity  \nand draughts of long oblivion. I have long been eager to tell you  \nwho they are, to show them to you face to face and count the  \ngenerations of my people to you so that you could rejoice the  \nmore with me at the finding of Italy.' 'But are we to believe,'  \n720 replied Aeneas to his dear father, 'that there are some souls who  \nrise from here to go back under the sky and return to sluggish  \nbodies? Why do the poor wretches have this terrible longing for  \nthe light?' 'I shall tell you, my son, and leave you no longer in  \ndoubt,' replied Anchises, and he began to explain all things in  \ndue order.\n\n'In the beginning Spirit fed all things from within, the sky and  \nthe earth, the level waters, the shining globe of the moon and  \nthe Titan's star, the sun. It was Mind that set all this matter in  \nmotion. Infused through all the limbs, it mingled with that great  \nbody, and from the union there sprang the families of men and  \nof animals, the living things of the air and the strange creatures  \n730 born beneath the marble surface of the sea. The living force  \nwithin them is of fire and its seeds have their source in heaven,  \nbut their guilt-ridden bodies make them slow and they are dulled  \nby earthly limbs and dying flesh. It is this that gives them their  \nfears and desires, their griefs and joys. Closed in the blind  \ndarkness of this prison they do not see out to the winds of air.  \nEven when life leaves them on their last day of light, they are  \nnot wholly freed from all the many ills and miseries of the body  \nwhich must harden in them over the long years and become  \ningrained in ways we cannot understand. And so they are put  \n740 to punishment, to pay the penalty for all their ancient sins. Some  \nare stretched and hung out empty to dry in the winds. Some  \nhave the stain of evil washed out of them under a vast tide of  \nwater or scorched out by fire. Each of us suffers his own fate in  \nthe after-life. From here we are sent over the broad plains of  \nElysium and some few of us possess these fields of joy until the  \ncircle of time is completed and the length of days has removed  \ningrained corruption and left us pure ethereal sense, the fire of  \nelemental air. All these others whom you see, when they have  \nrolled the wheel for a thousand years, are called out by God to  \n750 come in great columns to the river of Lethe, so that they may  \nduly go back and see the vault of heaven again remembering  \nnothing, and begin to be willing to return to bodies.'\n\nWhen he had finished speaking, Anchises led his son and the  \nSibyl with him into the middle of this noisy crowd of souls, and  \ntook up his stance on a mound from which he could pick them  \nall out as they came towards him in a long line and recognize  \ntheir faces as they came.\n\n'Come now, and I shall tell you of the glory that lies in store  \nfor the sons of Dardanus, for the men of Italian stock who will  \nbe our descendants, bright spirits that will inherit our name,  \n760 and I shall reveal to you your own destiny. That young warrior  \nyou see there leaning on the sword of valour, to him is allotted  \nthe place nearest to the light in this grove, and he will be the  \nfirst of us to rise into the ethereal air with an admixture of Italic  \nblood. He will be called Silvius, an Alban name, and he will be  \nyour son, born after your death. You will live long, but he will  \nbe born too late for you to know, and your wife Lavinia will  \nrear him in the woods to be a king and father of kings and found  \nour dynasty to rule in Alba Longa. Next to him is Procas, glory  \nof the Trojan race, and Capys, and Numitor, and the king who  \n770 will renew your name, Silvius Aeneas, your equal in piety and  \nin arms if ever he succeeds to his rightful throne in Alba. What  \nwarriors they are! Look at the strength of them! Look at the  \noak wreaths, the Civic Crowns, that shade their foreheads!  \nThese are the men who will build Nomentum for you, and  \nGabii, and the city of Fidenae. They will set Collatia's citadel  \non the mountains, and Pometia too, and Castrum Inui, and Bola  \nand Cora. These, my son, will be the names of places which are  \nat this moment places without names. And Romulus, son of  \nMars, will march at his grandfather's side. He will be of the  \nstock of Assaracus, and his mother, who will rear him, will be  \nIlia. Do you see how the double crest stands on his head and the  \n780 Father of the Gods himself already honours him with his own  \nemblem? Look at him, my son. Under his auspices will be  \nfounded Rome in all her glory, whose empire shall cover the  \nearth and whose spirit shall rise to the heights of Olympus. Her  \nsingle city will enclose seven citadels within its walls and she  \nwill be blest in the abundance of her sons, like Cybele, the  \nMother Goddess of Mount Berecyntus riding in her chariot  \nturret-crowned through the cities of Phrygia, rejoicing in her  \ndivine offspring and embracing a hundred descendants, all of  \nthem gods, all dwellers in the heights of heaven.\n\n'Now turn your two eyes in this direction and look at this  \nfamily of yours, your own Romans. Here is Caesar, and all the  \n790 sons of Iulus about to come under the great vault of the sky.  \nHere is the man whose coming you so often hear prophesied,  \nhere he is, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, the man who will  \nbring back the golden years to the fields of Latium once ruled  \nover by Saturn, and extend Rome's empire beyond the Indians  \nand the Garamantes to a land beyond the stars, beyond the  \nyearly path of the sun, where Atlas holds on his shoulder the  \nsky all studded with burning stars and turns it on its axis. The  \nkingdoms round the Caspian sea and Lake Maeotis are even  \n800 now quaking at the prophecies of his coming. The seven mouths  \nof the Nile are in turmoil and alarm. Hercules himself did not  \nmake his way to so many lands though his arrow pierced the  \nhind with hooves of bronze, though he gave peace to the woods  \nof Erymanthus and made Lerna tremble at his bow. Nor did  \ntriumphing Bacchus ride so far when he drove his tiger-drawn  \nchariot down from the high peak of Nysa, and the reins that  \nguided the yoke were the tendrils of the vine. And do we still  \nhesitate to extend our courage by our actions? Does any fear  \ndeter us from taking our stand on the shore of Ausonia?\n\n'But who is this at a distance resplendent in his crown of olive  \nand carrying holy emblems? I know that white hair and beard.  \n810 This is the man who will first found our city on laws, the Roman  \nking called from the little town of Cures in the poor land of the  \nSabines into a mighty empire. Hard on his heels will come Tullus  \nto shatter the leisure of his native land and rouse to battle men  \nthat have settled into idleness and armies that have lost the habit  \nof triumph. Next to him, and more boastful, comes Ancus, too  \nfond even now of the breath of popular favour. Do you wish to  \nsee now the Tarquin kings, the proud spirit of avenging Brutus  \n820 and the rods of office he will retrieve? He will be the first to be  \ngiven authority as consul and the stern axes of that office. When  \nhis sons raise again the standards of war, it is their own father  \nthat will call them to account in the glorious name of liberty.  \nHe is not favoured by Fortune, however future ages may judge  \nthese actions \u2013 love of his country will prevail with him and his  \nlimitless desire for glory. Look too at the Decii and the Drusi  \nover there and cruel Torquatus with his axe and Camillus carrying  \nback the standards. Those two spirits you see gleaming there  \nin their well-matched armour are in harmony now while they  \nare buried in night, but if once they reach the light of life, what  \na terrible war they will stir up between them! What battles!  \n830 What carnage when the father-in-law swoops from the ramparts  \nof the Alps and his citadel of Monaco and his son-in-law leads  \nagainst him the embattled armies of the East! O my sons, do not  \nharden your hearts to such wars. Do not turn your strong hands  \nagainst the flesh of your motherland. You who are sprung from  \nOlympus, you must be the first to show clemency. Throw down  \nyour weapons. O blood of my blood! Here is the man who will  \ntriumph over Corinth, slaughtering the men of Achaea, and will  \nride his chariot in triumph to the hill of the Capitol. Here is  \nthe man who will raze Argos and Agamemnon's Mycenae to  \nthe ground, and will kill Perseus the Aeacid, descendant of the  \n840 mighty warrior Achilles, avenging his Trojan ancestors and  \nthe violation of the shrine of Minerva. Who would leave you  \nunmentioned, great Cato? Or you, Cossus? Who would be  \nwithout the Gracchi? Or the two Scipios, both of them thunderbolts  \nof war, the bane of Libya? Or Fabricius, who will find  \npower in poverty? Or you, Serranus, sowing your seed in the  \nfurrow? Where are you rushing that weary spirit along to, you  \nFabii? You there are the great Fabius Maximus, the one man  \nwho restores the state by delaying. Others, I do not doubt it,  \nwill beat bronze into figures that breathe more softly. Others  \nwill draw living likenesses out of marble. Others will plead cases  \n850 better or describe with their rod the courses of the stars across  \nthe sky and predict their risings. Your task, Roman, and do not  \nforget it, will be to govern the peoples of the world in your  \nempire. These will be your arts \u2013 and to impose a settled pattern  \nupon peace, to pardon the defeated and war down the proud.'\n\nAeneas and the Sibyl wondered at what they heard, and Father  \nAnchises continued: 'Look there at Marcellus marching in glory  \nin spoils torn from the enemy commander he will fight and  \ndefeat. There he is, victorious and towering above all others.  \nThis is the man who will ride into battle and quell a great  \nuprising, steadying the ranks of Rome and laying low the  \nCarthaginian and the rebellious Gaul. He will be the third to  \ndedicate the supreme spoils to Father Quirinus.'\n\n860 At this Aeneas addressed his father, for he saw marching with  \nMarcellus a young man, noble in appearance and in gleaming  \narmour, but his brow was dark and his eyes downcast. 'Who is  \nthat, father, marching at the side of Marcellus? Is it one of his  \nsons or one of the great line of his descendants? What a stir his  \nescort makes! And himself, what a presence! But round his head  \nthere hovers a shadow dark as night.'\n\nThen his father Anchises began to speak through his tears: 'O  \nmy son, do not ask. This is the greatest grief that you and yours  \n870 will ever suffer. Fate will just show him to the earth \u2013 no more.  \nThe gods in heaven have judged that the Roman race would  \nbecome too powerful if this gift were theirs to keep. What a  \nnoise of the mourning of men will come from the Field of Mars  \nto Mars' great city. What a corte\u00e8ge will Tiber see as he glides  \npast the new Mausoleum on his shore! No son of Troy will ever  \nso raise the hopes of his Latin ancestors, nor will the land of  \nRomulus so pride itself on any of its young. Alas for his goodness!  \nAlas for his old-fashioned truthfulness and that right hand  \n880 undefeated in war! No enemies could ever have come against  \nhim in war and lived, whether he was armed to fight on foot or  \nspurring the flanks of his foaming warhorse. Oh the pity of it!  \nIf only you could break the harsh laws of Fate! You will be  \nMarcellus. Give lilies from full hands. Leave me to scatter red  \nroses. These at least I can heap up for the spirit of my descendant  \nand perform the rite although it will achieve nothing.'\n\nSo did they wander all over the broad fields of air and saw all  \nthere was to see, and after Anchises had shown each and every  \nsight to his son and kindled in his mind a love for the glory that  \n890 was to come, he told them then of the wars he would in due  \ncourse have to fight and of the Laurentine peoples, of the city of  \nLatinus and how he could avoid or endure all the trials that lay  \nbefore him.\n\nThere are two gates of sleep: one is called the Gate of Horn  \nand it is an easy exit for true shades; the other is made all in  \ngleaming white ivory, but through it the powers of the underworld  \nsend false dreams up towards the heavens. There on that  \nnight did Anchises walk with his son and with the Sibyl and  \nspoke such words to them as he sent them on their journey  \nthrough the Gate of Ivory.\n\n900 Aeneas made his way back to his ships and his comrades, then  \nsteered a straight course to the harbour of Caieta. The anchors  \nwere thrown from the prows and the ships stood along the  \nshore.\n\n## BOOK 7  \nWAR IN LATIUM\n\nYou too, Caieta, nurse of Aeneas, have given by your death  \neternal fame to our shores; the honour paid you there even now  \nprotects your resting-place, and your name marks the place  \nwhere your bones lie in great Hesperia, if that glory is of any  \nvalue.\n\nGood Aeneas duly performed the funeral rites and heaped up  \na barrow for the tomb, and when there was calm on the high  \nseas, he set sail and left the port behind him. A fair breeze kept  \nblowing as night came on, the white moon lit their course and  \n10 the sea shone in its shimmering rays. Keeping close inshore, they  \nskirted the land where Circe, the daughter of the Sun, lives  \namong her riches. There she sets the untrodden groves ringing  \nwith never-ending singing and burns the fragrant cedar wood  \nin her proud palace to lighten the darkness of the night as her  \nsounding shuttle runs across the delicate warp. From her palace  \ncould be heard growls of anger from lions fretting at their chains  \nand roaring late into the night, the raging of bristling boars and  \npenned bears and howling from huge creatures in the shape of  \n20 wolves. These had all been men, but with her irresistible herbs  \nthe savage goddess had given them the faces and hides of wild  \nbeasts. To protect the devout Trojans from suffering these monstrous  \nchanges, Neptune kept them from sailing into the harbour  \nor coming near that deadly shore. He filled their sails with  \nfavouring winds and took them past the boiling breakers to  \nsafety.\n\nAnd now the waves were beginning to be tinged with red  \nfrom the rays of the sun and Aurora on her rosy chariot glowed  \nin gold from the heights of heaven, when of a sudden the wind  \nfell, every breath was still and the oars toiled in a sluggish sea.  \n30 Here it was that Aeneas, still well off shore, sighted a great forest  \nand the river Tiber in all its beauty bursting through it into the  \nsea with its racing waves and their burden of yellow sand.  \nAround it and above it all manner of birds that haunted the  \nbanks and bed of the river were flying through the trees and  \nsweetening the air with their singing. Aeneas gave the order to  \nchange course and turn the prows to the land, and he came into  \nthe dark river rejoicing.\n\n40 Come now, Erato, and I shall tell of the kings of ancient  \nLatium, of its history, of the state of this land when first the  \narmy of strangers beached their ships on the shores of Ausonia.  \nI shall recall too, the cause of the first battle \u2013 come, goddess,  \ncome and instruct your prophet. I shall speak of fearsome fighting,  \nI shall speak of wars and of kings driven into the ways of  \ndeath by their pride of spirit, of a band of fighting men from  \nEtruria and the whole land of Hesperia under arms. For me this  \nis the birth of a higher order of things. This is a greater work I  \nnow set in motion.\n\nKing Latinus was by this time an old man and he had reigned  \nover the countryside and the cities for many peaceful years. We  \nare told that he was the son of Faunus and the Laurentine nymph  \nMarica. The father of Faunus was Picus, and the father claimed  \nby Picus was Saturn. Saturn then was the first founder of the  \n50 line. By divine Fate Latinus had no male offspring. His son had  \nbeen snatched from him as he was rising into the first bloom of  \nhis youth. An only daughter tended his home and preserved  \nthe succession for this great palace. She was now grown to  \nwomanhood and at the age for marriage and many were seeking  \nher hand from great Latium and the whole of Ausonia, Turnus  \nthe handsomest of them all, his claim supported by the long line  \nof his forebears. The queen Amata longed above all things to  \nsee him married to her daughter, but many frightening portents  \nfrom the gods forbade it.\n\n60 Deep in the innermost courtyard of the palace there stood a  \nlaurel tree. Its foliage was sacred and it had been preserved and  \nheld in awe for many years, ever since Father Latinus himself  \nhad found it, so the story went, when he was building his first  \ncitadel, and dedicated it to Phoebus Apollo, naming the settlers  \nafter it, the Laurentines. To this tree there came by some miracle  \na cloud of bees, buzzing loudly as they floated through the liquid  \nair till suddenly they formed a swarm and settled on its very top,  \nhanging there from a leafy branch with their feet intertwined. A  \nprophet thus interpreted: 'What we see is a stranger arriving,  \n70 and an army coming from the same direction, making for the  \nsame place and gaining mastery over the heights of the citadel.'  \nThen again when Lavinia was standing by her father's side  \ntending the altar with her chaste torches, another fearful sight  \nwas seen. Her long hair caught fire and all its adornment was  \ncrackling in the flames. The princess's hair was blazing, her  \ncrown with all its lovely jewels was blazing, and soon she was  \nwrapped in smoke and a yellow glare, and scattering fire all  \nover the palace. The horror and miracle of it were on everyone's  \n80 lips, and it was prophesied that her own fate and fame would  \nbe bright, but that a great war would come upon the people.\n\nTroubled by such portents, the king consulted the oracle of  \nhis prophetic father Faunus, visiting the grove under Mount  \nAlbunea, a huge forest sounding with the waters of its sacred  \nfountain and breathing thick clouds of sulphurous vapour. Here  \nthe Italian tribes and the whole land of Oenotria came to consult  \nthe oracle in their times of doubt. Here the priest brought his  \nofferings, and when he lay down to sleep in the silence of the  \nnight on a bed of the fleeces of slaughtered sheep, he would see  \n90 many strange fleeting visions, hear all manner of voices, enjoy  \nthe converse of the gods and speak to Acheron in the depths of  \nAvernus. Here too on that day Father Latinus himself came to  \nconsult the oracle, and after sacrificing a hundred unshorn  \nyearling sheep as ritual prescribes, he was lying propped on a  \nbed of their hides and fleeces, when suddenly a voice was heard  \nfrom the depths of the forest: 'Do not seek to join your daughter  \nin marriage to a Latin. O my son, do not place your trust in  \nany union that lies to hand. Strangers will come to be your  \nsons-in-law and by their blood to raise our name to the stars.  \n100 The descendants of that stock will see the whole world turning  \nunder their feet and guided by their will, from where the rising  \nSun looks down on the streams of Ocean to where he sees them  \nas he sets.' This was the reply of his father Faunus, the warning  \nthat came in the silence of the night. Latinus did not keep it  \nlocked in his heart, and Rumour as she flew had already spread  \nit far and wide through the cities of Ausonia when the young  \nwarriors from Laomedon's Troy tied up their ships to the grassy  \nramparts of the river bank.\n\nAeneas, the leading captains of Troy and lovely Iulus had lain  \ndown on the grass under the branches of a tall tree and were  \n110 starting to eat a meal, setting out their banquets on wheaten  \ncakes \u2013 for Jupiter himself had so advised them \u2013 and heaping  \ncountry fruits on these foundations, the gift of Ceres, the Goddess  \nof Grain. When the fruit had all been eaten and the sparseness  \nof the diet had driven them to sink their teeth into Ceres'  \nbounty, scant as it was, to violate with bold hand and jaw the  \nfateful circles of crust and show no mercy to the flat quartercircles  \nof bread, suddenly Iulus said, as a joke: 'Look! We  \nare eating even our tables!' That was all. This was the first  \nannouncement they had received of the end of their sufferings.  \nAstounded by the presence of the divine, Aeneas seized upon  \nhis son's first words while he was still speaking and made him  \n120 be silent. In that instant he lifted up his voice and cried out:  \n'Hail to the land owed to me by the Fates, and hail to the  \nhousehold gods of Troy who have kept faith with me! This is  \nour home. This is our own land. For now I remember it, my  \nfather Anchises left me this riddle of the Fates. \"When you sail  \nto an unknown shore and your food is so scanty that hunger  \nforces you to eat your tables, that is the time, weary as you are,  \nto hope for a home. This is where you must with your own hand  \nlay down the foundations of your first buildings and raise a  \nrampart round them.\" This is the hunger of which he spoke.  \nThis is the last hunger we had to endure and it will put an end  \n130 to our calamities. Come then, with joy in your hearts, and at  \nthe first light of the sun let us all go in different directions from  \nthe harbour to explore this place and find out who are the men  \nthat live here and where their cities are. And now pour libations  \nfrom your goblets to Jupiter, call upon my father Anchises with  \nyour prayers and set the wine in due order on the tables.'\n\nAt these words he wound a branch of living green round his  \nforehead and offered up prayers to the Genius of the place and  \nto Earth, the first of gods, to nymphs and rivers not yet known,  \nthen to Night and the stars of Night then rising, to Jupiter of  \nMount Ida and the Phyrygian Mother in due order, to his mother  \n140 in the heavens and his father in Erebus. In reply the All-powerful  \nFather thundered clear three times from the heights of the sky  \nand with his own hand he displayed in heaven a burning cloud,  \nquivering with rays of golden light. In that instant the word  \nspread through the Trojan ranks that the day had come for them  \nto found their promised city. Eagerly they renewed their feast,  \nand delighting in this great omen, they set up their mixing bowls  \nand crowned the wine with garlands.\n\nWhen the next day first rose and began to traverse the earth  \n150 with its lamp, they set out in different directions to explore the  \ncity and the boundaries and shores of this people. Here were  \nthe pools where the river Numicus springs, here was the river  \nTiber and here were the homes of the stalwart Latins. Then  \nAeneas, son of Anchises, ordered one hundred men chosen as  \nspokesmen from every rank of his people to go to the sacred  \nwalls of king Latinus all bearing branches of Pallas Athene's  \nolive wreathed in wool, carrying gifts and asking for peace for  \nthe Trojans. They made no delay, but hastened with all speed  \nto do as they were bidden, while Aeneas himself was marking  \nout the line of his walls with a shallow ditch and beginning to  \nbuild on the site, surrounding this first settlement on the shore  \n160 with a stockade and rampart as though it were a camp. The  \nwarriors, meanwhile, their long journey ended, were within  \nsight of the towers and high roofs of the city of the Latins and  \ncame up to the wall. There in front of the city boys and young  \nmen in the first flower of their age were exercising with their  \nhorses, training chariot teams in clouds of dust, bending the  \nspringy bow, spinning the stiff-shafted javelin, racing and sparring,  \nwhen a messenger riding ahead of the Trojans brought to  \nthe ear of the old king the news that huge men in strange costume  \nhad arrived. Latinus ordered them to be summoned into his  \npalace while he took his seat in the middle on his ancestral  \nthrone.\n\n170 A sacred building, massive and soaring to the sky with a  \nhundred columns, stood on the highest point of the city. This  \nwas the palace of Laurentine Picus, a building held in great awe  \nbecause of an ancestral sense of the presence of the divine in the  \ngrove that surrounded it. Here the omens declared that kings  \nshould receive their sceptres and take up the rods of office for  \nthe first time. This temple was their senate-house, this the hall  \nin which they held their sacred banquets and here the elders  \nwould sacrifice a ram and sit down to feast at long tables. Here  \ntoo, carved in old cedar wood, stood in order in the forecourt  \nthe statues of their ancestors from time long past: Italus and  \nFather Sabinus, planter of the vine, still holding in effigy his  \n180 curved pruning knife, old Saturn, the image of Janus with his  \ntwo faces, all the other kings since the foundation of the city  \nand with them the men who had been wounded while fighting  \nto defend their native land. Many too were the weapons hung  \non the posts of the temple doors, captured chariots, curved axes,  \ncrests of helmets, great bolts from the gates of cities, spears,  \nshields and beaks broken off the prows of ships. Here too, with  \nhis short toga, and the augural staff of Quirinus in his left hand,  \nsat the Horse-Tamer, Picus himself, whose wife Circe, possessed  \n190 by lust, struck him with her rod of gold and changed him with  \nher potions into a bird, sprinkling colours on his wings.\n\nSuch was the temple of the gods where Latinus sat in the seat  \nof his fathers and called the Trojans to him in his palace. When  \nthey entered he was the first to speak, addressing them in these  \nkindly words: 'Tell me, sons of Dardanus \u2013 you see we know  \nyour city and your family and had heard about you before you  \nset your course here \u2013 what are you searching for? What has  \ntaken your ships over all the blue waters of ocean to the shore  \nof Ausonia? What need has brought you here? Whether you  \nhave lost your way or been driven off course by the storms that  \n200 sailors have to endure so often on the high seas, you have now  \nsailed between the banks of our river and are sitting in harbour.  \nDo not refuse the guest-friendship we offer you and do not  \nforget that we Latins are Saturn's people, righteous not because  \nof laws and restraints but holding of our own free will to the  \nway of life of our ancient god. Besides, I myself remember that  \nthe Auruncan elders used to say \u2013 the story is dimmed by the  \nmists of time \u2013 that Dardanus was born in these fields and went  \nfar away to the cities of Ida in Phrygia and the Thracian island  \nof Samos now known as Samothrace. He set out from here,  \n210 from his Tyrrhenian home in Corythus, and now sits on a throne  \nin the palace of gold in the starry sky, and his altars add a name  \nto the roll of the gods.'\n\nHe spoke these words, and these were the words in which  \nIlioneus made answer: 'Great king, son of Faunus, it is not black  \nstorms and heavy seas that have driven us to this land of yours,  \nnor have we lost our way by mistaking a star or a coastline. It  \nis by design and with willing hearts that we all sail to this city,  \ndriven from our own kingdom which was once the greatest the  \njourneying Sun could see from the highest part of the heavens.  \n220 Our race begins with Jupiter. The warriors of Dardanus' Troy  \nrejoice in Jupiter as their ancestor. Their king, Aeneas himself,  \nis descended from Jupiter's exalted stock, and Trojan Aeneas  \nhas sent us to your door. The storm that gathered in merciless  \nMycenae and swept across the plains beneath Mount Ida, and  \nthe fate that drove the worlds of Europe and of Asia to collide,  \nthese are known to all men, those who live far to the north  \nwhere the ends of the earth beat back the stream of Oceanus,  \nand those who are separated from us by the zone of the cruel  \nsun whose expanse covers the middle zone of five. Since that  \ncataclysm we have sailed all those desolate seas, and now we  \n230 ask for a little piece of land for our fathers' gods, for harmless  \nrefuge on the beach, for the air and sea which are there for all  \nmen. We shall not bring discredit on your kingdom. Great fame  \nwill be yours, and our gratitude for such a service will never  \nfade. The men of Ausonia will never regret taking Troy to their  \nhearts. I swear by the destiny of Aeneas and his right arm, strong  \nin the truth to all who have tested it, and strong in war and the  \nweapons of war, that many nations have asked to enter into  \nalliance with us. Do not despise us because we choose to come  \nto you with words of supplication and olive branches wreathed  \nin wool in our hands. Many races have wished to be joined to  \n240 ours, but the commands of divine destiny have driven us to seek  \nout your country. This was the first home of Dardanus. This is  \nthe land to which Apollo calls us back, and urges us with his  \nmighty decrees towards the Tyrrhenian Thybris and the sacred  \nshallows of the fountain of Numicus. These gifts, besides,  \nAeneas offers you, some small relics of his former fortunes  \nrescued from the flames of Troy. From this gold cup his father  \nAnchises used to pour libations at the altar. This was the sceptre  \nPriam would hold in his hand as he gave solemn judgement  \nbefore the concourse of the nations, and here are his sacred  \nhead-dress and the vestments woven for him by the women  \nof Troy.'\n\n250 When Ilioneus had finished speaking, Latinus kept his gaze  \nfixed upon the ground and did not move. He never raised his  \nburning eyes but they were never still. As a king he was moved  \nto see the sceptre of Priam and his embroidered purple but much  \nmore was he moved by the thought of a marriage and a husband  \nfor his daughter, and long did he ponder in his heart the prophecy  \nof old Faunus. So this was the fulfilment of the portents sent  \nby the Fates! So this was the son-in-law who would come from  \na distant land and be called to share his kingdom with equal  \nauspices. This was the man whose descendants would excel in  \nvalour and whose power would win the whole world. He spoke  \nat last, and joyfully: 'May the gods give their blessing to what  \n260 we begin today and to their own prophecies! You will receive  \nwhat you ask, Trojan, and I do not refuse your gifts. While  \nLatinus is king, you will have rich land to farm and you will  \nnever feel the lack of the wealth of Troy. Only Aeneas must  \ncome here himself if he is so eager and impatient to join us in  \nfriendship and be called our ally. He has no need to recoil from  \nthe face of his friends. It will be a condition of the peace I offer  \nthat I must clasp the hand of your king. But now I charge you  \nto take back this answer to him. Tell him I have a daughter, and  \n270 the oracles from my father's shrine agree with all the signs from  \nheaven in forbidding me to join her in marriage to any man of  \nour people. Strangers will come from a foreign land to be my  \nsons-in-law \u2013 this is what is in store for Latium according to the  \nprophecies \u2013 and by their blood they shall raise our name to the  \nstars. This Aeneas is the man the Fates demand. This I believe,  \nand this is my will, if my mind has any true insight into the  \nfuture.' After these words, Father Latinus made a choice from his  \nwhole stable where three hundred well-groomed horses stood in  \ntheir high-built stalls, ordering one to be brought out instantly  \nfor each of the Trojans in due order. Their hooves were swift as  \nwings, their saddle-cloths were of embroidered purple. Gold  \nmedallions hung at their breasts, their caparisons were of gold  \n280 and they champed bright golden bits between their teeth. For  \nAeneas in his absence, he chose a chariot and pair of heavenly  \ndescent breathing fire from their nostrils. They were sprung  \nfrom a stock which cunning Circe had crossbred by stealing one  \nof the stallions of her father the Sun to mate with a mare. With  \nthese gifts Aeneas' men returned, riding high in the saddle and  \nbringing messages of peace.\n\nBut at that very moment fierce Juno, wife of Jupiter, was  \ncoming back from Argos, city of Inachus, holding her course  \nthrough the winds of the air, when from far away in the heavens,  \nas far as Cape Pachynus in Sicily, she caught sight of the jubilant  \n290 Aeneas and his Trojan fleet. When she saw that they were  \nalready at work on their buildings, having abandoned their  \nships and committed themselves to the land, she stopped in  \nmid-flight, pierced by bitter resentment. Then, shaking her head,  \nshe poured out these words from the depths of her heart: 'A  \ncurse on that detested race of Phrygians and on their destiny, so  \nopposed to our own! Could they not have died on the Sigean  \nplains? They were defeated. Why could they not accept defeat?  \nTroy was set alight. Could they not have burned with it? But  \nno! They found a way through the press of the battle and the  \nthick of the flames. They must think my divine powers are  \nexhausted and discredited, or that I have glutted my appetite  \nfor hatred and am now at peace. After all, when they were cast  \n300 out of their native land, I dared to hound them over the waves  \nand wherever they ran across the face of the ocean I was there  \nand set my face against them. I have used every resource of  \nsea and sky against these Trojans, and what use have the Syrtes  \nbeen to me? Or Scylla? Or the bottomless Charybdis? The  \nTrojans are where they wanted to be in the valley of the Thybris,  \nsafe from the sea and safe from me. Mars had the strength to  \ndestroy the monstrous race of Lapiths. The Father of the Gods  \nhimself handed over the ancient kingdom of Calydon to the  \nwrath of Diana, and what great crime had the Lapiths or  \nCalydon committed? But here am I, great Juno, wife of Jupiter,  \nthwarted, though I have tried everything that could be tried.  \n310 Nothing has been too bold for me. And I am being defeated by  \nAeneas! But if my own resources as a goddess are not enough, I  \nam not the one to hesitate. I shall appeal to whatever powers  \nthere are. If I cannot prevail upon the gods above, I shall move  \nhell. I cannot keep him from his kingdom in Latium: so be it.  \nThe decree of the Fates will stand and he will have Lavinia to  \nwife. But I shall be able to delay it all and drag it out, I shall be  \nable to cut the subjects of both those kings to pieces. This will  \nbe the cost of the meeting between father-in-law and son-in-law,  \nand their peoples will bear it. Your dowry, Lavinia, will be the  \nblood of Rutulians and Trojans, and your matron-of-honour  \nwill be the Goddess of War herself, Bellona. Hecuba, daughter  \n320 of Cisseus, was pregnant with a torch and gave birth to the  \nmarriage torches of Paris and Helen. But she is not alone. Venus,  \ntoo, has a son, a second Paris, and torches will again be fatal,  \nfor this second Troy.'\n\nWith these words the fearsome goddess flew down to the  \nearth and roused Allecto, bringer of grief, from the infernal  \ndarkness of her home among the Furies. Dear to her heart were  \nthe horrors of war, anger, treachery and vicious accusations.  \nHer own father Pluto hated his monstrous daughter. Her own  \nsisters in Tartarus loathed her. She had so many faces and such  \nfearsome shapes, and her head crawled with so many black  \n330 serpents. This was the creature Juno now roused to action with  \nthese words: 'Do this service for me, O virgin daughter of Night.  \nIt is a task after your own heart. See to it that my fame and the  \nhonour in which I am held are not impaired or slighted, and see  \nto it that Aeneas and his men do not win Latinus over with their  \noffers of marriage and are not allowed to settle on Italian soil.  \nYou can take brothers who love each other and set them at each  \nother's throats. You can turn a house against itself in hatred and  \nfill it with whips and funeral torches. You have a thousand  \nnames and a thousand ways of causing hurt. Your heart is  \nteeming with them. Shake them all out. Shatter this peace they  \nhave agreed between them and sow the seeds of recrimination  \n340 and war. Make their young men long for weapons, demand  \nthem, seize them!'\n\nIn that moment Allecto, gorged with the poisons of the Gorgons,  \nwent straight to Latium and the lofty palace of the king  \nof the Laurentines and settled on the quiet threshold of the  \nchamber of Amata. There the queen was seething with womanly  \nanger and disappointment at the arrival of the Trojans and the  \nloss of the wedding with Turnus. Taking one of the snakes from  \nher dark hair, the goddess Allecto threw it on Amata's breast to  \nenter deep into her heart, a horror driving her to frenzy and  \n350 bringing down her whole house in ruin. It glided between her  \ndress and her smooth breasts and she felt no touch of its coils.  \nWithout her knowing it, it breathed its viper's breath into her  \nand made her mad. The serpent became a great necklace of  \ntwisted gold round her neck. It became the trailing end of a long  \nribbon twined round her hair. It slithered all over her body.  \nWhile the first infection of the liquid venom was still oozing  \nthrough all her senses and winding the fire about her bones,  \nbefore her mind in her breast had wholly consumed the fever of  \nit, she spoke with some gentleness, as a mother might, and wept  \nbitterly over the marriage of her daughter to a Phrygian: 'Is  \n360 Lavinia being given in marriage to these Trojan exiles? You are  \nher father. Have you no feelings for your daughter or her mother  \nor yourself? When the first wind blows from the north, that  \nlying brigand will take to the high seas and carry off my daughter,  \nleaving me desolate. Is this not how the Phrygian shepherd  \nwormed his way into Sparta and carried Leda's daughter Helen  \noff to the cities of Troy? Where is your sacred word of honour?  \nWhere is the care you used to have for your kinsmen? And what  \nof all the pledges you have given Turnus, your own flesh and  \nblood? But if you are searching for a son-in-law among strangers  \nand that is decided, if the commands of your father Faunus  \n370 weigh so heavily upon you, then I maintain that all peoples who  \nare not subject to our sceptre are strangers. That is what the  \ngods are saying. Besides, if you were to trace the house of Turnus  \nback to its first beginnings, his forefathers were Inachus and  \nAcrisius of Argos and his home is in the heart of Mycenae.'\n\nWhen with these words she had tried in vain to move Latinus  \nand seen that he held firm, when the maddening poison of the  \nserpent had soaked deep into her flesh and oozed all through  \nher body, the unhappy Amata, driven out of her mind by her  \nmonstrous affliction, raged in a wild frenzy through the length  \nand breadth of the city like a spinning top flying under the  \n380 plaited whip when boys are engrossed in their play and make it  \ngo in great circles round an empty hall; the whip drives it on its  \ncurved course and the boys look down, puzzled and fascinated  \nas they lash the spinning boxwood into life \u2013 as swift as any top  \nAmata ran through the middle of the cities of the fierce Latian  \npeople. Not content with this, she flew into the forests, pretending  \nthat she was possessed by Bacchus, and rose to greater  \nimpieties and greater madness by hiding her daughter in the  \nleafy woods, hoping to cheat the Trojans out of the marriage or  \n390 delay the lighting of the torches. 'Euhoe, Bacchus!' she screamed.  \n'Only you are worthy of the virgin. For you she takes up the  \nsoft-leaved thyrsus. Round you she moves in ritual dance. She  \ngrows her hair to consecrate it to you.' Rumour flew fast. The  \nsame passion kindled in the hearts of all the mothers of Latium  \nand drove them out to search for new homes. They left their  \nhouses, their throats bare and their hair streaming in the winds.  \nOthers, clad in animal skins and carrying vine shoots sharpened  \ninto spears, made the heavens ring with whimpering and wailing.  \nAmata herself, in the fever of her madness, held high a  \nburning torch in the midst of them and sang a wedding hymn  \nfor Turnus and her daughter, rolling her bloodshot eyes. Suddenly  \n400 she gave a dreadful cry: 'Io, Io, all you mothers of Latins  \nwherever you may be, if in your faithful hearts there remains  \nany regard for unhappy Amata, if your minds are troubled by  \nthe thought of what is due to a mother, untie the ribbons of  \nyour hair and take to the secret rites with me.' This, then, was  \nthe queen whom Allecto drove with the lash of Bacchus through  \nthe forests and the desolate haunts of wild beasts.\n\nAfter she saw that this first madness was well under way, and  \nthat she had subverted Latinus' plans and all his house, the  \ndeadly goddess rose on her dark wings and flew straight to the  \nwalls of the bold prince of the Rutulians. Danae is said to  \nhave been driven on to this coast by southern gales and to have  \n410 founded this city for settlers who were subjects of her father  \nAcrisius, king of Argos. Our ancestors long ago gave it the name  \nof Ardea, and Ardea still keeps its great name though its fortune  \nlies in the past. Here in his lofty palace in the darkness of  \nmidnight Turnus was lying deep in sleep. Allecto changed her  \nappearance. No longer wild and raving, she took on the face of  \nan old woman, with her brow furrowed by horrible wrinkles  \nand her white hair tied in a sacred ribbon and bound in a chaplet  \nof olive leaves. She became Calybe, the aged priestess of Juno  \n420 and her temple, and appeared before the eyes of young Turnus  \nsaying: 'Are you going to stand by and see all your labours go  \nfor nothing, Turnus, and your crown made over to these  \nincomers from Troy? The king is refusing to give you the marriage  \nand the dowry you have earned in blood and is searching  \nfor a stranger to inherit his kingdom. So now, Turnus, go and  \nexpose yourself to danger! Your reward is to be laughed at. Go  \nand cut down these Etruscans in their battle lines! Go and cover  \nthe Latins with the shield of peace. These are the very words  \nwhich the daughter of Saturn, All-powerful Juno, has commanded  \nme to say and say clearly to you as you lie in the peace  \n430 of night. So up with you, and with a light heart prepare to arm  \nyour young warriors and move them from inside the city gates  \nand out to the fields to burn the Phrygian captains and their  \npainted ships where they have made themselves at home on our  \nlovely river. The mighty power of heaven demands it. If king  \nLatinus does not agree to obey this command and allow you  \nthis marriage, he must learn, he must in the end face Turnus  \nwith his armour on.'\n\nTurnus was laughing as he made his reply to the priestess:  \n'You are wrong. The report has not failed to reach my ears. I  \nknow a fleet has sailed into the waters of the Thybris. Do not  \ninvent these fears for me. Royal Juno has not entirely forgotten  \n440 us. It is old age and decay that cause you all this futile agitation  \nand distress and make you barren of truth, taking a prophetess  \namong warring kings and making a fool of her with false fears.  \nYour duty is to guard the statues of the gods and their temples.  \nLeave peace and war to men. War is the business of men.'\n\nWhen she heard the warrior's words Allecto burst into blazing  \nanger, and while he was still replying, a sudden trembling came  \nover his limbs and the eyes stared in his head as the Fury revealed  \nherself in her full size and set all her hydras hissing. As he  \n450 faltered and tried to go on speaking, she flung him back with  \nher eyes flashing fire, two snakes stood up on her head and she  \ncracked her whips as she spoke again from her now maddened  \nlips: 'So I am old and decayed and barren of truth and old age  \nis taking me among warring kings and making a fool of me with  \nfalse fears! Have a look at these! I come here from the home of  \nthe dread Furies, my sisters, and in my hands I carry war and  \ndeath.'\n\nWith these words she threw a burning torch at the warrior  \nand it lodged deep in his heart, smoking with black light. A  \ngreat terror burst in upon his sleep, and the sweat broke out all  \n460 over his body and soaked him to the bone. In a frenzy of rage  \nhe roared for his armour. 'My armour!' he shouted, ransacking  \nhis bed and the whole palace for it. The lust for battle raged  \nwithin him, the criminal madness of war and, above all, anger.  \nIt was as though a heap of brushwood were crackling and  \nburning under the sides of a bronze vessel, making the water  \nseethe and leap up, a great river of it raging in the pot, with  \nboiling foam spilling over and dense steam flying into the air.  \nThe peace was violated. Turnus gave orders to the leaders of his  \narmy to march to king Latinus, to prepare for war, to defend  \nItaly and thrust the enemy out of its borders. When he arrived,  \n470 that would be enough for the Trojans, and enough for the  \nLatins. These were his words and he called upon the gods to  \nwitness them. The eager Rutulians urged each other to arms,  \nsome of them inspired by the rare grace of his youthful beauty,  \nsome by the long line of kings that were his ancestors, some by  \nhis brilliant feats of arms.\n\nWhile Turnus was filling the hearts of the Rutulians with  \nboldness, Allecto flew off with all speed to the Trojans on her  \nwings of Stygian black. Here, spying out the ground where  \nlovely Iulus was hunting along the shore, trapping and coursing,  \nshe hatched a new plot. Into his hounds the virgin goddess of  \n480 Cocytus put a sudden fit of madness by touching their nostrils  \nwith the familiar scent of a stag and sending them after it in full  \ncry. This was the first cause of all the suffering. It was this that  \nkindled the zeal for war in the hearts of the country people. It  \nwas a huge and beautiful stag with a fine head of antlers, which  \nhad been torn from the udders of its mother and fed by Tyrrhus  \nand his young sons \u2013 Tyrrhus looked after the royal herds and  \nwas entrusted with the wardenship of the whole broad plain.  \nSilvia, the boys' sister, had given this wild creature every care  \nand trained it to obey her. She would weave soft garlands for  \n490 its horns, combing and washing it in clear running water. It  \nbecame tame to the hand and used to come to its master's table.  \nIt would wander through the woods and come back home of its  \nown accord to the door it knew so well, no matter how late the  \nnight. This is the creature that was roaming far from home,  \nfloating down a river, cooling itself in the green shade of the  \nbank when it was startled by the maddened dogs of the young  \nhuntsman Iulus. He himself, Ascanius, burning with a passionate  \nlove of glory, bent his bow and aimed the arrow. The god  \nwas with him and kept his hand from erring. The arrow flew  \nwith a great hiss and passed straight through the flank into the  \n500 belly. Fleeing to the home it knew so well, the wounded stag  \ncame into its pen moaning, and stood there bleeding and filling  \nthe house with its cries of anguish, as though begging and  \npleading. Silvia was the first to call for help. She beat her own  \narms in grief and summoned the country people, who came long  \nbefore she expected them, for savage Allecto was lurking in the  \nsilent woods. Some came armed with stakes burned to a point  \nin the fire; some with clubs made from knotted tree trunks; each  \nman searched for what he could find and anger taught him how  \nto make a weapon of it. Tyrrhus was calling up the troops. He  \n510 had been driving in wedges to split an oak into four and he  \nsnatched up his axe, breathing furiously.\n\nThe cruel goddess saw from her vantage point that this was a  \nmoment when harm might be done and, flying to the top of the  \nfarm roof, from the highest gable she sounded the herdsman's  \nsignal with a loud call on the curved horn, and its voice was the  \nvoice of Tartarus. The trees shivered at the noise and the whole  \nforest rang to its very depths. Far away the lake of Trivia heard  \nit. The white sulphur-laden streams of the river Nar heard it  \nand its springs in Lake Velinus, and terrified mothers pressed  \n520 their babies to their breasts. Swift to answer the call of that  \ndread horn, the hardy countrymen snatched up their weapons  \nand gathered from every side. The Trojans, for their part, opened  \nthe gates of their camp and streamed out to help Ascanius. They  \ndrew up in line of battle, and this was no longer a village brawl  \nwith knotted clubs and stakes sharpened in the fire. They fought  \nwith two-edged steel, and a dark crop of drawn swords sprouted  \nall over the field while bronze gleamed in answer to the challenge  \nof the sun and threw its light up to the clouds, like the sea  \nwhitening at the first breath of wind and slowly stirring itself,  \n530 raising its waves higher and higher till it reaches from the depths  \nof the sea-bed to the heights of heaven. Suddenly there was the  \nhiss of an arrow and a young man standing out in front of the  \nleading line of battle fell to the ground. It was Almo, the eldest  \nson of Tyrrhus. The shaft had stuck deep in his throat, blocking  \nthe moist passage of the voice and closing off the narrow channel  \nof his life in blood. The bodies of slain men soon lay around  \nhim, among them old Galaesus, who died when he stepped  \nbetween the armies to make peace. He was the justest man in  \nthe broad fields of Ausonia in these far days, and the richest.  \nFive flocks of sheep and five herds of cattle came back at evening  \nto his stalls and he turned the soil with a hundred ploughs.\n\n540 While the battle was evenly poised on the plain, the mighty  \ngoddess, having fulfilled her promise when the first blood was  \nspilt in war and the first clash of arms had led to death, left  \nHesperia and returned through the breezes of the sky to address  \nJuno in these words of proud triumph: 'You asked and I have  \ngiven. Discord is made perfect in the horror of war. Now tell  \nthem to come together and form alliances when I have sprinkled  \nthe Trojans with Italian blood! And I shall do more than this, if  \nsuch be still your will for me. I shall spread rumours to draw  \n550 the neighbouring cities into the war. I shall set their hearts ablaze  \nwith a mad lust for battle and they will come from all sides to  \njoin in the fray. I shall sow a crop of weapons in all their fields.'  \nJuno gave her answer: 'There is enough terror and lying. The  \ncauses of war are established. They are fighting at close quarters  \nand fresh blood is staining whatever weapons chance first puts  \ninto their hands. Let this be the wedding they will celebrate, the  \nnoble son of Venus and great king Latinus. Let this be their  \nwedding hymn. The Father of the Gods, the ruler of high  \nOlympus, would not wish you to rove too freely over the breezes  \nof heaven. You must withdraw. Should there be any need for  \n560 further effort, I shall take the guidance into my own hands.' No  \nsooner had the daughter of Saturn spoken these words than  \nAllecto lifted up her wings, hissing with snakes, and flew down  \nto her home on the banks of the Cocytus, leaving the steeps of  \nthe sky. At the foot of high mountains in the middle of Italy,  \nthere is a well-known place, whose fame has spread to many  \nlands, the valley of Amsanctus. A dark forest presses in upon it  \nfrom both sides with its dense foliage and in the middle a  \ncrashing torrent roars over the rocks, whipping up crests of  \nfoam. Here they point to a fearful cave which is a vent for the  \nbreath of Dis, the cruel god of the underworld. Into this cave  \n570 bursts Acheron and here a vast whirlpool opens its pestilential  \njaws, and here the loathsome Fury disappeared, lightening  \nheaven and earth by her absence.\n\nBut none the less the Queen of the Gods, the daughter of  \nSaturn, was at that moment putting the finishing touches to  \nthe war. A whole crowd of herdsmen came rushing from the  \nbattlefield into the city, carrying the bodies of young Almo and  \nGalaesus with his face mutilated. They were all imploring the  \nhelp of the gods and appealing to Latinus. Turnus was there,  \nand when the fire of their fury and the accusations of murder  \nwere at their height, he heaped fear upon fear by claiming that  \nthe Trojans were being invited to take a share in the kingdom;  \ntheir own Latin blood would be adulterated by Phrygians while  \nhe was being turned from the door. At this there gathered from  \nall sides, wearying Mars with their clamour for war, those whose  \n580 mothers had been crazed by Bacchus and were now dancing in  \nwild rout in the pathless forests \u2013 the name of Amata had great  \nweight with them. In an instant they were all demanding this  \nwicked war against all the omens, against divine destiny and  \ncontrary to the will of the gods. They rushed to besiege the  \npalace of king Latinus, who stood unmoved like a rock in the  \nocean, like a solid rock in the ocean pounded by breakers,  \nstanding fast with the waves howling round it, while reefs and  \n590 foam-soaked scars roar in helpless anger and the seaweed is  \nforced against its side, then streams back with the undertow.  \nBut there was no resisting the counsels of blind folly. All things  \nwere taking their course according to the nod of savage Juno.  \nAgain and again the king, the father of his people, called upon  \nthe gods and the empty winds to witness: 'We are caught in the  \ngale of Fate,' he cried. 'Our ship is breaking under us. You, my  \npoor people, will pay for this sacrilege with your blood. You  \nare the guilty one, Turnus, and a grim punishment lies in store  \nfor you. You will supplicate the gods but your prayers will be  \ntoo late. I have already reached calm water and here at the  \nharbour mouth I lose all the happiness I might have had in the  \nhour of my death.' He said no more, but shut himself away in  \n600 his palace and gave up the reins of power.\n\nIn Hesperia, in the lands of Latium, there was a custom, later  \ninherited and revered in the cities of Alba, and now observed by  \nRome, the greatest of the great, when men first rouse Mars for  \nbattle, whether they are preparing to bring the sorrows of war  \nto the Getae, the Hyrcani or the Arabs, or whether they are  \nheading for India and the rising of the sun and reclaiming the  \nstandards from the Parthians. There are two gates known as the  \nGates of War, sanctified by religion and the fear of savage Mars.  \nThese gates are closed by a hundred bolts of bronze and the  \n610 everlasting strength of iron, nor does their sentry Janus ever  \nleave the threshold. When the Fathers are resolved on war, the  \nconsul himself, conspicuous in the short toga of Quirinus girt  \nabout him in the Gabine manner, unbars the doors. They grind  \nin their sockets and he summons war. The whole army takes up  \nthe call and the bronze horns breathe their shrill assent. So too  \nin those days Latinus was bidden to declare war upon the men  \nof Aeneas by opening these grim gates. The old king, father of  \nhis people, would not lay his hand upon them, but recoiled from  \nthis wickedness and refused to perform the task, shutting himself  \n620 up in the darkness away from the sight of men. At this, the  \nQueen of the Gods came down from the sky and struck the  \nstubborn doors, bursting the iron-bound Gates of War and  \nturning them in their sockets. Till that moment Ausonia had  \nbeen at peace and unalarmed, but now the foot-soldiers  \nmustered on the plain and high in the saddle came the excited  \nhorsemen stirring up the dust. Every man was looking for  \nweapons, polishing shields with rich fat till they were smooth,  \nburnishing spears till they shone and grinding axes on the whetstone.  \nWhat joy to raise the standards and hear the trumpets  \n630 sound! Five great cities, no less, set up anvils to forge new  \nweapons, mighty Atina, proud Tibur, Ardea, Crustumerium  \nand Antemnae with its towers. They hollowed out helmets to  \nprotect the heads of warriors. They wove frames of willow  \nshoots to form shields. They made bronze breastplates and  \nsmooth shields of ductile silver. This is what had become of all  \ntheir regard for the sickle and the share. This is what had become  \nof all their love for the plough \u2013 the swords of their fathers were  \nnow retempered in the furnace. Now the trumpets blew and out  \nwent the signal that called them to war. In high excitement they  \ntore down their helmets from the roof, yoked their trembling  \n640 horses to the chariot, buckled on their shields and their breastplates  \nof triple-woven gold and girt their trusty swords about  \nthem.\n\nNow goddesses, it is time to open up Mount Helicon, to set  \nyour songs in motion and tell what kings were roused to war,  \nwhat armies followed each of them to fill the plains, the heroes  \nthat flowered and the weapons that blazed in those far-off days  \nin the bountiful land of Italy. You are the divine Muses. You  \nremember, goddesses, and can utter what you remember. Our  \nears can barely catch the faintest whisper of the story.\n\nThe first to enter upon the war and arm his columns was cruel  \nMezentius from Etruria, scorner of the gods. At his side was his  \n650 son Lausus, who for his beauty was second to none but the  \nLaurentine Turnus. Lausus was a tamer of horses and a hunter  \nof wild beasts, and he was at the head of a thousand men who  \nhad followed him and followed him in vain from the city of  \nAgylla. He deserved a father whom it would have been more  \nof a joy to obey, a father other than Mezentius.\n\nBehind them, driving over the grassland and displaying his  \nvictorious horses and his chariot which proudly bore the palm  \nof victory, came Aventinus, son of Hercules, fair son of a fair  \nfather, and on his shield he carried his father's blazon, the Hydra  \nand its snakes, the hundred snakes encircling it. His mother, the  \n660 priestess Rhea, had given birth to him in secret, bringing him  \ninto the land of light in the wood on the Aventine hill. She had  \nlain with Hercules, a woman with a god, when he had come in  \ntriumph to the land of the Laurentines, the hero of Tiryns who  \nhad slain Geryon and washed the cattle of Spain in the river of  \nthe Etruscans. His men carried javelins and fearsome pikes  \ninto battle and used the Sabine throwing spear with its round  \ntapering point. He himself was on foot, swinging a great lion  \nskin about him as he walked. It was matted and bristling, and  \nhe had put it with its white teeth over his head and a fearsome  \nsight he was as he came up to the palace with his father's garb  \ntied round his shoulders.\n\n670 Next came two bold Argive warriors, the twin brothers Catillus  \nand fierce Coras, leaving the walls of Tibur, which took its  \nname from their brother Tiburtus. They would charge out in  \nfront of the first line of battle through showers of missiles, like  \ntwo cloud-born Centaurs plunging down in wild career from the  \nsnow-clad tops of Mount Homole or Mount Othrys, crashing  \nthrough the trees as the great forest opens to let them pass.\n\nThe founder of the city of Praeneste was also there, a king  \nwho ruled among the herds and flocks of the countryside. Men  \n680 have always believed that he was the son of Vulcan, Caeculus,  \nfound as a baby on the burning hearth. His rustic legion came  \nfrom far and wide to follow him: from Praeneste on its hilltop;  \nfrom the fields round Juno's city of Gabii, from the icy waters  \nof the Anio and the streaming river rocks of the Hernici; men  \nnurtured by the rich city of Anagnia and by your river, Father  \nAmasenus. Not all of these came into battle with shields and  \narms and chariots sounding: most of them showered acorns of  \nblue lead from slings; some carried a pair of hunting spears in  \none hand and wore on their heads tawny caps made from the  \n690 hides of wolves, their left foot leaving a naked print while a  \nrawhide boot protected the right.\n\nNow Messapus, breaker of horses, son of Neptune, whom  \nneither fire nor steel might lay low, suddenly took up his sword  \nagain and called to arms tribes that had long lived at ease and  \narmies that had lost the habit of war. These were the men who  \ncame from the ridges of Fescennium, from Aequum Faliscum,  \nfrom the citadel of Soracte and the Flavinian fields, from the  \nlake of Ciminius and its mountain and the groves of Capena.  \nThey marched in regular formations singing the praises of their  \n700 king like white swans flying back from their feeding grounds  \nthrough wisps of cloud and pouring out the measured music  \nfrom their long necks while far and wide the echo of their singing  \nbeats back from the river and the Asian marsh. This great  \nmingled swarm of men seemed not like a bronze-clad army, but  \nan aery cloud of clamorous birds on the wing, straining in from  \nthe high seas to the shore.\n\nThere comes Clausus of the blood of the ancient Sabines,  \nleading a great army, and a great army in himself. From Clausus  \nare descended the tribe and family of the Claudii, spread all  \nover Latium ever since the Sabines were given a share in Rome.  \n710 With him came a large contingent from Amiternum and the first  \nQuirites, all the troops from Eretum and from olive-bearing  \nMutusca, all who lived in the city of Nomentum and the Rosean  \nplains round Lake Velinus, on the bristling rocks of Tetrica and  \nits gloomy mountain, in Casperia and Foruli and on the banks  \nof the Himella, men who drank the Tiber and the Fabaris, men  \nsent by chilly Nursia, levies from Orta, tribes from old Latium  \nand the peoples whose lands are cut by the Allia, that river of  \nill-omened name. They were as many as the waves that roll in  \nfrom the Libyan ocean when fierce Orion is sinking into the  \n720 winter sea, or as thick as the ears of corn scorched by the  \nearly sun on the plain of Hermus or the golden fields of Lycia.  \nTheir shields clanged and the earth quaked under the beat of  \ntheir feet.\n\nHalaesus next, one of Agamemnon's men and an enemy of  \nall things Trojan, yoked his horses to his chariot and rushed a  \nthousand fierce tribes to join Turnus: men whose mattocks turn  \nthe rich Massic soil for Bacchus; Auruncans sent by their fathers  \nfrom their high hills; men sent from the nearby plains of Sidicinum;  \nmen who come from Cales and the banks of the Volturnus,  \nriver of many fords, and with them the tough Saticulan and  \n730 bands of Oscans. Their weapon was the aclys, a light spear, and  \nit was their practice to attach a supple thong to it. A leather  \nshield protected their left side and for close fighting they used  \nswords shaped like sickles.\n\nNor will you, Oebalus, go unmentioned in our song. Men say  \nyou were the son of Telon by the nymph of the river Sebethus,  \nborn when Telon was already an old man and ruling over  \nCapreae, the island of the Teleboae. But the son no more than  \nthe father had been content with the lands he had inherited and  \nby now he had long held sway over the tribes of the Sarrastes,  \nthe plains washed by the river Sarnus, men who lived in Rufrae,  \n740 Batulum and the fields of Celemna and those on whom the walls  \nof apple-bearing Abella look down. Their missile was the catei  \na, a weapon thrown like the Teuton boomerang. Their heads were  \nprotected by helmets of bark stripped from the cork oak. They  \ncarried gleaming half-moon shields of plated bronze and their  \nswords too were of gleaming bronze.\n\nYou too, Ufens, famous for your feats of arms, were sent into  \nbattle from the mountains of Nersae. These Aequi live in a hard  \nland and are the most rugged of races, schooled in hunting the  \nforests. They work the soil with their armour on. Their delight  \nis always to bring home fresh plunder and live off what they  \ntake.\n\n750 Then came a priest from Marruvium, his helmet decorated  \nby a sprig of fruitful olive, the bravest of men, Umbro by name,  \nsent by king Archippus. By his spells and the touch of his hand  \nhe knew well how to sow the seed of sleep on nests of vipers  \nand on water-snakes, for all their deadly breath. His arts could  \ncharm their anger and soothe their bites, but he had no antidote  \nfor the sting of a Trojan sword and not all his lullabies and  \nherbs gathered in the Marsian hills could help him with his  \nwounds. For you wept the grove of the goddess Angitia. For  \n760 you wept the glassy waves and clear pools of Lake Fucinus.\n\nThere too, sent by his mother Aricia, glorious Virbius came  \nto the war, the lovely son of Hippolytus. He had grown to  \nmanhood in the grove of Egeria around the dank lake-shores by  \nthe altar where rich sacrifices win the favour of Diana. For after  \nHippolytus had been brought to his death by the wiles of his  \nstepmother Phaedra, torn to pieces by bolting horses and paying  \nwith his blood the penalty imposed by his father, men say he  \ncame back under the stars of the sky and the winds of heaven,  \n770 restored by healing herbs and the love of Diana. Then the  \nAll-powerful Father was enraged that any mortal should rise  \nfrom the shades below into the light of life and with his own  \nhand he took the inventor of those healing arts, Asclepius, son  \nof Apollo, and hurled him with his thunderbolt down into the  \nwave of the river Styx. But Diana Trivia, in her loving care,  \nfound a secret refuge for Hippolytus and consigned him to the  \nnymph Egeria and her grove, where, alone and unknown, his  \nname changed to Virbius, he might live out his days. Thus it is  \nthat horn-hooved horses are not admitted to the sacred grove  \n780 of the temple of Trivia because in their terror at the monsters of  \nthe deep the horses of Hippolytus had overturned his chariot  \nand thrown him on the shore. But none the less his son was  \ndriving fiery horses across the level plain as he rushed to the  \nwars in a chariot.\n\nThere, looking around him and moving among the leaders,  \nwas Turnus himself, in full armour, the fairest of them all, and  \ntaller by a head than all the others. On the towering top of his  \ntriple-plumed helmet there stood a Chimaera breathing from its  \nthroat a fire like Etna's, and the fiercer and bloodier the battle,  \nthe more savagely she roared and belched the deadly flames.  \nThe blazon on his polished shield showed a mighty theme, a  \n790 golden figure of Io, raising her horned head, with rough hair on  \nher hide, already changed into a heifer. And there was Argus,  \nguarding her, and her father Inachus pouring his river from an  \nurn embossed on the shield. Behind Turnus came a cloud of  \nfoot-soldiers and the whole plain was crowded with columns of  \nmen bearing shields, the youth of Argos, bands of Auruncans,  \nRutulians, Sicani, that ancient race, Sacrani in battle order and  \nLabici with their painted shields; men who ploughed the Tiber  \nvalley and the sacred banks of the Numicus; men whose ploughshare  \nworked the Rutulian hills and the ridge of Circeii; men  \n800 from the fields ruled by Jupiter of Anxur and the goddess Feronia  \ndelighting in her greenwood grove, and men from the black  \nswamps of Satura where the icy river Ufens threads his way  \nalong his valley bottom to lose himself in ocean.\n\nLast of all came Camilla, the warrior maiden of the Volsci,  \nleading a cavalry squadron flowering in bronze. Not for her  \ngirlish hands the distaff and wool-basket of Minerva. She was a  \nmaid inured to battle, of a fleetness of foot to race the winds.  \nShe could have skimmed the tops of a standing crop without  \ntouching them and her passage would not have bruised the  \n810 delicate ears of grain. She could have run over the ocean, hovered  \nover the swell and never wet her foot in the waves. Young men  \nstreamed from house and field and mothers came thronging to  \ngaze at her as she went, lost in wonderment at the royal splendour  \nof the purple veiling the smoothness of her shoulders, her  \nhair weaving round its gold clasp, her Lycian quiver and the  \nshepherd's staff of myrtle wood with the head of a lance.\n\n## BOOK 8  \nAENEAS IN ROME\n\nWhen Turnus raised the flag of war above the Laurentine citadel  \nand the shrill horns blared, when he whipped up his eager horses  \nand clashed his sword on his shield, there was instant confusion.  \nIn that moment the whole of Latium rose in a frenzy to take the  \noath and young warriors were baying for blood. Their great  \nleaders Messapus and Ufens and the scorner of the gods Mezentius  \nwere levying men everywhere, stripping the fields of those  \nwho tilled them. They also sent Venulus to the city of great  \n10 Diomede to ask for help and to let him know that Trojans were  \nsettling in Italy, that Aeneas had arrived with a fleet bringing  \nthe defeated household gods of Troy, claiming that he was being  \ncalled by the Fates to be king; the tribes were flocking to join  \nthis Trojan, this descendant of Dardanus, and his name was on  \nthe lips of men all over Latium; what all this was leading up to,  \nwhat Aeneas hoped to gain from the fighting if Fortune smiled  \nupon him, Diomede himself would know better than king  \nTurnus or than king Latinus.\n\nThis is what was happening in Latium. The Trojan hero,  \ndescendant of Laomedon, saw it all and great tides of grief  \n20 flowed in his heart. His thoughts moved swiftly, now here, now  \nthere, darting in every possible direction and turning to every  \npossible event, like light flickering from water in bronze vessels  \nas it is reflected from the sun or its image the moon, now flying  \nfar and wide in all directions, now rising to strike the high  \ncoffers of a ceiling.\n\nIt was night, and over the whole earth the weary animals, all  \nmanner of birds and all manner of flocks, were already deep in  \nsleep before Father Aeneas, on the bank of the river, under the  \n30 cold vault of the sky, heart sick at the sadness of war, lay down  \nat last and gave rest to his body. There on that lovely river he  \nsaw in his sleep the god of the place, old Tiber himself, rising  \namong the leaves of the poplars. He was veiled in a blue-green  \ncloak of fine-spun flax and dark reeds shaded his hair. He then  \nspoke to Aeneas and lightened his sadness with these words: 'O  \nyou who are born of the race of the gods, who are bringing back  \nto us the city of Troy saved from its enemies, who are preserving  \nits citadel Pergamum for all time, long have we waited for you  \nin the land of the Laurentines and the fields of Latium. This is  \nthe home that is decreed for you. This is the home decreed for  \n40 the gods of your household. Do not give it up. Do not be  \nintimidated by the threat of war. All the angry passions of the  \ngods are now spent. But come now, so that you may not think  \nwhat you are seeing is an empty dream, I tell you that you will  \nfind a great sow with a litter of thirty piglets lying beneath ilex  \ntrees on a shore. There she will lie all white on the ground and  \nthe young around her udders will be white. This will be a sign  \nthat after three times ten years revolve, Ascanius will found the  \ncity of Alba, white in name and bright in glory. What I prophesy  \n50 will surely come to pass. Attend now and I shall teach you in  \nfew words how you may triumphantly resolve the difficulties  \nthat lie before you.\n\n'The Arcadians are a race descended from Pallas. They came  \nto these shores following the standards of their king Evander,  \nchose a site here and established in these hills a city called  \nPallanteum after their founder Pallas. This people wages continual  \nwar with the Latin race. Welcome them into your camp as  \nyour allies. Make a treaty with them. I will take you to them  \nstraight up my river between these banks and you will be able  \nto row upstream into the current. Up with you then, son of the  \n60 goddess, for the first stars are beginning to set. Offer due prayers  \nto Juno and overcome her angry threats with vows and supplications.  \nTo me you will give honour and make repayment when  \nyou are victorious. I am that full river whom you see scouring  \nthese banks and cutting through the rich farmland. I am the  \nriver Thybris, blue as the sky and favoured of heaven. Here is  \nmy great home. My head waters rise among lofty cities.'\n\nSo spoke the river-god and plunged to the bottom of a deep  \npool. The night was over and so was Aeneas' sleep. As he rose  \nhe looked up to the light of the sun rising in the sky, took up  \n70 water from the river in cupped hands and poured out these  \nwords of prayer to the heavens: 'O you Laurentine nymphs,  \nnymphs who are the mothers of rivers, and you, Father Thybris  \nwith your holy stream, receive Aeneas, and now after all his  \nsuffering keep him safe from peril. In whichever of your pools  \nyou may be, at whichever of your sources, you who pity our  \nmisfortunes, in whatever land you emerge in all your splendour,  \nI will always pay you honour and always make offerings to you,  \nO horne\u00e8d river, king of all the waters of Hesperia, only be with  \nme and by your presence confirm your divine will.' So speaking  \n80 he picked out two biremes from the fleet, manned them with  \nrowers and at the same time put some of his comrades on board  \nin full armour.\n\nNow suddenly before his astonished eyes there appeared a  \nportent. There through the trees he caught sight of a white sow  \nwith offspring of the same colour, lying on the green shore. This  \nsow devout Aeneas offered to you as a sacrifice, even to you, O  \ngreatest Juno, leading her to your altar with all her young. And  \nall that long night the Thybris calmed his flood, reversing his  \ncurrent, and was as still and silent as a peaceful lake or quiet  \nmarsh. There were no ripples on the surface of his waters, and  \n90 no toiling for the oar. Thus they began their journey and made  \ngood speed, raising a cheerful noise as the caulked hulls glided  \nover the water. The waves were amazed and the woods were  \nfull of wonder at the unaccustomed sight of far-glinting shields  \nof warriors and painted prows floating on the river. So did they  \nwear out the night and the day with rowing and mastered all  \nthe long windings of the river, moving under the shade of all  \nmanner of trees and cleaving green woods in smooth water. The  \nfiery sun had climbed to the middle of the vault of heaven when  \nthey saw in the distance walls and a citadel and the roofs of  \n100 scattered houses. What Roman power has now raised to the  \nheights of the sky, in those days was a poor land ruled by  \nEvander. Quickly they turned their prows to the bank and  \nsteered for the city.\n\nIt so happened that on that day the Arcadian king Evander  \nwas performing yearly rites in honour of the mighty Hercules,  \nson of Amphitryon, and was sacrificing to the gods in a grove  \noutside the city. His son Pallas was with him, and with him also  \nwere all the leading warriors and the senators, poor men as they  \nwere. They were offering incense and warm blood was smoking  \non the altars. When they saw the tall ships and saw them gliding  \nthrough the dense grove with men bending to the oars in silence,  \n110 they were seized with sudden fright and rose in a body, abandoning  \nthe sacred tables. Not so Pallas. Boldly he told them not  \nto disturb their holy feast, and seizing a weapon he rushed off  \nto face the strangers by himself. 'What is it, warriors, that has  \ndriven you to try these new paths?' he called out from the top  \nof a mound while he was still at a distance. 'Where are you  \ngoing? What race are you? Where is your home? Is it peace you  \nare bringing us or war?' Then Father Aeneas replied from the  \nhigh poop of his ship, holding out in his hand the olive branch  \nof peace: 'We are of the Trojan race. These weapons you see are  \nfor use against our enemies the Latins. It is they who have driven  \nus here, exiles as we are, with all the insolence of war. We are  \nlooking for Evander. Tell him of this. Say to him that the chosen  \n120 leaders of the race of Dardanus have come to ask him to be their  \nally in battle.' At this great name Pallas was dumbfounded.  \n'Whoever you may be,' he cried, 'leave your ship and come and  \nspeak with my father face to face. Come as a guest into our  \nhouse.' With these words he took Aeneas by the right hand in a  \nlong clasp, and they moved forward into the grove, leaving the  \nriver behind them.\n\nThen Aeneas addressed the king with words of friendship: 'O  \nnoblest of the race of the Greeks, Fortune has willed that I  \nshould come to you as a suppliant with an olive branch draped  \nwith wool. I was not alarmed at the thought that you are a  \n130 leader of Greeks, an Arcadian and joined by blood to the two  \nsons of Atreus, for I am joined to you by my courage and by the  \nholy oracles of the gods, by our fathers who were kinsmen and  \nby your fame which is known throughout the world. All these  \nhave driven me here by the command of the Fates, and I have  \nwillingly obeyed. Dardanus, the first founder and father of the  \ncity of Troy, sailed to our Teucrian land. According to the  \nGreeks he was the son of Electra, and that same Electra was the  \ndaughter of Atlas, the mighty Atlas who carries the circle of  \n140 the heavens on his shoulder. On your side you are the son  \nof Mercury and he was the son of Maia, conceived and born on  \nthe snow-clad top of Mount Cyllene. But the father of Maia, if  \nwe put any trust in what we hear, was Atlas, that same Atlas  \nwho supports the stars of the sky. And so we are of one blood,  \ntwo branches of the same family. Trusting in this, I have not  \nsent emissaries or made trial of you in advance by any form of  \nsubterfuge, but have come in person as a suppliant to your door,  \nand laid my life before you. The same race harries us both in  \nbitter war, the Rutulians of king Daunus, and they are persuaded  \nthat if they were to drive us away, nothing would prevent them  \nfrom putting all the heartlands of Italy under their yoke and  \n150 becoming masters of the Tyrrhenian sea to the south and the  \nAdriatic to the north. Take the right hand of friendship I offer  \nand give me yours. Our hearts are strong in war. Our spirits are  \nhigh. Our fighting men are tried and proved.'\n\nSo spoke Aeneas. All the time he was speaking, Evander had  \nbeen gazing at his face and his eyes and his whole body. He then  \nreplied in these few words: 'Bravest of the Trojans, I welcome  \nyou with great joy, and with great joy I recognize who you are.  \nOh how well do I recall the words of your father, the very voice  \nand features of the great Anchises! For I remember that when  \nPriam, son of Laomedon, was on a visit to his sister Hesione in  \nthe kingdom of Salamis, he came on to visit us in the cold lands  \n160 of Arcadia. In those days the first bloom of youth was still  \ncovering my cheeks, and I was full of admiration for the leaders  \nof Troy. Priam himself, too, I admired, but taller than them all  \nwalked Anchises. With all a young man's ardour, I longed to  \nspeak with him and put my right hand in his, so I approached  \nhim and led him with full heart to the walls of Pheneus. When  \nhe was leaving he gave me a wonderful quiver filled with Lycian  \narrows, a soldier's cloak interwoven with gold thread and a pair  \nof golden bridles which now belong to my son Pallas. So then,  \nthe right hand of friendship for which you ask has already been  \n170 given in solemn pledge, and as soon as tomorrow's sun returns  \nto the earth, I shall send you on your way and you will not be  \ndisappointed with the reinforcements and supplies I shall give  \nyou. Meanwhile, since you are here as friends, come favour  \nthese annual rites of ours which it would be sinful to postpone,  \nby celebrating them with us. It is time you began to feel at home  \nat the tables of your allies.'\n\nThe food and drink had been cleared away, but as soon as he  \nwas finished speaking, he ordered them to be replaced, and the  \nking himself showed the Trojans to seats on the grass, but took  \nAeneas apart to a couch of maple wood and seated him on a  \nrough lion skin for a cushion. Then the priest of the altar and  \n180 some chosen warriors served with great good will the roast flesh  \nof bulls, loaded into baskets the grain which is the gift of Ceres  \nworked by the hand of man, and poured out the juice of Bacchus.  \nAeneas and the warriors of Troy then feasted together on the  \nwhole chine and entrails of the sacrificial ox.\n\nAfter their hunger was relieved and their appetite satisfied,  \nking Evander spoke as follows: 'This annual rite, this set feast  \nand this altar to a great divinity have not been imposed upon us  \nby any vain superstition working in ignorance of our ancient  \ngods. It is because we have been saved from desperate dangers,  \nmy Trojan friend, that we perform this worship and renew it  \nyearly in honour of one who has well deserved it.\n\n190 'First of all, look at this vaulted cavern among the rocks. You  \nsee how this great massive home inside the mountain has been  \ntorn apart and is now abandoned, with boulders lying everywhere  \nin ruins. Here, deep in the vast recesses of the rock, was  \nonce a cave which the rays of the sun never reached. This was  \nthe home of a foul-featured, half-human monster by the name  \nof Cacus. The floor of the cave was always warm with freshly  \nshed blood, and the heads of men were nailed to his proud doors  \nand hung there pale and rotting. The father of this monster was  \nVulcan, and it was his father's black fire he vomited from his  \nmouth as he moved his massive bulk. Long did we pray and in  \n200 the end we too were granted the help and the presence of a god.  \nFor the great avenger was at hand. Exulting in the slaughter  \nof the triple-bodied Geryon and the spoils he had taken, the  \nvictorious Hercules was driving the huge bulls through our land  \nand the herd was grazing the valley and drinking the water of  \nthe river. But Cacus was a robber, and thinking in the savagery  \nof his heart not to leave any crime or treachery undared or  \nunattempted, he stole from pasture four magnificent bulls and  \nas many lovely heifers. So that there would be no hoof prints  \n210 pointing forwards in the direction of the cave, he dragged them  \nin by their tails to reverse the tracks, and was now keeping his  \nplunder hidden deep in the darkness of the rock. There were no  \ntracks leading to the cave for any searcher to see.\n\n'Meanwhile, when his herd had grazed its fill, and the son of  \nAmphitryon was moving them out of pasture and preparing to  \ngo on his way, the cows began to low plaintively at leaving  \nthe place, filling the whole grove with their complaints, and  \nbellowing to the hills they were leaving behind them. Then, deep  \nin the cave, a single cow lowed in reply. Cacus had guarded her  \nwell, but she thwarted his hopes. At this Hercules blazed up in  \n220 anger. The black bile of his fury rose in him, and snatching up  \nhis arms and heavy knotted club, he made off at a run for  \nthe windswept heights of the mountain. Never before had our  \npeople seen Cacus afraid. Never before had there been terror in  \nthese eyes. He turned and fled, running to his cave with the  \nspeed of the wind, fear lending wings to his feet. There he shut  \nhimself up, dropping a huge rock behind him and breaking the  \niron chains on which it had been suspended by his father's art,  \nso that its great mass was jammed against the doorposts and  \nblocked the entrance. There was Hercules in a passion, trying  \n230 every approach, turning his head this way and that and grinding  \nhis teeth. Three times he went round the whole of Mount  \nAventine in his anger. Three times he tried to force the great rock  \ndoorway without success. Three times he sat down exhausted in  \nthe valley.\n\n'Above the ridge on top of the cave, there stood a sharp needle  \nof flint with sheer rocks falling away on either side. It rose to a  \ndizzy height and was a favourite nesting-place of carrion birds.  \nHercules put his weight on the right-hand side of it where it  \nleaned over the ridge towards the river on its left. He rocked it,  \nloosened it, wrenched it free from its deep base and then gave a  \nsudden heave, a heave at which the great heavens thundered,  \n240 the banks of the river leapt apart and the river flowed backwards  \nin alarm. The cave and whole huge palace of Cacus were unroofed  \nand exposed to view and his shadowy caverns were  \nopened to all their depths. It was as though the very depths of the  \nearth were to gape in some cataclysm and unbar the chambers of  \nthe underworld, the pale kingdom loathed by the gods, so that  \nthe vast abyss could be seen from above with the shades of the  \ndead in panic as the light floods in.\n\n'So Cacus was caught in the sudden rush of light and trapped  \nin his cavern in the rock, howling as never before, while Hercules  \n250 bombarded him from above with any missile that came to hand,  \nbelabouring him with branches of trees and rocks the size of  \nmillstones. There was no escape for him now, but he vomited  \nthick smoke from his monstrous throat and rolled clouds of it  \nall round his den to blot it from sight. Deep in his cave he  \nchurned out fumes as black as night and the darkness was shot  \nthrough with fire. Hercules was past all patience. He threw  \nhimself straight down, leaping through the flames where the  \nsmoke spouted thickest and the black cloud boiled in the vast  \ncavern. There, as Cacus vainly belched his fire in the darkness,  \n260 Hercules caught him in a grip and held him, forcing his eyes out  \nof their sockets and squeezing his throat till the blood was dry  \nin it. Then, tearing out the doors and opening up the dark house  \nof Cacus, he brought into the light of heaven the stolen cattle  \nwhose theft Cacus had denied, and dragged the foul corpse out  \nby the feet. No one could have enough of gazing at his terrible  \neyes and face, at the coarse bristles on his beastly chest and the  \nthroat charred by fires now dead.\n\n'Ever since that time we have honoured his name and succeeding  \ngenerations have celebrated this day with rejoicing. This  \n270 altar was set up in its grove by Potitius, the first founder of these  \nrites of Hercules, and by the Pinarii, the guardians of the rites.  \nWe shall always call it the Greatest Altar, and the greatest altar  \nit will always be. Come then warriors, put a crown of leaves  \naround your hair in honour of this great exploit, and hold out  \nyour cups in your right hands. Call upon the god who is a god  \nfor all of us and offer him wine with willing hearts.' No sooner  \nhad he spoken than his head was shaded by a wreath and  \npendant of the green-silver leaves of Hercules' poplar woven  \ninto his hair, and the sacred goblet filled his hand. Soon they  \nwere all pouring their libations on the table and praying to  \nthe gods.\n\n280 Meanwhile the Evening Star was drawing nearer as the day  \nsank in the heavens and there came a procession of priests led by  \nPotitius, wearing their ritual garb of animal skins and carrying  \ntorches. They were starting the feast again with a second course  \nof goodly offerings, and they heaped the altar with loaded  \ndishes. Then the Salii, the priests of Mars, their heads bound  \nwith poplar leaves, came to sing around the altar fires. On one  \nside was a chorus of young warriors, on the other a chorus of  \nold men, hymning the praise of Hercules and his great deeds:  \nhow he seized the two snakes, the first monsters sent against  \nhim by his stepmother, and throttled them, one in each hand;  \n290 how too he tore stone from stone the cities of Troy and Oechalia,  \nfamous in war; how he endured a thousand labours under king  \nEurystheus to fulfil the fate laid upon him by the cruel will of  \nJuno. 'O unconquered Hercules,' they sang, 'you are the slayer  \nof the half-men born of the cloud, the Centaurs Hylaeus and  \nPholus; of the monstrous Cretan bull and the huge lion of Nemea  \nin its rocky lair; the pools of the Styx trembled at your coming,  \nand the watchdog of Orcus cringed where he lay in his cave  \nweltering in blood on heaps of half-eaten bones. But nothing  \nyou have seen has ever made you afraid, not even Typhoeus  \n300 himself, rising up to heaven with his weapons in his hands. Nor  \ndid reason fail you when the hundred heads of the Lernaean  \nHydra hissed around you. Hail, true son of Jupiter, the latest  \nlustre added to the company of the gods, come to us now, to  \nyour own holy rite, and bless us with your favouring presence.'  \nTo end their hymn they sang of the cave of Cacus, and Cacus  \nhimself breathing fire, till the whole grove rang and all the hills  \nre-echoed.\n\nAs soon as the sacred rites were completed, they all returned  \nto the city. The king, weighed down with age, kept Aeneas and  \nhis son Pallas by his side as he walked, and made the way  \n310 seem shorter by all the things he told them. Aeneas was lost in  \nadmiration and his eyes were never still as he looked about him  \nenthralled by the places he saw, asking questions about them  \nand joyfully listening to Evander's explanations of all the relics  \nof the men of old. This is what was said that day by Evander,  \nthe founder of the citadel of Rome: 'These woods used to be the  \nhaunt of native fauns and nymphs and a race of men born from  \nthe hard wood of oak-tree trunks. They had no rules of conduct  \nand no civilization. They did not know how to yoke oxen for  \nploughing, how to gather wealth or husband what they had,  \nbut they lived off the fruit of the tree and the harsh diet of  \n320 huntsmen. In those early days, in flight from the weapons of  \nJupiter, came Saturn from heavenly Olympus, an exile who had  \nlost his kingdom. He brought together this wild and scattered  \nmountain people, gave them laws and resolved that the name of  \nthe land should be changed to Latium, since he had _lain_ hidden  \nwithin its borders. His reign was what men call the Golden Age,  \nsuch was the peace and serenity of the people under his rule.  \nBut gradually a worse age of baser metal took its place and with  \nit came the madness of war and the lust for possessions. Then  \nbands of Ausonians arrived and Sicanian peoples, and the land  \n330 of Saturn lost its name many times. Next there were kings,  \namong them the cruel and monstrous Thybris, after whom we  \nItalians have in later years called the river Thybris, and the old  \nriver Albula has lost its true name. I had been driven from my  \nnative land and was setting course for the most distant oceans  \nwhen Fortune, that no man can resist, and Fate, that no man  \ncan escape, set me here in this place, driven by fearsome words  \nof warning from my mother, the nymph Carmentis, and by the  \nauthority of the god Apollo.'\n\nHe had just finished saying this and moved on a little, when  \nhe pointed out the Altar of Carmentis and the Carmental Gate,  \nas the Romans have called it from earliest times in honour of  \n340 the nymph Carmentis. She had the gift of prophecy and was the  \nfirst to foretell the future greatness of the sons of Aeneas and  \nthe future fame of Pallanteum. From here he pointed out the  \ngreat grove which warlike Romulus set up as a sanctuary \u2013 he  \nwas to call it the Asylum \u2013 and also the Lupercal there under its  \ncool rock, then called by Arcadian tradition they had brought  \nfrom Parrhasia, the cave of Pan Lycaeus, the wolf god. He also  \npointed out the grove of the Argiletum, and, calling upon that  \nconsecrated spot to be his witness, he told the story of the killing  \nof his guest Argus.\n\nFrom here he led the way to the house of Tarpeia and the  \nCapitol, now all gold, but in those distant days bristling with  \n350 rough scrub. Even then a powerful sense of a divine presence in  \nthe place caused great fear among the country people, even then  \nthey went in awe of the wood and the rock. 'This grove,' said  \nEvander, 'this leafy-topped hill, is the home of some god, we  \nknow not which. My Arcadians believe they have often seen  \nJupiter himself shaking the darkening aegis in his right hand to  \ndrive along the storm clouds. And then here are the ruined walls  \nof these two towns. What you are looking at are relics of the  \nmen of old. These are their monuments. One of these citadels  \nwas founded by Father Janus; the other by Saturn. This one  \nused to be called the Janiculum; the other, Saturnia.'\n\n360 Talking in this way they were coming up to Evander's humble  \nhome, and there were cattle everywhere, lowing in the Roman  \nForum and the now luxurious district of the Carinae. When  \nthey arrived at his house, Evander said: 'The victorious Hercules  \nof the line of Alceus stooped to enter this door. This was a  \npalace large enough for him. You are my guest, and you too  \nmust have the courage to despise wealth. You must mould  \nyourself to be worthy of the god. Come into my poor home and  \ndo not judge it too harshly.' With these words he led the mighty  \nAeneas under the roof-tree of his narrow house and set him  \ndown on a bed of leaves covered with the hide of a Libyan bear.  \nNight fell and its dark wings enfolded the earth.\n\n370 But his mother Venus was terrified, and with good reason, by  \nthe threats of the Laurentines and the savagery of the fighting,  \nso she spoke to her husband Vulcan. Coming to him in his  \ngolden bedroom and breathing divine love into her voice, she  \nsaid: 'When the citadel of Troy was being ravaged in war by the  \nkings of Greece, it was owed to Fate and was doomed to fall in  \nthe fires lit by its enemies, but I asked for nothing for those who  \nsuffered. I did not call upon the help of your art to make arms  \n380 for them. Although I owed much to the sons of Priam and had  \noften wept at the sufferings endured by Aeneas, I did not wish,  \nO my dearest husband, that you should exert yourself to no  \npurpose. But now, in obedience to the commands of Jupiter,  \nAeneas is standing on Rutulian soil and so now I come to you  \nas a suppliant. I approach that godhead which I so revere, and  \nas a mother, I ask you to make arms for my son. You yielded to  \nThetis, the daughter of Nereus, you yielded to the wife of  \nTithonus when they came and wept to you. Look at all the  \nnations gathering. Look at the walled cities that have closed  \ntheir gates and are sharpening their swords against me to destroy  \nthose I love.' She had finished speaking and he was hesitating.  \nThe goddess took him gently in her white arms and caressed  \nhim, and caressed him again. Suddenly he caught fire as he  \n390 always did. The old heat he knew so well pierced to the marrow  \nof his bones and coursed through them till they melted, as in a  \nthunderstorm when a fiery-flashing rift bursts the clouds and  \nruns through them in dazzling brightness. His wife knew and  \nwas pleased. She was well aware of her beauty and she knew  \nhow to use it. Father Vulcan, bound to her by eternal love, made  \nthis reply: 'You need not delve so deep for arguments. Where is  \nthat trust, O goddess, which you used to have in me? If your  \ncare for Aeneas was then as it is now, it would have been right  \nfor us even then to arm the Trojans. Neither the All-powerful  \nFather nor the Fates were forbidding Troy to stand and Priam  \n400 to go on living for ten more years. And now if you are preparing  \nfor war and this is what you wish, whatever care I can offer you  \nin the exercise of my skill, whatever can be done by melting iron  \nor electrum, anything that fire and bellows can achieve, you do  \nnot have to pray to me. You need not doubt your power.' At  \nthese words he gave his wife the embraces so much desired, and  \nthen, relaxed upon her breast, he sought and found peace and  \nrepose for all his limbs.\n\nWhen the night had passed the middle of its course, when  \nVulcan's first sleep was over and there was no more rest, just  \n410 when the ashes are first stirred to rouse the slumbering fire by a  \nwoman whose task it is to support life by the humble work of  \nspinning thread on a distaff; taking time from the night for her  \nlabours, she sets her slave women going by lamplight upon their  \nlong day's work, so that she can keep her husband's bed chaste  \nand bring her young sons to manhood \u2013 with no less zeal than  \nsuch a woman and not a moment later did the God of Fire rise  \nfrom his soft bed and go to work at his forge.\n\nBetween Lipari in the Aeolian Islands and the flank of Sicily,  \nan island of smoking rocks rises sheer from the sea. Deep within  \nit is a great vault, and in that vault caves have been scooped out  \nlike those under Etna to serve as forges for the Cyclopes. The  \n420 noise within them is the noise of thunder. Mighty blows can be  \nheard booming on the groaning anvils, the caves are filled with  \nthe sound of hissing as the Chalybes plunge bars of white-hot  \npig-iron into water and all the time the fires are breathing in the  \nfurnaces. This is the home of Vulcan, and Vulcania is the name  \nof the island. Into these depths the God of Fire descended from  \nthe heights of heaven.\n\nThe Cyclopes were forging steel, working naked in that vast  \ncavern, Brontes, Sterope and Pyracmon. In their hands was a  \nthunderbolt which they had roughed out, one of those the Father  \nof the Gods and Men hurls down upon the earth in such numbers  \nfrom every part of the sky. Some of it was already burnished,  \nsome of it unfinished. They had attached three shafts of lashing  \n430 rain to it, three shafts of heavy rainclouds, three of glowing fire  \nand three of the south wind in full flight. They were now adding  \nto the work the terrifying lightning and the sound of thunder,  \nthen Fear and Anger with their pursuing flames. In another  \npart of the cave they were working for Mars, busy with the  \nwing-wheeled chariot in which he stirs up men and cities to war.  \nOthers were hard at work polishing the armour worn by Pallas  \nAthene when roused, the fearsome aegis and its weaving snakes  \nwith their reptilian scales of gold, even the Gorgon rolling her  \neyes in the bodiless head on the breast of the goddess. 'Put all  \nthis away!' he cried. 'Whatever work you have started, you  \n440 Cyclopes of Etna, lay it aside and give your attention here.  \nArmour has to be made for a brave hero. You need strength and  \nquick hands now. Now you need all your arts to guide you. Let  \nnothing stand in your way.' He said no more, but instantly they  \nall bent to the work, dividing it equally between them. The  \nbronze was soon flowing in rivers. The gold ore and iron, the  \ndealer of death, were molten in a great furnace. They were  \nshaping one great shield to be a match for all the weapons of  \nthe Latins, fastening the seven thicknesses of it circle to circle.  \n450 Bellows were taking in air and breathing it out again. Bronze  \nwas being plunged into troughs of water and hissing. The cave  \nboomed with the anvils standing on its floor while the Cyclopes  \nraised their arms with all their strength in time with one another  \nand turned the ore in tongs that did not slip.\n\nWhile Father Vulcan, the god of Lemnos, was pressing on  \nwith this work in the Aeolian Islands, Evander was roused from  \nsleep in his humble hut by the life-sustaining light of day and  \nthe dawn chorus of the birds under his eaves. The old man rose,  \nput on his tunic and bound Etruscan sandals on the soles of his  \nfeet. He then girt on a Tegean sword with its baldric over the  \n460 shoulder and threw on a panther skin to hang down on his left  \nside. Nor did the sentinels from his high threshold fail to precede  \nhim \u2013 his two dogs went with their master \u2013 as the hero walked  \nto the separate quarters of his guest Aeneas, remembering their  \ntalk and remembering the help he had promised to give. Aeneas  \nwas up and about just as early, walking with Achates. Evander  \nhad his son Pallas with him. They met, clasped right hands, and  \nsitting there in the middle of Evander's house, they were at last  \nable to discuss affairs of state.\n\n470 The king spoke first: 'Great leader of the Trojans, while you  \nare alive I shall never accept that Troy and its kingdom are  \ndefeated. Beside your mighty name, the power we have to help  \nyou in this war is as nothing. On one side we are hemmed in by  \nthe Tuscan river, on the other the Rutulians press us hard and  \nwe can hear the clang of their weapons round our walls. But I  \nhave a plan to join vast peoples and the armies of wealthy  \nkingdoms to your cause. A chance that no man could have  \nforeseen is showing us the path to safety. Fate was calling you  \nwhen you came to this place.\n\n'Not far from here is the site of Agylla, founded long ago on  \n480 its ancient rock by the warlike Lydians who once settled there  \non the ridges of the Etruscan mountains. After this city had  \nflourished for many years, Mezentius eventually took it under  \nhis despotic rule as king and held it by the ruthless use of armed  \nforce. I shall not speak of the foul murders and other barbaric  \ncrimes committed by this tyrant. May the gods heap equal  \nsuffering upon his own head and the heads of his descendants!  \nHe even devised a form of torture whereby living men were  \nroped to dead bodies, tying them hand to hand and face  \nto face to die a lingering death oozing with putrefying flesh in this  \ncruel embrace. But at last his subjects reached the end of their  \nendurance and took up arms against him. Roaring and raging  \n490 he was besieged in his palace, his men were butchered and fire  \nwas thrown on his roof. In all this bloodshed he himself escaped  \nand took refuge in the land of the Rutulians under the protection  \nof the armies of his guest-friend, Turnus. At this the whole of  \nEtruria rose in righteous fury and has now come in arms to  \ndemand that Mezentius be given up for punishment. They have  \nthousands of troops and I shall put you at their head. Their  \nships are massed all along the shore, clamouring for the signal  \nfor battle, but they are held in check by this warning from an  \naged prophet: \"O you chosen warriors from Lydian Maeonia,  \n500 flower of the chivalry of an ancient race, it is a just grievance  \nthat drives you to war, and Mezentius deserves the anger that  \nblazes against him, but it is not the will of heaven that such a  \nrace as the Etruscans should ever obey an Italian. You must  \nchoose your leaders from across the seas.\"\n\n'At this the Etruscan army has settled down again on the  \nplain, held back by fear of these divine warnings. Tarchon  \nhimself has sent envoys to me with crown and sceptre, and  \noffers me the royal insignia of Etruria if I agree to come to their  \ncamp and take over the kingdom. But my powers have passed  \nwith the passing of the generations. Age has taken the speed  \nfrom my feet and the warmth from my blood. I am too old for  \n510 command and no longer have the strength for battle. I would  \nbe urging my son to go, but he is of mixed stock through his  \nSabine mother and is therefore part Italian. It is you who are  \nfavoured of the Fates for your years and your descent. You are  \nthe man the gods are asking for. Go then, O bravest leader of  \nall the men of Troy and Italy, and I shall send with you this my  \nson Pallas, our hope and our comfort. Let him be hardened to  \nthe rigours of war under your leadership. Let him daily see your  \nconduct and admire you from his earliest years. Two hundred  \nhorsemen I shall give him, the flower of our fighting men, and  \nPallas will give you two hundred more in his own name.'\n\n520 He had scarcely finished speaking, and Aeneas, son of  \nAnchises, and his faithful Achates were still looking sadly down  \nat the ground, and long would they have pondered in the anguish  \nof their hearts, had Venus not given a sign from the clear sky.  \nThere came from the heavens a sudden flash of lightning and a  \nrumble of thunder and the whole sky seemed to be crashing  \ndown upon them with the blast of an Etruscan trumpet shrilling  \nacross the heavens. They looked up and again and again great  \npeals broke over their heads and in bright sky in a break between  \nthe clouds they saw armour glowing red and heard it thunder  \n530 as it clashed. The others were all astonished but the hero of  \nTroy understood the sound and knew this was the fulfilment of  \nthe promise of his divine mother. At last he spoke: 'There is no  \nneed, my friend, no need to ask what these portents mean. This  \nis heaven asking for me. The goddess who is my mother told me  \nshe would send this sign if war were threatening, and bring  \narmour made by Vulcan down through the air to help me. Alas!  \nWhat slaughter waits upon the unhappy Laurentines! What a  \npunishment Turnus will endure at my hands! How many shields  \nand helmets and bodies of brave men will Father Thybris roll  \n540 down beneath his waves. Now let the Laurentines ask for war!  \nNow let them break their treaties!'\n\nWhen he had said this, he rose from his high throne. First of  \nall he stirred the fires smouldering on the altar of Hercules and  \napproached with joy the humble gods of home and hearth whom  \nhe had worshipped on the day before, and then Evander and  \nthe warriors of Troy made sacrifice together of duly chosen  \nyearling sheep. When this was done Aeneas went back from  \nEvander's house to his ships and his comrades, from whom he  \nchose men of outstanding courage to follow him to war. The  \nrest sailed downstream, floating effortlessly on the current, to  \n550 bring Ascanius news of his father and tell him what had happened.  \nThe Trojans going to Etruria were given horses. The  \nmount picked out for Aeneas was caparisoned in one great  \ntawny lion skin with gleaming gold claws.\n\nSwiftly round the little city flew the rumour that they were  \nriding to the gates of the king of Etruria. Frightened mothers  \nheaped prayer upon prayer, their fear increasing with the  \napproach of danger, and the vision of Mars loomed ever larger  \nbefore them. As they left, Evander took the right hand of his  \n560 son Pallas and clung to it inconsolably: 'If only Jupiter would  \ngive me back the years that are past,' he cried, 'when I laid low  \nthe front rank of the enemy's battle line under the very walls of  \nPraeneste, heaping up their shields and burning them to celebrate  \nmy victory, with this right hand sending down to Tartarus  \ntheir king Erulus, whose mother Feronia had given him three  \nlives at birth \u2013 I shudder to remember it \u2013 three sets of armour  \nto carry into battle, and three times I had to lay him dead on the  \nground, but in those days this one right hand was able to take  \nall his lives and strip him of all those sets of armour...no  \npower on earth would be tearing me from your arms, O my  \nbeloved son, and Mezentius would never have been able to  \n570 trample upon his neighbour, putting so many of my countrymen  \nto the sword and emptying the city of so many of its people. But  \nO you gods above, and you, Greatest Jupiter, ruler of the gods,  \nI beseech you, take pity on an Arcadian king, and hear a father's  \nprayers. If your divine powers and the Fates are keeping Pallas  \nsafe for me, if I am going to live to see him again and be with  \nhim again, then I pray for life and harden my heart to endure  \nany suffering. But if Fortune has some horror in store, let me  \ndie now, let me break off this cruel life here and now, before I  \n580 can put a name to my sorrow, before I know what the future  \nwill bring and while I still hold you in my arms, O my dear son,  \nmy only source of joy, given to me so late in life. I want no grim  \nnews to come and wound my ears.' These are the words that  \npoured from the lips of Evander at his last parting with his son.  \nWhen he had uttered them, he collapsed and was carried into  \nhis house by his attendants.\n\nAnd now the gates had been opened and the horsemen had  \nridden out, Aeneas among the first of them and his faithful  \nAchates with him, then the other Trojan commanders with  \nPallas conspicuous in the middle of the column in his Greek  \nmilitary cloak and brightly coloured armour. He was like the  \n590 Morning Star, which Venus loves above all other starry fires, as  \nhe leaves his ocean bath and lifts up his holy face into the sky  \nto scatter the darkness. Mothers stood on the city walls, full of  \ndread and following with their eyes the cloud of dust and the  \nglint of bronze from the squadrons. They were riding in their  \narmour by the shortest route over rough scrub and their shouts  \nrose to the sky as the four-hoofed beat of the galloping column  \ndrummed on the dusty plain. Near Caere's cold river there was  \na wide glade, revered for generations as a holy place by peoples  \nnear and far. It was enclosed on every side by a ring of hills clad  \nin black firs. The story is told that the ancient Pelasgians, who  \nin days long past were the first inhabitants of Latium, consecrated  \n600 this grove and a holy day to be observed in it to Silvanus,  \nthe god of field and flock. Not far from here Tarcho and the  \nEtruscans were occupying a strong position and their whole  \narmy could be seen from the heights of the hills, encamped on  \nthe broad fields. Aeneas and his chosen warriors had come down  \nto the camp and, weary from the ride, were seeing to their horses  \nand refreshing themselves.\n\n610 But the goddess Venus, bringing her gifts, was at hand, shining  \namong the clouds of heaven. When she saw her son at some  \ndistance from the others, alone in a secluded valley across the  \nicy river, she spoke to him, coming unasked before his eyes:  \n'Here now are the gifts I promised you, perfected by my husband's  \nskill. When the time comes you need not hesitate, my  \nson, to face the proud Laurentines or challenge fierce Turnus to  \nbattle.' With these words the goddess of Cythera came to her  \nson's embrace and laid the armour in all its shining splendour  \nbefore him under an oak tree.\n\nAeneas rejoiced at these gifts from the goddess and at the  \nhonour she was paying him and could not have his fill of gazing  \n620 at them. He turned them over in his hands, in his arms, admiring  \nthe terrible, crested, fire-spurting helmet, the death-dealing  \nsword, the huge, unyielding breastplate of blood-red bronze like  \na dark cloud fired by the rays of the sun and glowing far across  \nthe sky, then the polished greaves of richly refined electrum and  \ngold, the spear and the fabric of the shield beyond all words to  \ndescribe. There the God of Fire, with his knowledge of the  \nprophets and of time that was to be, had laid out the story of  \nItaly and the triumphs of the Romans, and there in order were  \nall the generations that would spring from Ascanius and all the  \nwars they would fight.\n\n630 He had made, too, a mother wolf stretched out in the green  \ncave of Mars with twin boys playing round her udders, hanging  \nthere unafraid and sucking at her as she bent her supple neck  \nback to lick each of them in turn and mould their bodies into  \nshape with her tongue.\n\nNear this he had put Rome and the violent rape of the Sabines  \nat the great games in the bowl of the crowded Circus, and a new  \nwar suddenly breaking out between the people of Romulus and  \nthe stern Sabines from Cures led by their aged king Tatius. Then,  \n640 after these same kings had put an end to their conflict, they  \nstood in their armour before the altar of Jupiter with sacred  \nvessels in their hands, sacrificing a sow to ratify the treaty.\n\nClose by, four-horse chariots had been driven hard in opposite  \ndirections and had torn Mettus in two \u2013 the man of Alba should  \nhave stood by his promises \u2013 and Tullus was dragging the  \ndeceiver's body through a wood while a dew of blood dripped  \nfrom the brambles.\n\nThere too was Porsenna ordering the Romans to take Tarquin  \nback after they had expelled him, and mounting a great siege  \nagainst the city while the descendants of Aeneas were running  \n650 upon the drawn swords of the enemy in the name of liberty.  \nThere you could see him as though raging and blustering because  \nHoratius Cocles was daring to tear the bridge down and Cloelia  \nhad broken her chains and was swimming the river.\n\nAt the top of the shield Manlius, the keeper of the citadel on  \nthe Tarpeian rock, stood in front of the temple and kept guard  \non the heights of the Capitol. The new thatch stood out rough  \non the roof of Romulus' palace, and here was a silver goose  \nfluttering through the golden portico, honking to announce that  \nthe Gauls were at the gates. There were the Gauls close by,  \namong the thorn bushes, climbing into the citadel under the  \ncover of darkness on that pitch-black night. Their hair was gold,  \n660 their clothing was gold, their striped cloaks gleamed and their  \nmilk-white necks were encircled by golden torques. In each right  \nhand there glinted two heavy Alpine spears and long shields  \nprotected their bodies. Here too Vulcan had hammered out the  \nleaping Salii, the priests of Mars, and the naked Luperci, the  \npriests' conical hats tufted with wool, the figure-of-eight shields  \nwhich had fallen from heaven and chaste matrons leading sacred  \nprocessions through the city in cushioned carriages.\n\nAt some distance from these scenes he added the habitations  \nof the dead in Tartarus, the tall gateway of Dis and the punishments  \nof the damned, with Catiline hanging from his beetling  \ncrag and shivering at the faces of the Furies. There too were the  \n670 righteous, in a place apart, and Cato administering justice.\n\nBetween all these there ran a representation of a broad  \nexpanse of swelling sea, golden, but dark blue beneath the white  \nfoam on the crests of the waves, and all round it in a circle swam  \ndolphins picked out in silver, cleaving the sea and feathering its  \nsurface with their tails.\n\nIn the middle were the bronze-armoured fleets at the battle of  \nActium. There before your eyes the battle was drawn up with  \nthe whole of the headland of Leucas seething and all the waves  \ngleaming in gold. On one side was Augustus Caesar, leading the  \nmen of Italy into battle alongside the Senate and the People of  \n680 Rome, its gods of home and its great gods. High he stood on  \nthe poop of his ship while from his radiant forehead there  \nstreamed a double flame and his father's star shone above his head.  \nOn the other wing, towering above the battle as he led his  \nships in line ahead, sailed Agrippa with favouring winds and  \nfavouring gods, and the beaks of captured vessels flashed from  \nthe proud honour on his forehead, the Naval Crown. On the  \nother side, with the wealth of the barbarian world and warriors  \nin all kinds of different armour, came Antony in triumph from  \nthe shores of the Red Sea and the peoples of the Dawn. With  \nhim sailed Egypt and the power of the East from as far as distant  \nBactria, and there bringing up the rear was the greatest outrage  \nof all, his Egyptian wife! On they came at speed, all together,  \n690 and the whole surface of the sea was churned to foam by the  \npull of their oars and the bow-waves from their triple beaks.  \nThey steered for the high sea and you would have thought that  \nthe Cycladic Islands had been torn loose again and were floating  \non the ocean, or that mountains were colliding with mountains,  \nto see men in action on those ships with their massive, turreted  \nsterns, showering blazing torches of tow and flying steel as the  \nfresh blood began to redden the furrows of Neptune's fields. In  \nthe middle of all this the queen summoned her warships by  \nrattling her Egyptian timbrels \u2013 she was not yet seeing the two  \nsnakes there at her back \u2013 while Anubis barked and all manner  \n700 of monstrous gods levelled their weapons at Neptune and Venus  \nand Minerva. There in the eye of battle raged Mars, engraved  \nin iron, the grim Furies swooped from the sky and jubilant  \nDiscord strode along in her torn cloak with Bellona at her heels  \ncracking her bloody whip. But high on the headland of Actium,  \nApollo saw it all and was drawing his bow. In terror at the sight  \nthe whole of Egypt and of India, all the Arabians and all the  \nShebans were turning tail and the queen herself could be seen  \ncalling for winds and setting her sails by them. She had untied  \nthe sail-ropes and was even now paying them out. There in all  \n710 the slaughter the God of Fire had set her, pale with the pallor of  \napproaching death, driven over the waves by the Iapygian winds  \nblowing off Calabria. Opposite her he had fashioned the Nile  \nwith grief in every line of his great body, opening his robes and  \nwith every fold of drapery beckoning his defeated people into  \nhis blue-grey breast and the secret waters of his river.\n\nBut Caesar was riding into Rome in triple triumph, paying  \nundying vows to the gods of Italy and consecrating three hundred  \ngreat shrines throughout the city. The streets resounded  \nwith joy and festivities and applause. There was a chorus of  \nmatrons at every temple, at every temple there were altars and  \nthe ground before the altars was strewn with the bodies of  \n720 slaughtered bullocks. He himself was seated at the white marble  \nthreshold of gleaming white Apollo, inspecting the gifts brought  \nbefore him by the peoples of the earth and hanging them high  \non the posts of the doors of the temple, while the defeated  \nnations walked in long procession in all their different costumes  \nand in all their different armour, speaking all the tongues of the  \nearth. Here Mulciber, the God of Fire, had moulded the Nomads  \nand the Africans with their streaming robes; here, too, the  \nLelegeians and Carians of Asia and the Gelonians from Scythia  \nwith their arrows. The Euphrates was now moving with a  \nchastened current, and here were the Gaulish Morini from the  \nends of the earth, the two-horned Rhine, the undefeated Dahae  \nfrom beyond the Caspian and the river Araxes chafing at his  \nbridge.\n\nSuch were the scenes spread over the shield that Vulcan made  \n730 and Venus gave to her son. Marvelling at it, and rejoicing at the  \nthings pictured on it without knowing what they were, Aeneas  \nlifted on to his shoulder the fame and the fate of his descendants.\n\n## BOOK 9  \nNISUS AND EURYALUS\n\nWhile this was happening far away in Etruria, Juno, daughter  \nof Saturn, sent Iris down from the sky to bold Turnus, who  \nchanced at that moment to be sitting in a grove sacred to his  \nancestor Pilumnus. These were the words that came to him from  \nthe rosy lips of Iris, daughter of Thaumas: 'There, Turnus, time  \nin its ever-rolling course has brought you unasked what none  \nof the gods would have dared to promise you if you had prayed  \nfor it \u2013 Aeneas has left his city, his allies and his fleet, and gone  \n10 to visit the royal seat of Evander on the Palatine. And as though  \nthat were not enough, he has travelled as far as the remotest  \ncities of Corythus and is arming a band of Lydians, some country  \npeople he has collected. What are you waiting for? This is the  \nmoment to call for your horses and chariots. Do not allow any  \ndelay. Make a surprise attack on their camp and seize it.' At  \nthese words she soared into the sky on poised wings, cutting in  \nher flight a great rainbow under the clouds. The warrior knew  \nher, and raising his hands palms upward to the stars, he called  \nout to her as she flew: 'Iris, glory of the sky, who has sent you  \nhere to me, riding the clouds down to the earth? Why this  \n20 sudden brightness in the air? I see the heights of heaven parting  \nand stars wandering through the vault of the sky. I follow this  \ngreat sign, whoever you are that call me to arms.' When he had  \nspoken these words, he walked to the river's edge and scooped  \nup in his hands the water from its surface as he offered up prayer  \nupon prayer to the gods and burdened heaven with his vows.\n\nThe whole army was soon moving across the open plain, rich  \nin its horses, rich in embroidered apparel, rich in gold. The  \nvanguard was controlled by Messapus, the rear by the sons of  \nTyrrhus, while Turnus, the chief commander, was in the middle  \n30 of the column. It was like the Ganges fed by the steady flow of  \nits seven rivers and silently rising, or like the fertile waters of the  \nNile when it withdraws from the plains and settles back at last  \ninto its own channel. The Trojans saw this distant cloud of  \nblack dust suddenly gathering and the darkness rising on the  \nplain. Caicus was on the rampart on that side and he was the  \nfirst to raise the alarm: 'What is that ball of dark dust rolling  \nalong the plain? Fetch your weapons, fellow-citizens, and fetch  \nthem now! Give out missiles! Mount the walls! The enemy is  \nupon us. To your posts!' With a great clamour the Trojans  \n40 streamed in by all the gates to man the walls, for these were the  \norders they had received from Aeneas, the greatest of warriors,  \nas he left them: if anything should happen in his absence, they  \nwere not to dare take up position for a pitched battle or trust  \nthemselves to the plain, but only to stay on the ramparts and  \ndefend the camp and the walls. So, though shame and anger  \nurged them to join battle, they nevertheless obeyed orders and  \nclosed the gates against the enemy, waiting for them in full  \narmour inside their towers.\n\nBy this time Turnus had taken wing and gone on ahead of the  \nslow-moving column. With twenty picked horsemen he arrived  \n50 at the city before he was expected, riding a piebald Thracian  \ncharger and wearing his gold helmet shaded by red plumes. 'Is  \nthere any man among you, my friends, will come with me and  \nbe first upon the enemy? There!' he cried, and sent his javelin  \nspinning into the air as a signal for battle, then, rising in the  \nsaddle he charged across the plain. His comrades took up the  \ncry and followed him with blood-curdling shouts. They were  \namazed at the faint-heartedness of the Trojans. Why did they  \nnot commit themselves to a fair fight on the level plain? They  \nwere men. Why did they huddle in their camp and not meet  \narms with arms? Turnus in a fury prowled round the walls this  \nway and that, searching for an approach where there was none,  \n60 like a wolf in the dead of night, lying in wait in all the wind and  \nrain by a pen full of sheep, and growling at the gaps in the  \nfence, while the lambs keep up their bleating, safe beneath their  \nmothers; beside himself with anger he storms and rages but  \ncannot reach them; he is worn out by the ravening hunger he  \nhas been so long in gathering and many a day has passed since  \nblood wet his throat \u2013 so did the Rutulian blaze with anger as  \nhe surveyed the walls of the Trojan camp and the pain burned  \nhim to the bone. How could he try to come at them? What  \n70 device could shake out the Trojans shut up there behind their  \nrampart and spill them on to the plain? Ah! The fleet! There it  \nwas moored in a sheltered position along the side of the camp,  \nprotected by the water of the river, and to the landward by  \nramparts. There he made his attack. Burning with fury himself  \nhe demanded fire from his exultant comrades and took up a  \ngreat blazing pine torch in his hand. At this they all bent to the  \ntask, with Turnus there to urge them on. They plundered what  \nfires they could find, and their reeking torches smouldered with  \na pitchy light as Vulcan whirled to the stars dense clouds of  \nsmoke shot through with sparks.\n\nTell me, Muses, what god turned these fierce flames away  \nfrom the Trojans and drove such fire from their ships. The tale  \nwas told in times long past but the fame of it will live for ever.  \n80 When Aeneas was first building his fleet on Mount Ida in Phrygia  \nand preparing to take to the high seas, Berecyntian Cybele  \nherself, the Mother of the Gods, is said to have addressed these  \nwords to great Jupiter: 'O my son, grant my prayer. Now that  \nOlympus is subdued, grant what your dear mother asks of you.  \nOn top of my citadel I had a wood of pine trees which I had  \nloved for many years, a dark grove of black pine and maple  \nwhere men would bring their offerings. These trees I gladly gave  \nto the Trojan warrior when he needed a fleet, but now my heart  \n90 is seized by anxiety and dread. Put all my fears at rest and  \nanswer your mother's prayer. Grant that my ships should not  \nbe wrecked on any of their voyages or overwhelmed by any  \nsquall of wind. Let it stand to their favour that they were born  \non our mountains.' Her son, who turns the stars of heaven in  \ntheir courses, made this reply to his mother: 'What is this you  \nare calling on the Fates to do? What do these words of yours  \nmean? Are ships made by mortal hands to have immortal rights?  \nIs Aeneas to face all his doubts and dangers and never know  \nuncertainty? Is there any god to whom such a privilege has been  \ngranted? No. But when the ships have done their duty, when in  \ndue course they reach the end of their voyaging and are safe in  \nharbour in Ausonia, each one to survive the sea and reach the  \n100 Laurentine fields with the Trojan leader will lose its mortal  \nshape. I shall order all of them to become goddesses of the great  \nocean, like Galatea and Doto, daughters of Nereus, whose  \nbreasts cleave the foam of the waves of the sea.' Jupiter had  \nspoken, ratifying his words by the waters of the Styx, his  \nbrother's river, by the banks and dark whirlpools of that pitch-black  \ntorrent, and at his nod the whole of Olympus shook.\n\nAnd so the promised day had come and the Fates had completed  \nthe allotted time, when the violent attack of Turnus  \nwarned the Mother Goddess to defend her sacred ships from  \n110 these burning brands. A strange light now shone before men's  \neyes and a great cloud seemed to cross the sky from the east,  \nbearing with it votaries of the goddess from Mount Ida. A  \nfearsome voice then fell from the air and filled the ears of Trojans  \nand Rutulians in their armed ranks: 'Do not trouble, Trojans,  \nto defend my ships. Do not take your weapons in your hands.  \nTurnus will burn the sea dry before he can burn these sacred  \npine trees. Go then! You are freed. Go, you goddesses of the  \nsea! The Mother of the Gods commands.' In an instant every  \n120 ship burst the ropes that moored it to the bank, and they plunged  \nlike dolphins, beak first to the bottom. When they returned to  \nthe surface, they were miraculously changed, each one a nymph  \nswimming in the sea.\n\nThe Rutulians were astonished. Messapus himself was afraid  \nand his horses reared. Even Tiber checked his flow with a harsh  \nroaring of his waters as he called back his current from the sea.  \nBut the boldness and confidence of Turnus never wavered.  \nWithout hesitation he set about haranguing his men and whipping  \nup their spirits: 'These portents strike at the Trojans: they  \nmean that Jupiter has taken from them the help they have  \n130 become accustomed to. The ships did not wait to taste Rutulian  \nfire and sword! So now the seas are barred to the Trojans and  \nthey have no hope of escape. By this they have lost one half of  \nthe world, and the land is already in our hands, so many thousands  \nof men are marching under arms from all the races of  \nItaly. This Phrygian talk of destiny and the oracles of the gods  \ndoes not dismay me. Destiny and Venus were satisfied the  \nmoment Trojans set foot on the fertile fields of Italy. I too have  \na destiny, of a different sort \u2013 to cut down with the sword this  \nvicious people that has robbed me of my bride. The sons of  \nAtreus are not the only ones who have suffered, and the people  \nof Mycenae are not the only men who can take up arms. Let  \n140 them not imagine it is enough to have been destroyed once! It  \nshould have been enough for them to sin once. They had no  \nneed to show loathing and contempt for every woman in the  \nworld. Look at them now, all courage and confidence because  \nof this rampart that keeps us from them and these ditches they  \nhave dug to hold us back. This is no sort of barrier to stand  \nbetween them and death. Did they not see the walls of Troy  \nsettling into the flames? And those were fashioned by the hands  \nof Neptune. You are my chosen few. Which one of you is ready  \nto cut through their rampart with the sword and rush into that  \ncamp of cowards? To fight Trojans I do not need the armour  \nVulcan made for Achilles. I do not need a thousand ships, not  \n150 if every man in Etruria went and joined them as allies this  \ninstant. Nor do they need to be frightened of the dark. We shall  \nnot be creeping up on them like cowards to kill the guards all  \nover their citadel and steal their Palladium. We shall not be  \nhiding in the blind belly of a horse. Our plan is to come in  \ndaylight in full view and gird their walls with fire. I shall soon  \nmake sure they realize it is not Greeks they have to deal with or  \nthe army of Pelasgians Hector held off into a tenth year. But the  \nbest part of the day is already spent. For what remains of it you  \ncan now rest yourselves. You have done well. Be of good cheer,  \nin high hopes that we can bring them to battle.' Meanwhile  \n160 Messapus was given the task of blockading the gates with a  \nnight guard and ringing the walls with watch-fires. Fourteen  \nRutulians were chosen to keep watch on the walls, each commanding  \na hundred men with purple crests on their helmets and  \ngleaming with gold. They dispersed, some going to their various  \nduties, others lying out on the grass, enjoying their wine and  \ntipping up the bronze mixing bowls. The watch-fires burned  \nand the guards kept awake by gaming the night away.\n\nThe Trojans looked out on all this from the top of their  \n170 rampart and kept armed guards on all the high points while  \nanxiously checking the gates, building bridges to their outlying  \nfortlets, and bringing up missiles. Mnestheus and the zealous  \nSerestus never relaxed their vigilance. They were the men Father  \nAeneas had appointed to take over the command of the troops  \nand the government of the people should adversity require it.  \nThe whole legion was on the alert along the walls. Lots had been  \ncast for posts of danger and each man was taking his turn to  \nstand guard.\n\nNisus, son of Hyrtacus, was keeper of a gate. This  \nformidable warrior, swift to throw the spear or send the arrow flying, had  \nbeen sent by Ida, the hunters' mountain, to be the comrade of  \n180 Aeneas, and with him came his own comrade, Euryalus, a boy  \nwith the first signs of manhood on cheeks as yet unshaven. There  \nwas no lovelier youth among the people of Aeneas, and no  \nlovelier youth ever put on Trojan armour. They were one in  \nlove, and side by side they used to charge into battle. So now  \ntoo, they were sharing guard duty on the gate, when Nisus said  \nto Euryalus: 'Is it the gods who put this ardour into our minds,  \nor does every man's irresistible desire become his god? My mind  \nis not content to rest in peace and quiet but has long been driving  \nme to rush into battle or into some great enterprise. You see the  \nRutulians there with just a few scattered lights piercing the  \n190 darkness, how sure they are of everything, lying sunk in sleep  \nand wine, and silence everywhere. Just listen to what I am  \nthinking and to the plan beginning to form in my mind. The  \npeople and the fathers, they are all clamouring for Aeneas to be  \nsummoned and messengers sent to tell him exactly what is  \nhappening. If they promise to give you what I ask \u2013 all I want is  \ncredit for the deed \u2013 I think I can find a way round the foot of  \nthat hill to the city of Pallanteum.' Euryalus was overcome,  \npierced to the heart with a great love of glory, and in an instant  \nhe replied in these words to his ardent friend: 'So you do not  \n200 want me as your comrade on this great expedition, and I am to  \nlet you go alone into dangers like this? This is not how I was  \nbrought up by my father Opheltes during the Greek terror and  \nour sufferings at Troy, and he knew all about war. Nor is this  \nhow I have conducted myself with you, in following to the end  \nthe Fates of great-hearted Aeneas. I have here a heart that  \ndespises the light, that would gladly spend life to buy the honour  \nyou are striving for.' To this Nisus replied: 'So may great Jupiter,  \nor whatever god looks with favour on this undertaking, bring  \nme back to you in triumph, I swear I never had any such fears  \n210 about you. That would have been a sin. But if some chance or  \nsome god were to lead me into disaster \u2013 and you know how  \nmany things can happen in dangerous affairs like this \u2013 I would  \nwish you to go on living. You are young and your claim on life  \nis greater than mine. There would then be someone to consign  \nmy body to the earth if it is rescued from the battlefield or  \nrecovered by ransom, or if some fortune forbids that \u2013 and we  \nknow her ways \u2013 to make offerings for me here and honour me  \nwith an empty tomb. Besides, let me not be the cause of such  \nheartbreak to your mother, who of all the mothers of Troy is  \nthe only one who has dared to follow her son here with never a  \nthought for the walls of great Acestes.' 'One feeble argument  \nafter another,' replied Euryalus, 'and all to no purpose. My  \n220 mind is made up and you have done nothing to change it. Let  \nus go, and quickly.' So saying, he woke sentries to take over and  \nkeep guard for Nisus and himself. They left their post and  \nmarched off side by side to look for prince Ascanius.\n\nOver the whole world the creatures of the earth were relaxed  \nin sleep, all resting from their cares, and their hearts had forgotten  \ntheir labours; but the chosen warriors who were the great  \nleaders of the Trojans were holding a council on matters of the  \nhighest importance to the kingdom. What were they to do now?  \n230 Who would go as a messenger to Aeneas? As they stood there  \non the level ground in the middle of the camp, leaning on  \ntheir long spears and carrying their shields, Nisus and Euryalus  \nsuddenly arrived in great haste and asked to be admitted, saying  \nthat their business was urgent and well worth listening to. Seeing  \ntheir excitement, Iulus was the first to welcome them and invited  \nNisus to speak. These were the words of the son of Hyrtacus:  \n'Give us a fair hearing, sons of Aeneas. Do not judge what is  \nsaid by the age of the speakers. The Rutulians have fallen quiet,  \ndeep in their drunken sleep, and we have seen a place for an  \nambush, some open ground where the two roads meet by the  \ngate nearest the sea. There the ring of watch-fires is broken and  \n240 the smoke is rising black to the stars. If you allow us to take  \nthis opportunity to go and look for Aeneas and the city of  \nPallanteum, you will soon see us coming back laden with booty  \nand much slaughter done. We have no doubts about the way to  \ngo. We always hunt there and have seen the first houses of the  \ncity in the dark valleys. We have explored the whole river.'\n\nIt was Aletes, heavy with years and mature in judgement, who  \nnow replied: 'O gods of our fathers, in whose divine hands Troy  \nstill remains, in spite of all, it is not your will utterly to destroy  \nthe Trojans, if you have put such firmness of mind and heart  \n250 into our young warriors,' and as he spoke he clasped the right  \nhands of both of them and laid his hands on their shoulders while  \nthe tears ran down his cheeks and face: 'Can any recompense be  \nfound for you?' he cried. 'Can anything match the glorious  \ndeeds you propose? The first and richest reward will come from  \nthe gods and from your own virtue, but the others will soon  \nfollow from a grateful Aeneas, and young Ascanius for the rest  \nof his life will never forget such a service.' 'More than that,'  \ninterposed Ascanius, 'my whole life hangs upon the return of  \n260 my father and I call upon you both to witness, by the great  \nPenates and Lar of Assaracus, and the shrine of white-haired  \nVesta, I now place all my fortunes and all my hopes for the  \nfuture in your hands, Nisus. Call back my father. Bring him  \nback to my sight. If he is restored there can be no cause for grief.  \nI shall give you two solid silver embossed cups which he took at  \nthe fall of Arisba, and with them a pair of tripods, two great  \ntalents of gold and an ancient mixing bowl given him by Dido  \nof Sidon. But if he succeeds in taking Italy and winning the  \ncrown, while he is presiding over the distribution of booty in  \nhis hour of victory \u2013 you have seen the horse that Turnus rides,  \n270 you have seen him all golden in his armour \u2013 I shall exclude  \nfrom the lot that horse, the shield and the scarlet plumes, and  \nthese will now be yours, Nisus, as your reward. In addition my  \nfather will give you twelve chosen matrons and twelve prisoners  \nof war, each with his armour, and all the lands on the plain now  \nheld by king Latinus. But as for you, Euryalus, although you  \nare a boy and not so far ahead of myself in the race of life, I  \nrevere you and take you wholly into my heart, embracing you  \nas my comrade, whatever may lie before us. Whatever I may do,  \nI shall look for no glory that is not shared with you. In war or  \n280 in peace, whatever I say or do, my whole trust will be placed  \nin you.'\n\nTo this Euryalus replied: 'The day shall never come when I  \nshall be found unequal to acts of courage like this, if only the  \nfall of fortune is in our favour tonight, and not against us. But  \none thing I ask of you, more precious than any gifts: I grieve for  \nmy mother of the ancient line of Priam. The land of Troy could  \nnot hold her when she came away with me, nor did the walls of  \nking Acestes. As I now leave her, she knows nothing of the  \ndanger I am entering upon, whether it be great or small, and I  \nhave taken no farewell of her because \u2013 and I swear it by the  \nNight and your own right hand \u2013 I could not bear to see my  \n290 mother weep. But comfort her in her helplessness, I beg you,  \nand support her in her desolation. Let me take with me the hope  \nthat you will do this and I shall go all the more boldly into  \nwhatever dangers lie before me.' The Trojans were overcome  \nand wept, the fair Iulus most of all, as this image of his love for  \nhis own father touched his heart, and he replied: 'You can be  \ncertain that everything I do will be worthy of your great enterprise.  \nYour mother will be my mother in everything but the  \nname Creusa. The woman who gave birth to such a son will  \nreceive no ordinary gratitude. I have promised you rewards  \nwhen you return in triumph. Whatever the outcome of your  \n300 bravery, I swear by this head of mine, by which my father used  \nto swear, that these same promises will hold good for your  \nmother and your kin.' So he spoke, weeping, and in that moment  \nhe took from his shoulder a gilded sword that Lycaon of Cnossus  \nhad fashioned with consummate art and fitted in an ivory scabbard  \nto hang perfectly at his side, while Mnestheus gave Nisus  \na rough hide stripped from a lion, and trusty Aletes changed  \nhelmets with him. As soon as they were armed they marched  \n310 off, and all the leading Trojans, young and old, escorted them  \nto the gates with their prayers. Foremost among them was the  \nfair Iulus, bearing beyond his years a man's load of cares and a  \nman's spirit. He gave them many commissions to bear to his  \nfather, but they were all futile. The wind scattered them among  \nthe clouds.\n\nThey moved off and crossed the ditch, making their way  \nunder cover of night to the camp that would be their death, but  \nnot before they had brought death to many others. They could  \nsee men sprawling in drunken sleep all over the grass and  \nchariots standing along the river bank with their poles in the air  \nand a tangle of men's bodies and armour and wine vessels  \n320 among the reins and wheels. Nisus was the first to speak: 'Now,  \nEuryalus,' he said, 'my right hand must show its mettle. The  \nhour calls out for it. Our road goes this way. You keep guard to  \nthe rear in case a party of men creeps up on us from behind, and  \nlook well into the distance. I shall make havoc here and clear a  \nbroad path for you.' So he spoke and then had done with words.  \nWith sword drawn he made for proud Rhamnes who happened  \nto be propped up there on a deep pile of rugs, his whole chest  \nheaving as he slept. A king he was, and a prophet cherished by  \na king, by Turnus. But not all his prophesying could drive from  \nhim the plague of death. Nisus then caught three of Rhamnes'  \nattendants lying in a heap among their weapons, then the  \n330 armour-bearer of Remus and his charioteer among the hooves  \nof the horses. Their heads were lolling. He cut them off. Next  \nhe removed the head of their master Remus and left the blood  \ngurgling out of his trunk and warming the ground as the black  \ngore soaked through the bedding. Lamyrus also he slew, and  \nLamus and young Serranus, a handsome youth who had  \ngambled late into the night. There he lay overcome by all the  \nwine of Bacchus he had drunk. He would have been happy if he  \ncould have made his gambling last the night and kept it up till  \n340 daylight. Nisus was like a lion driven mad with hunger and  \nravening through pens full of sheep, dumb with fear, while he  \ngrowls from jaws dripping with blood as he mauls and champs  \ntheir soft flesh.\n\nMeanwhile there was no less slaughter from the hand of  \nEuryalus. He too was in a blazing frenzy as he crept up on a  \ngreat crowd of nameless warriors lying unconscious in his path,  \nFadus and Herbesus, Rhoetus and Abaris. Rhoetus was awake  \nand saw it all, so hid in panic behind a great mixing bowl. But  \nwhen Euryalus came near him, he rose and Euryalus plunged  \nhis sword to the hilt in his chest. When he withdrew it, the  \nwhole life of Rhoetus flooded out after it. As he lay there dying,  \n350 still vomiting his crimson life's breath and bringing up wine and  \ngore together, Euryalus was already prowling on, hot for blood.  \nHe was soon making for Messapus and his comrades, where he  \nsaw the dying embers of the watch-fires and the horses tethered  \nin good order cropping the grass, when Nisus had a few words  \nto say to him \u2013 for he noticed that Euryalus was being carried  \naway by bloodlust and greed: 'Let us make an end,' he said.  \n'Daylight is no friend of ours and it will soon be here. Our  \nenemies have taken enough punishment and we have cut our  \npath through the middle of them.' They left behind them many  \npieces of men's armour wrought in solid silver, and mixing  \nbowls besides, and lovely rugs, but Euryalus took Rhamnes'  \n360 medallions and his gold-studded belt. Long ago the wealthy  \nCaedicus had sent them from his home as gifts to Remulus of  \nTibur to form a guest-friendship with him. When Remulus was  \ndying, he gave them to his grandson, and after his death they  \npassed to the Rutulians as spoils of war. Euryalus now snatched  \nthem up and put them round his brave shoulders, but little good  \nwere they to do him. He also put on the helmet of Messapus  \nwith its gorgeous plumes, and they left the camp and made  \nfor safety.\n\nAt this moment, while the rest of the Latin army was waiting  \nin battle order on the plain, a detachment of cavalry had been  \nsent out from their city and was now on its way with dispatches  \n370 to Turnus, three hundred of them, all carrying shields, under  \nthe command of Volcens. They were approaching the camp and  \ncoming up to its ramparts when they saw Nisus and Euryalus  \nin the distance, veering off along the road to the left. Euryalus  \nhad forgotten about the helmet, and its glittering betrayed him,  \nreflecting the rays of the moon in the dim shadows of the night.  \nThe enemy saw and did not fail to act. 'Halt there, you men!'  \nshouted Volcens from the head of his column. 'Why are you on  \nthe road? Who are you? Why are you armed? Where are you  \ngoing?' They offered no reply, but ran off into the trees, putting  \ntheir trust in the darkness of the night. The horsemen spread  \n380 out along each side of the wood they knew so well, blocking the  \ntracks that led in, and putting guards on every approach. It was  \na rough wood full of dense undergrowth and dark ilex trees, all  \nof it choked with thick brambles, and the path glimmered only  \nhere and there among the faint tracks left by animals. Euryalus  \nwas held back by the darkness under the trees and by the weight  \nof his booty, and in his fright he lost his way. But Nisus escaped.  \nWithout knowing it he had come through the enemy and the  \narea later to be known as Alban, taking its name from the  \ncity of Alba, but in those days king Latinus had high-fenced  \nenclosures there for his cattle. He now stopped and looked back  \n390 for his friend, but could not see him. 'Poor Euryalus,' he cried.  \n'Where have I left you? Where can I look for you?' and even as  \nhe spoke, he was beginning to go back over his path through  \nthe wood with all its deceptive twists and turns, retracing every  \nremembered step as he wandered through the silent undergrowth.  \nHe heard horses. He heard the noise of the pursuers  \nand their signals, and in no time shouts reached his ears and he  \nsaw Euryalus. Lost in the treacherous darkness of the wood and  \nconfused by the sudden tumult, he had been caught by the whole  \nenemy troop and was now being carried off, still struggling  \ndesperately against all the odds. What was Nisus to do? How  \ncould he rescue his young friend? How should he attack? What  \n400 weapons could he use? Should he throw himself into the thick  \nof their swords and rush through wound upon wound to a  \nglorious death? In that instant he drew back his arm, and  \nbrandishing his throwing spear, he looked up to the moon in  \nheaven and prayed in these words: 'O goddess, daughter of  \nLatona, O glory of the stars and guardian of the groves, be with  \nme now and help me in my hour of trouble. If ever my father  \nHyrtacus has offered gifts for me at your altars, if ever I myself  \nhave enriched them with the spoils of my hunting, hanging my  \nofferings in the dome of your temple or nailing them on your  \nholy gables, guide my weapons through the air and grant that I  \n410 may throw this troop of my enemies into confusion.' When he  \nhad spoken, he hurled his spear with the whole force of his  \nbody. Parting the shadows of the night it flew towards Sulmo,  \nwhose back was turned, and there it struck and broke, sending  \na splinter through his diaphragm. He rolled over, vomiting a  \nstream of warm blood from his chest in the chill of death, and  \nheaving his flanks in deep-drawn agonies. While the enemy were  \nlooking round in all directions, there was Nisus, emboldened  \nby his success, with another shaft ready by his ear, poised to  \naim. They were still in tumult when the spear came whistling  \nand caught Tagus in the middle of the forehead, went through  \n420 the brain, and stuck there, growing warm. Volcens was wild  \nwith rage, but nowhere could he see the thrower and he could  \nnot decide where to direct the fury of his assault. 'Never mind!'  \nhe shouted. 'For the moment, you and your warm blood will  \npay me for both of them!' and he drew his sword and rushed at  \nEuryalus. This was too much for Nisus. Out of his mind with  \nterror and unable to endure his anguish, he broke cover, shouting  \nat the top of his voice: 'Here I am! Here I am! I am the one  \nwho did it! Aim your weapons at me, you Rutulians! The whole  \nscheme was mine. He is innocent. He could not have done it. I  \nswear by this sky above me and the stars who know the truth,  \n430 his only offence is to have loved the wrong friend too much!'  \nHe was still speaking as the sword was driven through the ribs  \nof Euryalus, full force, shattering his white breast. He rolled on  \nthe ground in death, the blood flowed over his beautiful body,  \nhis neck grew limp and the head drooped on his shoulders, like  \na scarlet flower languishing and dying when its stem has been  \ncut by the plough, or like poppies bowing their heads when the  \nrain burdens them and their necks grow weary. But Nisus rushed  \ninto the thick of the enemy, looking only for Volcens. Volcens  \n440 was the only thought in his mind. The Rutulians gathered round  \ntheir leader and in close fighting threw Nisus back again and  \nagain as he came at them from one side after another, but he  \nbore on none the less, whirling a sword like lightning till he met  \nthe Rutulian face to face and buried it in his mouth as he opened  \nit to shout. So, in the moment of his own dying, he cut off the  \nbreath of his enemy. Then, pierced through and through, he  \nhurled himself on the dead body of his friend and rested there  \nat last in the peace of death.\n\nFortune has favoured you both! If there is any power in my  \npoetry, the day will never come when time will erase you from  \nthe memory of man, while the house of Aeneas remains by the  \nimmovable rock of the Capitol and the Father of the Romans  \nstill keeps his empire.\n\n450 The victorious Rutulians had collected their booty and their  \nspoils and carried the body of Volcens to their camp, weeping  \nas they went. There was no less sorrow waiting for them there,  \nwhen they found Rhamnes dead, and with him Serranus and  \nNuma and all their other leaders who had been killed in that  \none night of slaughter. A great crowd gathered round the dead  \nand dying heroes and the ground was running with rivers of  \nnewly shed blood, still warm and foaming. Between them they  \nrecognized the spoils, the shining helmet of Messapus, and the  \nmedallions which had cost so much sweat to recover.\n\n460 By now Aurora was just leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus  \nand sprinkling her new light upon the world. The sun was soon  \nstreaming over the earth and soon all things stood revealed in  \nits light. Turnus, in full armour himself, was rousing his men to  \narms, and each of the leaders was taking his own troop into  \nbattle in ranks of bronze, whipping up their anger with different  \naccounts of the night's work. They even stuck the heads of  \nEuryalus and Nisus on spears \u2013 what a sight that was! \u2013 and  \nparaded along behind them shouting. Aeneas' men, long-enduring,  \ndrew up in battle order to face them on the walls on  \ntheir left flank \u2013 the right was guarded by the river \u2013 and they  \n470 manned their great ditches and stood on their high towers  \nstricken with grief and shocked by the sight of the heads of the  \ncomrades they knew so well, impaled on spears and dripping  \nblack gore.\n\nMeanwhile Rumour flew with the news on her swift wings  \nthrough the whole terrified city of the Trojans, and came gliding  \ninto the ears of the mother of Euryalus. In that instant the  \nwarmth left her very bones, the shuttle was dashed from her  \nfingers and its thread unwound. Crazed with grief she rushed  \nout, and wailing as women do and tearing her hair, she made  \nfor the front ranks of the army on the walls. With no thought  \n480 for the presence of men, with no thought of the danger of flying  \nweapons, she stood there on the ramparts and filled heaven with  \nher cries of mourning: 'Is this you I am looking at, Euryalus?  \nHow could you leave me alone, so cruelly, you who were the  \nlast comfort of my old age? Could not your poor mother have  \nbeen allowed a few last words with you, before you went on  \nthat dangerous expedition? So now you lie in a strange land,  \nand your body is food for the dogs and the birds of Latium! I  \nam your mother and did not walk before you at your funeral;  \nnor close your eyes, nor wash your wounds, nor cover you with  \nthe robe I have been weaving for you day and night with what  \nspeed I could, finding in my loom some solace for the cares of  \n490 age. Where am I to go to look for you, my son? What piece of  \nearth holds your mutilated body and dismembered limbs? Is this  \nhead all you bring back to me? Is that what I have followed over  \nland and sea? Strike me, you Rutulians, if you have any human  \nfeelings! Throw all your spears at me! Let me be the first to die.  \nOr will you take pity on me, Great Father of the Gods, and blast  \nmy detested body into Tartarus with your lightning, since I can  \nfind no other way to end this bitter life?' Sorrow like this was  \ntoo much for the Trojans to bear. The sound of mourning was  \nheard all through the army. Their strength was broken. They  \nwere losing their appetite for battle and her presence was fanning  \n500 the flames of their grief. At a word from Ilioneus and the bitterly  \nweeping Iulus, Idaeus and Actor came and took her between  \nthem back into her house.\n\nThe ringing bronze of the trumpet gave out its shrill and  \nterrible note from close at hand. The shouting rose and the  \nheavens bellowed in reply. The Volsci all at once rushed the  \nwalls with their shields locked in tortoise formation and tried  \nto fill in the ditches and tear down the rampart. Some were  \nlooking for a point of access and putting up scaling ladders  \nwhere the line of defenders was strung out along the walls, and  \nlight could be seen in the breaks between them. From their side  \n510 the Trojans showered down missiles of every kind, and pushed  \nthe ladders off with stout poles \u2013 in their long war they had  \nlearned how to defend walls \u2013 and they rolled great heavy rocks  \ndown on the enemy to try to break their armoured formations,  \nbut in their close-packed tortoise they cheerfully endured whatever  \nfell on them. But they still did not succeed. For where a  \nsolid mass of Rutulians was threatening the walls, the Trojans  \nrolled along a huge block of stone and sent it crashing down on  \nthem to loosen their interlocking shields and cut a great swathe  \nthrough them. After this the bold Rutulians no longer cared to  \nfight blind under cover of their shields but strove to clear the  \n520 defenders off the ramparts with a barrage of missiles. At another  \nsection of the wall Mezentius was brandishing a torch of Etruscan  \npine and a fearful sight he was as he came at them with fire  \nand smoke. Messapus, son of Neptune and tamer of horses, was  \ncutting a way through the rampart and shouting for scaling  \nladders.\n\nI pray to you, Calliope, and to your sister Muses, to breathe  \nupon me as I sing of the death and destruction wrought by the  \nsword of Turnus and to tell who sent down to Orcus each  \nwarrior that died. Unroll with me now the mighty scroll of war.\n\n530 There was a tower, well placed and of commanding height,  \nwith high connecting bridges. The Latins were trying to take it  \nby main force, striving with all their powers to bring it down,  \nwhile the Trojans packed inside tried to defend it by throwing  \nrocks and sending a hail of weapons through the loopholes.  \nTurnus, who was leading the attack, hurled a blazing torch  \nwhich set fire to the side of the tower. Fanned by the wind, the  \nflames took hold of the planking and ate into the upright posts.  \nInside all was confusion, terror and desperate attempts to escape  \nthe heat. As everyone crowded together to take refuge on the  \n540 side away from the flames, all at once the whole sky seemed to  \nthunder and the tower toppled over with the weight, and men  \nplunged to the ground in their death throes with the massive  \nfabric following them down, impaling them on their own  \nweapons and driving the broken timbers through their breasts.  \nOnly Helenor and Lycus were able to escape. Helenor was a  \nyoung man, son of the king of Maeonia and the slave girl  \nLicymnia, who had reared him in secret and sent him to Troy  \nunder arms although this had been forbidden. His equipment  \nwas light, a sword with no scabbard and an inglorious shield of  \nplain white, and he found himself caught in the middle of the  \n550 thousands of men who fought with Turnus, looking at the battle  \nlines of the Latins drawn up on all sides of him, like a wild beast  \ntrapped in a dense ring of hunters; it rages against the steel, and  \nwith full understanding it hurls itself to its death by springing  \non to the hunting spears \u2013 just so did young Helenor leap into  \nthe middle of his enemies, rushing to his death where he saw the  \nsteel was thickest. But Lycus was far fleeter of foot. He ran the  \ngauntlet of the enemy and their weapons as far as the wall.  \nThere as he was trying to take hold of the top of the outworks  \nand reach the outstretched hands of his comrades, Turnus, who  \n560 had been pursuing him with his javelin, came to gloat over him:  \n'You fool! Did you think you could escape my hands?' and even  \nas he shouted, he seized hold of him where he hung and tore  \nhim down, taking a great section of the wall with him, like the  \neagle, the armour-bearer of Jupiter, seizing in his hooked talons  \na hare or the white body of a swan and soaring into the air with  \nit; or like the wolf of Mars tearing a lamb out of the sheep pen,  \nand loud and long will be the bleating of its mother, as she looks  \nfor it.\n\nThe shouting rose on every side. The attackers levelled the  \nrampart, filled in the ditch and tossed blazing torches high on  \n570 to the roofs. Lucetius, who was coming to set fire to a gate, was  \nlaid low by a rock thrown by Ilioneus, a huge block torn out of  \na mountain. Liger felled Emathion with a javelin; Asilas brought  \ndown Corynaeus with an arrow he never saw in all its long flight.  \nCaeneus slew Ortygius; Turnus slew the victorious Caeneus;  \nTurnus also slew Itys and Clonius, Dioxippus and Promolus,  \nthen Sagaris and Idas, who was standing out in front of the  \nhighest towers. Privernus was killed by Capys: Themillas had  \nfirst grazed him with a light spear and the fool had thrown his  \nshield away to put his hand to the wound. So the winged arrow  \n580 flew and, plunging deep into his left side, it broke the passages  \nof his life's breath with a mortal wound. The son of Arcens  \nstood there in gorgeous armour, resplendent in his embroidered  \ncloak and Spanish purple, a noble sight to see. He had been sent  \nto war by his father, who had reared him in his mother's grove  \non the banks of the river Symaethus where the people of Sicily  \nmade their offerings at the rich altar of the mild god Palicius.  \nMezentius laid down his spears. Then, whirling his sling three  \ntimes round his head, he shot the hissing bolt and struck the son  \nof Arcens full in the middle of the forehead. Melting in its flight,  \nthe lead bullet split his skull and stretched him full length on  \nthe sand.\n\n590 It was then, men say, that Ascanius first shot in war the swift  \narrow which till this time had only driven wild animals to terror  \nand flight, and his was the hand that laid the brave Numanus  \nlow. This was a warrior whose family name was Remulus, and  \nnot long before he had been joined in marriage to the younger  \nsister of Turnus. His heart was swollen with pride at the royal  \nrank he had newly acquired, and he stepped out in front of the  \nbattle line, swaggering and shouting abuse, some fit and some  \nunfit to be repeated: 'You have been sacked twice already, you  \nPhrygians! Are you not ashamed to be cooped up again in a  \nsiege behind ramparts with only a wall between yourselves and  \n600 death! Are you the men who came here to fight us for our brides?  \nIs it some god that has driven you to Italy? Or some madness?  \nYou will not find here the sons of Atreus or the fictions and fine  \nwords of Ulixes! We are men of a hardy stock. We take our  \nbabies down to the river the moment they are born and harden  \nthem in the icy water. Our boys stay awake all night and weary  \nthe woods with their hunting. For games they ride horses and  \nstretch the bow to the arrow. Our men endure hard labour and  \nlive spare, subduing the land with the mattock and shaking the  \ntowns of their enemies with war. We are worn hard by iron all  \n610 our lives and turn our spears to goad our oxen. There is no  \nsluggish old age for us to impair the strength and vigour of our  \nminds. We crush our grey hair into the helmet, and our delight  \nis always to bring home new plunder and live off what we take.  \nBut you like your clothes dyed with yellow saffron and the  \nbright juice of the purple fish. Your delight is in dancing and  \nidleness. You have sleeves to your tunics and ribbons to keep  \nyour bonnets on. You are Phrygian women, not Phrygian men!  \nAway with you over the heights of Mount Dindymus, where  \nyou can hear your favourite tunes on the double pipe. The  \ntambourines are calling you and the boxwood fifes of the Berecyntian  \n620 Mother of Mount Ida. Leave weapons to the men. Make  \nway for the iron of our swords.'\n\nSo he hurled his abuse and threats till Ascanius could endure  \nit no longer. Turning to face him, he drew his bow and stretched  \nthe horsegut string, and as he stood there with his arms straining  \nwide apart, he prayed first to Jupiter with this vow: 'All powerful  \nJupiter, bless now this my first trial of arms, and with  \nmy own hands I shall bring yearly offerings to your temple and  \nset before your altar a milk-white bullock, with gilded horns,  \nholding its head as high as its mother's, already butting with its  \n630 horns and kicking up the sand with its hooves.' The Father  \nheard and thundered on the left from a clear sky, and the sound  \nof the death-dealing bow of Ascanius mingled with the sound  \nof the thunder. The arrow had been drawn back, and it flew  \nwith a fearful hiss straight through the head of Remulus, its iron  \npoint piercing his hollow temples. 'Go, Remulus!' he cried, 'and  \nmock brave men with proud words! This is the reply to the  \nRutulians from the twice-sacked Phrygians!' Ascanius said no  \nmore than this, but the Trojans followed it with a shout of joy,  \ntheir spirits raised to the skies.\n\nAt that moment Apollo, the youthful god, whose hair is never  \ncut, chanced to be seated on a cloud, looking down from the  \n640 expanse of heaven on the armies and cities of Italy, and he  \naddressed these words to the victorious Iulus: 'You have become  \na man, young Iulus, and we salute you! This is the way that  \nleads to the stars. You are born of the gods and will live to be  \nthe father of gods. Justice demands that all the wars that Fate  \nwill bring will come to an end under the offspring of Assaracus.  \nTroy is not large enough for you.' At these words he plunged  \ndown from the heights of heaven, parting the breathing winds,  \nand made for Ascanius, taking on the features of old Butes.  \nButes had once been armour-bearer to the Dardan Anchises and  \nthe trusted guard of his door, and Aeneas had then appointed  \nhim as companion to his son Ascanius. This was the guise in  \n650 which Apollo came, the old man Butes to the life \u2013 voice,  \ncolouring, white hair, weapons grimly clanking \u2013 and these were  \nthe words he spoke to Iulus in the flush of his victory: 'Let that  \nbe enough, son of Aeneas. Numanus has fallen to your arms  \nand you are unhurt. Great Apollo has granted you this first taste  \nof glory and does not grudge you arrows as sure as his own.  \nYou must ask for no more, my boy, in this war.' So began  \nApollo, but while speaking, he left the sight of men, fading  \nfrom their eyes into the insubstantial air. The Trojan leaders  \n660 recognized the god. They knew his divine arrows and the quiver  \nthat sounded as he flew. So, although Ascanius was thirsting for  \nbattle, they held him back, urging upon him the words of  \nPhoebus Apollo and the will of the god. But they themselves  \nwent back into battle and put their lives into naked danger. The  \nshouting rang round the ramparts all along the walls. They bent  \ntheir deadly bows and twisted their spear thongs till the ground  \nwas strewn with missiles. Shield and round helmet rang with  \nthe blows as fiercer and fiercer raged the battle. It was like a  \ngreat shower from the west drumming on the earth in the rainy  \nseason when the Kids are rising, or like hailstones dropping  \n670 from the clouds into the sea when the south wind is blowing  \nand Jupiter hurls down squalls of rain in his fury and bursts the  \nhollow thunderclouds in the sky.\n\nPandarus and Bitias, sons of Alcanor of Mount Ida, had been  \nbrought up by the wood nymph Iaera in the grove of Jupiter  \nand they were built like the pines and mountains of their fatherland.  \nSo sure were they of their weapons that they now flung  \nopen the gate that had been entrusted to them by their leader's  \ncommands, and took it upon themselves to invite the enemy to  \ncome within the walls. They themselves stood inside at the  \nready, like twin towers, one on the right and one on the left,  \narmed in steel, with their crests flashing high on their heads.  \nThey were like a pair of tall oaks by a flowing river, on the  \n680 banks of the Po or by the lovely Adige, holding their unshorn  \nheads up to the sky with their high tops nodding in the breeze.  \nAs soon as they saw the gate open, the Rutulians came bursting  \nin. Quercens and Aquiculus in splendid armour, impetuous  \nTmarus and Haemon, son of Mars, but instantly with all their  \nmen they either turned and ran or gave up their lives on the very  \nthreshold of the gate. The fury mounted in all their hearts as  \nthey fought. Trojans now came crowding to the spot and not  \n690 only joined in the fray but also dared to sally out further and  \nfurther in front of the gate.\n\nMeanwhile Turnus, the Rutulian commander, was raging and  \nstorming and creating havoc in another part of the field, when  \na message arrived to say that the enemy were hot with the  \nRutulian blood they were now spilling and that open gates were  \non offer. Turnus instantly abandoned the work he had in hand  \nand rushed to the Trojan gate in a savage rage to meet these  \narrogant brothers. The first man to fall to his javelin was Antiphates  \n\u2013 for he was the first to confront him. Antiphates was the  \nbastard son of great Sarpedon by a Theban mother. The spear  \nof Italian cornel wood flew through the unresisting air, went in  \n700 by his belly and twisted upwards deep into his chest. A wave of  \nfrothing blood welled out of the black hole of the wound, and  \nthe steel grew warm where it had lodged in the lung. Then  \nErymas and Meropes fell to his hand; then Aphidnus; then Bitias  \nhimself for all the fire that flashed from his eyes and the roaring  \nfury of his heart. No javelin for him. He was not the man to  \nyield his life to a javelin. It was an artillery spear with an iron  \nhead a cubit long and a ball of lead at its butt which came rifling  \nthrough the air with a loud hiss and the force of a thunderbolt.  \nThe two bull-hides of his shield did not resist it, nor did his  \ntrusty breastplate with its overlapping scales of gold. His huge  \nbody collapsed and fell. The earth groaned and the mighty shield  \n710 thundered as it came down on top of him. It was like the fall of  \na stone pile by the shore at Euboean Baiae; men first build it to  \nits massive height and then they let it down into the sea, and it  \nspreads ruin all along its length, grinding the sea-bed as it settles  \nin the shallows; the water boils, the black sand rises, the high  \nrock of Procida is shaken, and Inarime with it, the hard bed laid  \nfor Typhoeus at Jupiter's command.\n\nNow Mars, mighty in war, put new spirit and strength into  \nthe Latins and twisted a sharp goad into their flesh, while  \n720 sending Flight and black Fear upon the Trojans. Now that their  \nchance had come to fight, the Latins gathered from all sides and  \nthe God of War stormed their hearts. When Pandarus saw his  \nbrother stretched out in death and knew how his fortunes stood  \nand the turn events were taking, he put his broad shoulder to  \nthe gate with all his force and heaved it shut on its hinges,  \nleaving many of his own people cut off outside the walls with a  \nhard battle to fight, but taking in those who came running, and  \nshutting them in with himself. Fool that he was! He did not see  \nthe Rutulian king bursting into the city in the middle of the  \n730 press. By his own act he penned him in like a great tiger among  \nhelpless cattle. In that instant a new light shone from the eyes  \nof Turnus. He clashed his armour with a fearsome noise, the  \nblood-red crest trembled on his head, his shield flashed lightning.  \nSuddenly Aeneas' men recognized him \u2013 the hated face, the huge  \nbody \u2013 and were thrown into confusion. But the giant Pandarus  \nleapt forward to confront him, burning with anger at the death  \nof his brother: 'This is not your bridal chamber in the palace of  \nAmata!' he shouted. 'Turnus is not safe in the middle of Ardea  \nbehind his father's walls. This is the camp of your enemies and  \n740 there is no way out.' Turnus replied, smiling calmly: 'If there is  \nany courage in you, then come and fight. You will soon be able  \nto tell Priam that here too you found an Achilles!' At these  \nwords Pandarus took a spear of rough, knotted wood with its  \nbark unplaned and hurled it with all his force. As it flew to  \nwound Turnus, the winds caught it, Juno deflected it and it  \nlodged in the gate. 'You will not escape this weapon of mine,'  \ncalled out Turnus, 'which I brandish here in my right hand. This  \nsword is wielded by a different arm, and gives a deeper wound.'  \nWith these words he lifted it above his head, rising with it, and  \n750 struck Pandarus between the temples. The blade went straight  \nthrough the middle of the forehead and parted the smooth,  \nyoung cheeks. The wound was hideous. He fell with a crash and  \nthe ground shook with the weight of him. As he lay dying he  \nstrewed around his nerveless limbs and armour blooded with  \nbrains, and the two halves of his head hung on his two shoulders.\n\nThe Trojans turned and ran in terror. If at that moment the  \nvictor had thought of breaking the bolts and letting his comrades  \nin through the gates, that would have been the end of the war  \n760 and the end of the Trojan race, but instead his mad lust for  \nblood drove him upon his enemies in an ecstasy of passion. First  \nhe caught Phaleris and Gyges, slitting his hamstrings. He then  \ntook their spears, and with Juno lending him strength and spirit,  \nhe hurled them into the backs of the retreating enemy. Next he  \nsent Halys to keep them company and Phegeus, the spear passing  \nthrough his shield; then Alcander, Halius, Noemon and Prytanis,  \nwho were on the walls in the thick of battle and did not  \nknow he was inside. Now Lynceus was coming at him and  \ncalling on his comrades for help. Turnus from the rampart on  \n770 his right stopped him short with one flashing stroke of his sword,  \na blow from close range that severed the head and sent it flying  \nfar from the body, helmet and all. Next he brought down  \nAmycus, that mighty hunter and slayer of wild beasts \u2013 no man  \nbetter to charge the spear-point with poison or smear the tip of  \nthe arrow; then Clytius, son of Aeolus, and Cretheus, that dear  \ncompanion of the Muses, Cretheus, a great lover of song and of  \nthe lyre, a great setter of poems to the strings, always singing  \nof horses and armour and the battles of heroes.\n\nAt last the Trojan leaders, Mnestheus and the bold Serestus,  \nhearing of the slaughter of their men, came on the scene to find  \n780 their allies scattering and the enemy within the walls. 'Where  \nare you running to now, citizens?' cried Mnestheus. 'Where is  \nthere to go? What other walls have you? What other defences  \nwhen you leave these? Can one man, and one man hemmed in  \non every side by your ramparts, cause all this slaughter and send  \nso many of your best fighting men to their deaths all over your  \ncity, and still live? Have you no spirit? Have you no shame? No  \nthought for your fatherland in its anguish, for your ancient gods  \nor for great Aeneas?' These words fired them. They rallied and  \nheld fast in close formation while Turnus gradually began to  \n790 disengage, making for the river and the part of the camp in the  \nbend of the river. Seeing this the Trojans laid on all the harder,  \nshouting at the top of their voices and crowding him like a pack  \nof huntsmen with levelled spears pressing hard on a savage lion;  \nthe lion is afraid and gives ground, but he is still dangerous, still  \nglaring at his attackers; his anger and his courage forbid him to  \nturn tail, and though he would dearly love to, he cannot charge  \nthrough the wall of steel and the press of men \u2013 just so did  \nTurnus give ground, uncertain but unhurried, and his mind was  \n800 boiling with rage. Twice he even hurled himself into the middle  \nof his enemies, breaking their ranks and sending them flying  \nalong the walls, but a whole army came together in a rush  \nagainst him from the camp, and Juno, daughter of Saturn, did  \nnot dare to renew his strength to withstand them, for Jupiter  \nsent Iris down from the sky bearing stern commands through  \nthe air for his sister Juno if Turnus did not withdraw from the  \nhigh walls of the Trojans. So sword-arm and shield were of no  \navail. The warrior could no longer stand his ground in the hail  \nof weapons that overwhelmed him from every side. The helmet  \nrang and rang again on his hollow temples and the solid bronze  \n810 was cracked by rocks. The plumes were torn from his head and  \nthe boss of his shield gave way under the blows. The Trojans  \ndoubled their barrage and the spear of Mnestheus was like the  \nlightning. Sweat poured off the whole body of Turnus like a  \nriver of pitch and he was given no breathing space. His lungs  \nwere heaving. He was shaking and sick with weariness. Then,  \nand only then, he dived head first into the river in full armour.  \nThe Tiber took him when he came into his yellow tide, bore him  \nup in his soft waves, washing away the blood of slaughter, and  \ngave him back in high heart to his comrades.\n\n## BOOK 10  \nPALLAS AND MEZENTIUS\n\nMeanwhile the house of All-powerful Olympus was thrown  \nopen and the Father of Gods and King of Men summoned a  \ncouncil to his palace among the stars, from whose steep heights  \nhe looked down upon all the lands of the earth, upon the Trojan  \ncamp and the peoples of Latium. The gods sat in their chamber  \nopen east and west to the light, and Jupiter began to speak: 'O  \ngreat dwellers in the sky, why have you gone back on your  \nword? Why do you contend with such bitterness of heart? I had  \nforbidden Italy to clash with the Trojans. Why is there discord  \n10 against my express command? What has made them afraid and  \ninduced them to take up arms and make each other draw the  \nsword? The time will come for war \u2013 there is no need to hasten  \nit \u2013 when barbarous Carthage will let destruction loose upon  \nthe citadels of Rome, opening up the Alps and sending them  \nagainst Italy. That will be the time for pillaging, and for hate to  \nvie with hate. But now let it be. A treaty has been decided upon.  \nAccept it, and be content.'\n\nThese were the few words spoken by Jupiter, but when golden  \nVenus replied, her words were not few: 'O father, imperishable  \npower over men and over all the world \u2013 how could there be  \n20 any other to whom we might address our prayers? \u2013 you see the  \nRutulians rampant and Turnus riding in glory in the midst of  \nthem, swollen with the success of his arms. A closed ring of  \nfortifications no longer offers protection to the Trojans. They  \nnow have to fight hand to hand inside their gates, even on the  \nramparts of their walls, and their ditches are swimming with  \nblood. Aeneas is far away and knows nothing of this. Will you  \nnever allow them to be free of besiegers? Even as Troy is being  \nreborn, a new enemy is threatening its walls with a new army  \nbehind him, and from Arpi the Aetolian Diomede is once more  \nrising against the Trojans. I suppose I shall soon be wounded  \n30 again \u2013 after all, mortals are at war and your daughter stands in  \ntheir way!\n\n'If the Trojans have come to Italy without your approval, in  \ndefiance of your heavenly will, they must be punished for their  \nsins and you must not raise a finger to help them. But if they  \nhave obeyed all the commands they have received from the gods  \nabove and the shades below, how can anyone overturn what  \nyou have ordered or fashion a new destiny? You have seen their  \nships burned on the shores of my own son Eryx. You have seen  \nthe king of the storms and his raging winds roused out of their  \nAeolian island. You have seen Iris driven down from the clouds.  \nAnd now she even turns to the one remaining part of the world  \n40 and stirs up the powers below \u2013 Allecto has suddenly been let  \nloose upon the earth and has run wild through all the cities in  \nthe middle of Italy! I no longer give a thought to empire. That  \nwas our hope, as you well know, while our fortunes remained.  \nBut those who must prevail are those you wish to prevail. If  \nthere is no region on earth that your cruel queen could concede  \nto the Trojans, I beg of you, father, by the smoking ruins of the  \nsacked city of Troy, allow me to take Ascanius safely out of the  \nwar. Allow my grandson to live. As for Aeneas, let him be tossed  \nby storms in unknown waters and go the road that Fortune  \n50 gives him, but grant me the power to protect Ascanius and take  \nhim out of this fearful battle. I have Amathus. I have lofty  \nPaphos, and Cythera, and my palace at Idalium. Let him lay  \ndown his arms and there live out his life in obscurity, while you  \ngive the order for Italy to be crushed beneath the mighty empire  \nof Carthage. The cities of Tyre will have nothing to fear from  \nAscanius. What good has it done him to escape the plague of  \nwar and come safe through the middle of all the fires of the  \nGreeks, to have drained the cup of danger over all the vast earth  \nand sea while the Trojans have been searching for Latium and  \na new Pergamum? Would it not have been better for them to  \n60 settle on the dead ashes of their native land, on the soil that was  \nonce Troy? Take pity on them, I beg you, and if the wretched  \nTrojans must live again the fall of Troy, give them back their  \nXanthus and their Simois.'\n\nAt this Juno, Queen of Heaven, burst out, wild with rage:  \n'Why do you force me to break my deep silence? The scars have  \nformed over my wounds. Why do you make me speak and  \nreopen them? Neither man nor god compelled Aeneas to choose  \nthe ways of war and confront king Latinus as an enemy. We are  \ntold he has the authority of the Fates for coming to Italy. The  \nFates, indeed! He was goaded into it by the ravings of Cassandra!  \nAnd did we urge him to abandon his camp or put his life at  \n70 the mercy of the winds? Did we advise him to entrust his  \nfortifications and the whole management of the war to a boy?  \nTo disturb the loyalty of the Etruscans and stir up a peaceful  \npeople? Was it a god that drove him to dishonesty? Was it some  \ncruel power of mine? Where is Juno in all this? Where is Iris  \nsent down from the clouds? It is wrong, we hear, for Italians to  \nring Troy with fire at the moment of its birth, and for Turnus  \nto take his stand in the land of his fathers, Turnus, whose  \ngrandfather was Pilumnus and whose mother was the goddess  \nVenilia. Why then is it right for Trojans to raise the blacksmoking  \ntorches of war against Latins, to put other men's lands  \nunder their yoke, to carry off plunder, to pick and choose who  \nare to be their fathers-in-law, to tear brides from their mothers'  \n80 laps and to hold out the olive branch of peace with their weapons  \nfixed on the high sterns of their ships? You can steal Aeneas  \naway from the hands of the Greeks, and where there was a man  \nyou can spread a cloud with empty winds. You can change ships  \ninto sea nymphs. Is it an impiety if we in our turn have given  \nsome help to the Rutulians? Aeneas, you tell us, is far away and  \nknows nothing of all this. Keep him in ignorance and let him  \nstay away! You have Paphos and Idalium. You have the heights  \nof Cythera. Why do you concern yourself with those roughhearted  \nItalians and their city teeming with war? You claim  \nwe are trying to overturn from the foundations the tottering  \nfortunes of these Phrygians from Troy. No! Who was it who  \n90 put your wretched Trojans at the mercy of the Greeks? What  \ncaused Europe and Asia to rise in arms and betray the sacred  \nties of friendship? Was I in the lead when the Trojan adulterer  \nstormed the walls of Sparta? Did I hand him his weapons? Was  \nit I who kindled the fires of war with lust? That was when you  \nshould have feared for your people. Now, when it is too late,  \nyou get to your feet with these complaints and lies, and hurl this  \nempty abuse.'\n\nAs Juno was making her plea, all the gods began to murmur  \nin support or in dissent. It was like the murmuring of a storm  \nwhen the first breeze is caught in a wood and the rustling rolls  \nthrough the trees unseen, warning sailors that winds are on the  \n100 way. Then the All-powerful Father, the highest power in all the  \nuniverse, began to speak, and at his voice the lofty palace of  \nthe gods fell silent, the earth trembled to its foundations and the  \nheights of heaven were hushed. The winds in that moment were  \nstilled and the sea kept its waves at peace. 'So be it,' he said.  \n'Hear my words and lay them to your hearts. Since you have  \nnot allowed the people of Ausonia to be joined in a treaty with  \nthe Trojans, and since there is no end to this discord of yours,  \nthis day let each man face his own fortune and set his course by  \nhis own hopes. Trojan and Rutulian I shall treat alike. Whether  \n110 this camp is blockaded by the destiny of Italy or because of the  \nfolly and wickedness of the Trojans and false prophecies they  \nhave received, as each man has set up his loom, so will he endure  \nthe labour and the fortune of it \u2013 I do not exempt the Rutulians.  \nJupiter is the same king to all men. The Fates will find their  \nway.' Then, swearing an oath by the waves of the Styx, his  \nbrother's river, by the banks and dark whirlpools of that pitch-black  \ntorrent, he nodded and his nod shook the whole of  \nOlympus. There were no more words. He rose from his golden  \nthrone, and the heavenly gods thronged around him and  \nescorted him to the threshold.\n\nThe Rutulians meanwhile were fighting hard round each of  \nthe gates to bring down their enemies in blood and ring their  \n120 walls with fire, while Aeneas' legion was trapped inside its own  \nramparts with no hope of escape. Helpless and desperate, they  \nstood on their high towers and manned the circle of their walls  \nwith a thin line of defenders. Asius, son of Imbrasus, Thymoetes,  \nson of Hicetaon, the two Assaraci and old Thymbris alongside  \nCastor were there in the forefront of the battle, and the two  \nbrothers of Sarpedon were with them, Clarus and Thaemon  \nfrom the mountains of Lycia. Acmon of Lyrnesus, as great a  \nwarrior as his father Clytius or his brother Mnestheus, was  \nputting out all his strength to carry a boulder, no small part of  \n130 a mountain, while they strove to defend their camp by throwing  \nrocks and javelins, or hurling fire and fitting arrows to the string.  \nThere in the middle of them, with his noble head bared, stood  \nthe boy Ascanius for whom the goddess Venus cares above all  \nothers, and rightly cares. He was like a gem sparkling in its gold  \nsetting, an adornment for a head or neck, or like glowing ivory  \nskilfully inlaid in boxwood or Orician terebinth, and his long  \nhair lay on his milk-white neck, held in place by a circlet of soft  \ngold. There too was Ismarus. The warriors of those great-hearted  \n140 peoples could see him tipping his arrows with poison  \nand aiming them at the enemy. He was the offshoot of a noble  \nhouse in Maeonia where men worked the rich lands and the  \nriver Pactolus watered them with gold. Mnestheus also was  \nthere, raised to the heights of glory for his recent repulse of  \nTurnus out of the ring of the walls; Capys, too, who gives his  \nname to the city of Capua in Campania.\n\nThese were the men who clashed that day in bitter fighting.  \nIn the middle of the night that followed, Aeneas was ploughing  \nthe waves of the ocean. After leaving king Evander, he had  \nentered the Etruscan camp and gone to their king to tell him his  \n150 name and nation, what he wanted, what he offered and what  \narmed forces Mezentius was winning to his support. He told  \nhim too of the violent passions of Turnus and reminded him  \nthat in human affairs there is no room for certainty, and to all  \nthis he added his appeal for help. Tarchon instantly joined forces  \nwith him and made a treaty. Then these Etruscans, these men  \nof Lydian stock, having paid their debts to destiny, put to sea  \nand committed themselves to a foreign leader in accordance  \nwith the will of the gods. Aeneas' ship took the lead. Phrygian  \nlions were yoked to it for a beak, and above them the figurehead  \nwas Mount Ida, a sight most dear to the Trojan exiles. Here sat  \n160 great Aeneas, turning over in his mind the varied chances of  \nwar, and all the while young Pallas stayed close by his left side,  \nasking him now about the stars and the course they were steering  \nthrough the darkness of the night, now about all he had suffered  \nby land and sea.\n\nNow goddesses, it is time to open up Mount Helicon, to set  \nyour songs in motion and tell of the army which came that night  \nwith Aeneas from the shores of Etruria, to say who fitted out  \nthe ships and who sailed in them across the ocean.\n\nMassicus was the first, cutting through the water on the  \nbronze-plated _Tiger_. Under him sailed a band of a thousand  \nwarriors who had left behind them the walls of Clusium and the  \ncity of Cosae. Their weapons were arrows carried in light quivers  \non their shoulders, and death-dealing bows.\n\n170 With them sailed grim Abas, whose whole troop shone in  \nbrilliant armour, and a gilded Apollo gleamed on the stern of  \nhis ship. Populonia, his motherland, had given him six hundred  \nfighting men, skilful in the wars, while three hundred came from  \nIlua, the island of the Chalybes, teeming with its inexhaustible  \nores.\n\nThe third ship was sailed by Asilas, the great mediator  \nbetween gods and men, master of the stars of the sky and the  \nentrails of the beasts of the field, of bird cries and the prescient  \nfires of lightning. He sped along leading a thousand men in close  \nformation with their spears bristling. Pisa put them under his  \n180 command, a city on Etruscan soil but founded by men from the  \nAlpheus, the river of Olympia.\n\nNext in line sailed fair Astyr, whose trust was in his horse and  \nhis iridescent armour. To him were joined three hundred men,  \nand all were as one in their zeal to follow him, men whose home  \nwas Caere, men from the fields of Minio, from ancient Pyrgi  \nand the unwholesome swamps of Graviscae.\n\nNor could I pass over Cunarus, so brave in war, the leader of  \nthe Ligurians, nor Cupavo with his small band of fighting men.  \nHigh above his head tossed the swan feathers that were a token  \nof his father's change of form \u2013 all the fault of the God of Love.  \nThey say that Cycnus sought comfort from the Muse for the  \nsadness of his love, by singing of the loss of his dear Phaethon  \n190 in the green shade of the poplars that had been Phaethon's  \nsisters. There, when he grew old, he put on soft white plumage  \nand rose from the earth, singing as he flew towards the stars. It  \nwas his son who now commanded the huge _Centaur_ , driving it  \nalong under oar, and with him in his fleet he took a throng  \nof his peers. The Centaur figurehead loomed over the water,  \nthreatening to hurl down a massive rock into the waves from its  \ndizzy height, and the long keel ploughed its furrow deep in the  \nsea.\n\nThere too was Ocnus, driving on an army from his fatherland.  \nHe was the son of Manto the prophetess and the Tuscan river  \n200 Tiber. To you, Mantua, he gave your walls and the name of his  \nmother \u2013 Mantua, rich in the roll of its forefathers, and not all  \nof one race, but of three, and in each race four peoples. Of all  \nthese peoples Mantua is the head, and its strength comes from  \nits Etruscan blood. From here too, Mezentius had roused five  \nhundred men to fight against him, and these the river Mincius,  \nveiled in blue-green reeds, led down to the sea in their ships of  \nwar from his father, Lake Benacus. There sailed Aulestes, heavy  \nin the water, but rising as his hundred oars thrashed the waves  \nand churned the marble of the sea to foam. He sailed the  \n210 monstrous _Triton_ , which terrified the blue sea with its horn. As  \nit swam along, its figurehead showed a shaggy front like a man  \nas far as its flanks, but its belly ended in a monster of the deep,  \nwhile under the breast of this creature, half-man half-beast, the  \nwaves foamed and murmured.\n\nThese were the chosen leaders who went to the help of Troy  \nin their thirty ships, and ploughed the plains of salt with bronze.\n\nBy now the day had left the sky and Phoebe, the kindly  \nGoddess of the Moon, was pounding the middle of Olympus  \nwith the hooves of her night-wandering horses. Duty allowed  \nno rest to the limbs of Aeneas. As he sat controlling the tiller  \n220 and seeing to the sails, a band of his old comrades came suddenly  \ntowards him in mid-voyage. They were nymphs, the nymphs  \ninto whom his ships had been changed at the bidding of the  \nkindly Mother Goddess Cybele, and they now held divine power  \nover the sea. There they were, swimming in line, as many of  \nthem now cleaving the waves as had then stood to the shore  \nwith bronze-plated prows. They recognized their king from a  \ndistance and danced around him in the water, and Cymodocea,  \nthe best speaker among them, came behind his ship and putting  \nher right hand on its stern, raised her back out of the water,  \nwhile her left hand was below the surface, oaring silently along.  \nAeneas was still bewildered when she began to speak to him:  \n'Are you awake, Aeneas,' she asked, 'son of the gods? Wake  \n230 then and let out the sail-ropes. We are the pines from the sacred  \ntop of Mount Ida, now sea nymphs. We are your fleet. When  \nthe treacherous Rutulian was pressing us hard with fire and  \nsword, against our wishes we had to break the moorings you  \ngave us, and now we have been looking for you all over the  \nocean. Mother Cybele took pity on us and gave us this new  \nform, allowing us to become goddesses and spend our lives  \nbeneath the waves. But the boy Ascanius is trapped behind a  \nwall and ditches, surrounded by missiles and by Latins bristling  \nwith war. The Arcadian cavalry from Pallanteum are now in  \ntheir places as ordered, along with the brave Etruscans, and  \n240 Turnus has firmly resolved to prevent them joining forces with  \nthe Trojan camp by taking up position between them with his  \nown troops. Up with you then, and at the first coming of dawn,  \norder your allies to arms and then take up the invincible shield  \nwith its rim of gold given you by the God of Fire himself.  \nTomorrow's light, unless you think these are empty words of  \nmine, will see the field of battle heaped high with Rutulian  \ndead.' So she spoke, and as she left him she gave the high stern  \na push with her right hand \u2013 and well she knew the art of it. The  \nship flew through the waves faster than a javelin or wind-swift  \narrow, and the others sped along behind it. The leader of the  \n250 Trojans, the son of Anchises, was struck dumb with bewilderment,  \nbut his heart lifted at the omen, and looking up to the  \nvault of heaven, he uttered this short prayer: 'Kindly Mother of  \nthe Gods, dweller on Ida, who takes delight in Mount  \nDindymus, in cities crowned with towers and in the lion pair  \nresponsive to your chariot reins, be now my leader in this battle.  \nBring near to us the due fulfilment of your omen. Stand by the  \nside of your Phrygians and give us your divine blessing.' These  \nwere his words, and even as he spoke them the revolving day  \nwas already rushing back in its full brightness and had put the  \ndarkness to flight. His first thought was to order his allies to  \nfollow the standards, to fit their minds for the use of their  \nweapons and prepare themselves for battle.\n\n260 And now, as soon as Aeneas, standing high on the stern of  \nhis ship, could see the Trojans and his own camp, at that moment  \nhe lifted the shield on his left arm and made it flash. The Trojans  \non the wall raised a shout to heaven, fresh hope renewing their  \nanger, and they hurled their spears, like cranes from the river  \nStrymon in Thrace giving out their signals under the black  \nclouds, trumpeting as they cross the sky and flying before the  \nstorm winds with exultant cries. The Rutulian king and the  \nleaders of Italy were amazed until they turned round and saw a  \nfleet making for the shore and a whole sea of ships gliding in  \n270 towards them. On the head of Aeneas there blazed a tongue of  \nfire, baleful flames poured from the top of his crest and the  \ngolden boss of his shield belched great streams of fire, like the  \ngloomy, blood-red glow of a comet on a clear night, or the  \ndismal blaze of Sirius the Dog-star shedding its sinister light  \nacross the sky and bringing thirst and disease to suffering  \nmortals.\n\nBut the bold confidence of Turnus never wavered as he quickly  \ntook up position on the shore to repel the landing. 'This is the  \nanswer to your prayer,' he cried, 'now is the time to break them.  \n280 Brave men have the God of War in their own right arms. Each  \nof you must now think of his own wife and his own home and  \nremember the great deeds which brought glory to our fathers.  \nLet us go down to the sea to meet them while they are still in  \nconfusion and finding their feet after landing. Fortune favours  \nthe bold.' So he spoke and pondered in his mind who could be  \nled against the fleet and who could be trusted to keep up the  \nsiege of the walls.\n\nMeanwhile Aeneas was landing his allies by gang-planks from  \nthe high sterns. Many waited for the spent waves to be sucked  \n290 back and then took a leap into the shallow water. Others were  \nclambering down the oars. Tarchon, who had been looking out  \nfor a stretch of shore where there seemed to be no shoals and  \nno grumbling of broken water, where the swelling tide could  \ncome in without obstruction, suddenly swung his ship round  \nand appealed to his comrades: 'Now, my chosen band, now  \nbend to your stout oars. Up with your ships out of the water.  \nTake the weight of them. Split with your rams this land that we  \nhate, and let each keel plough its own furrow. I do not care if  \nmy ship is wrecked by such a mooring, if only we take possession  \nof this land.' When Tarchon had spoken, his comrades rose to  \n300 their oars and drove their ships foaming at the prow, hard on  \nto the soil at Latium, till their beaks struck home on dry land  \nand their keels were safely settled. But not yours, Tarchon.  \nYou ran aground on a shoal and hung there see-sawing on a  \ndangerous ridge of rock, till at last the waves were weary of you  \nand your ship broke up, throwing your men into the sea to be  \ntangled in smashed oars and floating thwarts, as the undertow  \nof the waves kept taking the feet from them.\n\nTurnus was no sluggard. Wasting no time he eagerly led his  \nwhole force to face the Trojans and drew them up at the ready  \n310 on the shore. The trumpets sounded, and Aeneas was the first  \nto move against the army of the country people of Latium and  \nlay them low. This was an omen of the battle that was to come.  \nTheron was the first to fall. He was the tallest of their warriors,  \nand had taken it upon himself to attack Aeneas. Through the  \nmesh of his chain mail of bronze, through his tunic stiffened  \nwith threads of gold, Aeneas tore a huge gash with his sword in  \nthe flesh of his side. He then struck Lichas. His mother was  \nalready dead when Lichas was cut from her womb and dedicated  \nto Phoebus Apollo, the God of Healing. Little good did it do the  \nbaby to escape the hazard of steel at birth. Next Aeneas saw  \nhuge Gyas and tough Cisseus felling the embattled Trojans with  \ntheir clubs, and sent them down to death. Nothing could help  \n320 them now: not the weapons of Hercules, nor the strength of  \ntheir hands, nor their father Melampus, who had stood by the  \nside of Hercules as long as the earth supplied him with heavy  \nlabours to perform. There was Pharus, hurling his empty threats,  \ntill Aeneas spun the javelin and planted it in his throat even as  \nhe shouted. You too, Cydon, desperately following your latest  \nbeloved Clytius, with the first gold down on his cheeks, would  \nhave forgotten the young men you were always in love with.  \nYou would have fallen by the right hand of a Trojan and lain  \nthere for men to pity, had not Aeneas been confronted by seven  \n330 brothers in serried ranks, the sons of Phorcus, hurling their  \nseven spears. Some rebounded harmlessly from his helmet or  \nhis shield. Others his loving mother Venus deflected so that they  \nonly grazed his body, and Aeneas addressed his faithful Achates:  \n'Pile up some javelins for me. No weapon that has stood in the  \nbody of a Greek on the plains of Troy will spin in vain from my  \nright hand against Rutulians!' He then caught up a great spear  \nand hurled it. Flying through the air it beat through the bronze  \nof Maeon's shield and shattered in one instant the breastplate  \nand the breast. Alcanor came to help him as he fell, a brother's  \n340 right hand to support a brother. Through Alcanor's arm went  \nthe spear of Aeneas and flew on its way dripping with his blood,  \nwhile the dying arm hung by its tendons from the shoulder.  \nAnother brother, Numitor, snatched the weapon from Maeon's  \nbody and aimed at Aeneas in return, but was not allowed to  \nstrike him, only to graze the thigh of great Achates. Then came  \nClausus of Cures in all the pride of his youthful strength and  \nwith a long-range cast of his unbending spear he struck Dryops  \nfull force under the chin. It went straight through his throat and  \ntook from him in one moment, even as he spoke, his voice and  \nhis life's breath. His forehead struck the ground and his mouth  \n350 vomited great gouts of blood. Then Aeneas laid three Thracians  \nlow, men from the exalted stock of Boreas, then three more sent  \nby their father Idas from their fatherland Ismara, all by different  \nforms of death. Halaesus came running to the spot with his  \nAuruncans; Messapus too, son of Neptune, whose horses drew  \nevery eye. Trojans and Latins were battling on the very threshold  \nof Italy, each striving to dislodge the other, like opposing winds  \nfighting their wars in the great reaches of the sky, equal in spirit  \nand equal in strength; they do not give way to one another,  \nneither the winds themselves nor the clouds nor the sea, but  \nlong rages the fight, undecided, and they all stand locked in  \n360 battle \u2013 just so clashed the armies of Troy and the armies of  \nLatium, foot planted against foot, and man face to face with  \nman.\n\nIn another part of the battle, where a torrent had rolled down  \nboulders and trees uprooted from its banks and strewn them  \neverywhere, Pallas saw his Arcadians, who had for once  \nadvanced on foot, now retreating with Latins in hot pursuit \u2013  \nthe floods had so roughened the ground that they had decided  \nto abandon their horses. One course alone remained \u2013 to fire  \nthe valour of his men by appeals and bitter reproaches: 'Where  \nare you running to, comrades? I beg you by your pride in  \n370 yourselves, by your bravery in time past, by the name of Evander  \nyour leader, by the wars you have won, by the hopes rising in  \nme to gain glory like my father's, this is no time to trust to your  \nfeet! It is swords you need, to cut your way through the enemy.  \nThere, where the moil is thickest, where the attack is fiercest,  \nthat is where your proud fatherland requires you and your  \nleader Pallas to go. These are not gods who are pressing you so  \nhard; they are mortals pursuing mortals. Like us they have two  \nhands, and like us they have one life to lose. Look about you!  \nThe great barrier of ocean closes us in. There is no more land to  \nrun to. Shall we take to the sea? Shall we set course for Troy?'  \nWith these words he threw himself into the thick of his enemies.\n\n380 The first man to meet him, drawn there by an unkindly fate,  \nwas Lagus. While he was trying to tear loose a great heavy rock,  \nPallas hurled his spear and struck him in the middle of the back  \nwhere the spine divides the ribs. Pallas was pulling out the  \nweapon, which had wedged between the bones, when Hisbo  \nswooped on him, hoping to take him by surprise, but Pallas  \ncaught him first in the fury of his charge, made reckless by the  \ncruel death of his comrade. Hisbo's lungs were swollen. Pallas  \nburied his sword in them. He then turned on Sthenius; then on  \nAnchemolus of the ancient stock of Rhoetus, who had shamefully  \n390 debauched his own stepmother. You too fell on the  \nRutulian fields, Larides and Thymber, sons of Daucus, identical  \ntwins, a source of confusion and delight to your parents. But  \nPallas made a grim difference between you: with the sword of  \nhis father Evander he removed the head of Thymber, and cut  \noff the hand of Larides. As it lay there, it groped for its owner  \nand the fingers twitched, still half alive, and kept clutching at  \nthe sword. The Arcadians were stung by Pallas' reproaches, and  \nas they watched his glorious feats, remorse and shame armed  \nthem against their enemies.\n\n400 Then Pallas put a spear through Rhoeteus as he fled past on  \nhis two-horse chariot, and gave that much respite and reprieve  \nto Ilus. For it was against Ilus that Pallas had aimed a long throw  \nwith his mighty spear, but Rhoeteus had come between them  \nand taken the blow while fleeing from great Teuthras and his  \nbrother Tyres. He rolled from his chariot, and died with his  \nheels drumming on the Rutulian ploughland. Just as a shepherd  \nfires a wood at different points when the summer winds get up  \nat last, and suddenly all the flames merge in the middle to make  \none bristling battle-front of fire stretching over the broad plain,  \nand there he sits in triumph looking down on the exulting blaze  \n410 \u2013 just so, Pallas, did the valour of your men all come together in  \none, and put joy in your heart. But Halaesus was a fierce warrior,  \nand he made straight for the enemies that stood in front of him,  \ngathering all his strength behind his weapons. Ladon and Pheres  \nand Demodocus he slew, and his flashing sword ripped off the  \nright hand of Strymonius as it was poised to lunge at his throat.  \nThoas he struck with a rock in the face, shattering the bones  \nand grinding them into the blood-soaked brains. Halaesus was  \nnext. His father, foreseeing the future, had hidden him in the  \nwoods, but when the father grew old and his whitening eyes  \ndissolved in death, the Fates laid a hand on the son and consecrated  \n420 him to Evander's spear. This was the prayer of Pallas  \nbefore he attacked: 'Grant now, O Father Thybris, that the  \nspear I am holding poised to throw may reach the mark and go  \nthrough the stout breast of Halaesus, and I shall strip these arms  \nof his from his body and hang them on your sacred oak as  \nspoils.' The god heard his prayer. As the hapless Halaesus  \nprotected Imaon, he left his breast exposed to the Arcadian  \nspear.\n\nBut Lausus, who was bearing the brunt of the battle, did not  \nallow his men to be dismayed by all this slaughter done by  \nPallas. First of all he slew Abas as he stood before him, the very  \nknot and stumbling-block of war. The youth of Arcadia were  \n430 laid low and the Etruscans fell beside them, and you too,  \nTrojans, who had faced the Greeks unscathed. The armies  \nclashed, equal in their leaders and in their strength, and the  \nwings of the battle line were forced into the centre so that men  \ncould not raise a hand or a weapon in the crowd. On the one  \nside Pallas thrust and pressed, on the other Lausus. They were  \nalmost of an age, and noble in appearance, but Fortune had  \ndenied each of them a homecoming. Yet the ruler of high  \nOlympus did not yet allow their paths to cross, reserving for  \neach his own death at the hand of a stronger enemy.\n\nMeanwhile, after Juturna had advised her dear brother  \n440 Turnus to take the place of Lausus, he cut through the middle  \nof the ranks of warriors on his swift chariot, and as soon as he  \nsaw his allies he called out: 'Time now to stand down from the  \nfighting. I am the only one who attacks Pallas. Pallas is mine,  \nand mine alone. I wish his father were here to see it.' So he  \nspoke and his allies left the ground clear as ordered. When the  \nRutulians withdrew, Pallas marvelled at these proud commands  \nand stood amazed at the sight of Turnus, running his eyes all  \nover that mighty body, his grim stare taking it in part by part  \nfrom where he stood, and these were the words he hurled in  \nreply to the words of the insolent prince: 'I shall win rich  \nrenown today, either for stripping the corpse of the leader of  \n450 my country's enemies, or else for a glorious death. My father  \nwill bear the one fate as easily as the other. Do not waste your  \nthreats on me.' With these words he strode on to the level  \nground in the middle of the battlefield, and the blood of the  \nArcadians froze in their breasts. Turnus leapt down from his  \nchariot and prepared to come to close quarters on foot, flying  \nat him like a lion which has seen from some high vantage point  \na bull practising for combat far away on the plain \u2013 this is how  \nTurnus appeared as he came on. Pallas made the first attack,  \njudging that Turnus would be within range of a spear-cast and  \nhoping that Fortune would favour the weaker for his daring.  \nLifting up his voice to the wide expanse of heaven, he cried: 'I  \n460 call upon you, Hercules of the stock of Alceus, by my father's  \ntable and by the friendship he offered you when you came as a  \nstranger to his home, stand at my side now as I set my hand to  \nthis great task. May Turnus as he dies see me tear the blood-stained  \narmour off his body, and may the last sight he endures  \nbe the face of the man who has defeated him!' Hearing the  \nyoung warrior, Hercules checked the great groan rising from  \nthe depths of his heart and the helpless tears streamed from his  \neyes. Then Father Jupiter spoke these loving words to his son:  \n'Each man has his allotted day. All life is brief and time once  \npast can never be restored. But the task of the brave man is to  \n470 enlarge his fame by his actions. So many sons of gods fell under  \nthe high walls of Troy, and with them fell also my son Sarpedon.  \nTurnus too is called by his own destiny and has reached the  \nlimits of the time he has been given.' So he spoke and instantly  \nturned his eyes away from the Rutulian fields.\n\nBut Pallas hurled his spear with all his strength and tore his  \nbright sword from its enclosing scabbard. The spear flew and  \nfell where the armour stood highest on the shoulder of Turnus,  \nforcing its way through the edge of the shield and grazing at last  \n480 the skin of that huge body. Then Turnus took long aim at Pallas  \nwith his steel-pointed hardwood spear and threw it saying:  \n'Now see whether mine is any better at piercing!' With a shuddering  \nblow it beat through the middle of the shield, through all  \nthe plates of iron and of bronze and all the ox-hides that covered  \nit, and unchecked by the breastplate, it bored through that  \nmighty breast. In desperation Pallas tore the warm blade out of  \nthe wound, and blood and life came out together after it, both  \nby the same channel. He fell forward on the wound, his armour  \nringing on top of his body, and as he died his bleeding mouth  \n490 bit the soil of his enemies. Turnus stood over him and said:  \n'Take this message of mine to Evander, you Arcadians, and do  \nnot forget it: I am sending him back the Pallas he deserves.  \nWhatever honour there is in a tomb, and any comfort he finds  \nin burying him, these I gladly give him. His hospitality to Aeneas  \nwill cost him dear!' With these words he planted his left foot on  \nthe dead body, and tore off the huge, heavy baldric. On this  \ngreat belt an abominable crime was embossed, how in one night,  \nthe night of their marriage, a band of young men were foully  \nslain, and their marriage chambers bathed in blood, all worked  \nby Clonus, son of Eurytus, in a wealth of gold. This was the  \n500 spoil in which Turnus now exulted and he gloried in the taking  \nof it. The mind of man has no knowledge of what Fate holds in  \nstore, and observes no limit when Fortune raises him up. The  \ntime will come when Turnus would gladly pay, and pay richly,  \nto see Pallas alive and unharmed. He will bitterly regret this  \nspoil and the day he took it. A throng of Pallas' comrades laid  \nhim on his shield and carried him back with tears and groans. O  \nPallas, a great grief and a great glory are coming home to your  \nfather! This one day gave you to war, and now takes you from it,  \nand yet you leave behind you huge piles of Rutulian dead.\n\n510 First a rumour of this calamity came flying to Aeneas and  \nthen a reliable messenger, to tell him his men were on the very  \nedge of destruction; the Trojans were in retreat; now was the  \ntime to help them. Everything that stood before him he harvested  \nwith the sword, cutting a broad swathe through the enemy  \nranks, and burning with rage as he looked for this Turnus  \nflushed with slaughter. Before his eyes he could see Pallas,  \nEvander, everything, the table he had sat down to that day when  \nhe first came to their house, and the right hands of friendship  \nthey had given him. Four warrior sons of Sulmo he now captured  \nalive and four reared by Ufens, to sacrifice them as offerings to  \n520 the shade of Pallas and pour their captive blood on the flames  \nof his pyre. Next he aimed his deadly spear from long range at  \nMagus, who cleverly ran under it. The quivering spear flew over  \nhis head and he clasped the knees of Aeneas with this prayer:  \n'By the shade of your own father and the hopes you have of  \nIulus as he grows to manhood, I beg you to spare this life of  \nmine for the sake of my son and my father. Our home is a  \nhigh-built palace, and buried deep within it I have talents of  \nengraved silver and great weights of gold, both worked and  \nunworked. A Trojan victory does not depend on me. My one  \n530 life will not make so great a difference.' This was Aeneas' reply:  \n'Keep for your children all those talents of silver and gold you  \ntalk about. Turnus put an end to such war-trading the moment  \nhe murdered Pallas. So judges the shade of my father Anchises.  \nAnd so judges Iulus.' When he had spoken he took Magus'  \nhelmet in his left hand, and bending back his neck when he was  \nstill begging for mercy, he drove the sword home to the hilt.  \nNot far away was Haemonides, priest of Phoebus Apollo and  \nDiana Trivia, his temples bound by a headband of sacred wool,  \n540 all shining white in his white robes and insignia. Aeneas closed  \nwith him, drove him across the plain, stood over him when he  \nfell, darkening the whiteness with his great shadow, and took  \nhim as his victim. Serestus collected the spoils and carried them  \nback on his shoulders as a trophy to Mars Gradivus.\n\nCaeculus of the stock of Vulcan renewed the battle, and  \nUmbro from the Marsian mountains with him. Aeneas confronted  \nthem in all his fury. His sword had already struck off  \nthe left hand of Anxur \u2013 a stroke of the blade had sent the whole  \ncircle of his shield to the ground. He had uttered some great  \nthreat, imagining that the strength would be there to make it  \ngood. It seemed he was trying to raise his spirits to the skies,  \nand had promised himself that he would live to enjoy grey hairs  \n550 and a long life. Next Aeneas in his fury was faced by Tarquitus,  \nglorying in his shining armour, the son of Faunus, God of the  \nWoods, and the nymph Dryope. Drawing back his spear, Aeneas  \nthrew and pinned the great heavy shield to the breastplate.  \nWhile he was still begging for mercy, and still had much to say,  \nAeneas smashed his head to the ground, and as he set the warm  \ntrunk rolling, these were the words he spoke with hatred in his  \nheart: 'Lie there now, you fearsome warrior. Your good mother  \nwill not bury you in the earth or burden your body with the  \nfamily tomb. You will be left for the wild birds, or thrown into  \n560 the sea to be carried away by the waves, and the hungry fish will  \ncome and lick your wounds!' Next he pursued and caught  \nAntaeus and Lucas, the front rank of Turnus, then brave Numa  \nand yellow-haired Camers, son of great-hearted Volcens, who  \nwas richest in land of all the men of Italy and ruled over silent  \nAmyclae. Aeneas was like Aegaeon, who they say had a hundred  \narms and a hundred hands, with fire flaming from fifty breasts  \nand mouths, and fifty was the number of swords he drew against  \nthe lightning of Jupiter, fifty the number of identical shields he  \nclashed \u2013 so seemed Aeneas, raging victorious all over the plain,  \n570 when once his sword blade had warmed to the work. Imagine  \nhim next bearing down on the chariot of Niphaeus, with the  \nfour horses showing their chests as they stood to meet him, but  \nwhen they saw Aeneas' great stride and heard his fearsome roar,  \nthey wheeled in panic and bolted, throwing their master out of  \nthe chariot and stampeding to the shore.\n\nMeanwhile Lucagus was coming into the middle of battle on  \na chariot drawn by two white horses. With him was his brother  \nLiger, handling the reins and controlling the horses while  \nLucagus whirled his naked sword about him. Aeneas could not  \nendure to see such fury and such fervour, but rushed forward  \n580 and loomed huge before them with his levelled spear. It was  \nLiger who spoke: 'These are not the horses of Diomede you are  \nlooking at, or the chariot of Achilles. These are not the plains  \nof Troy. Here in this land today there will be an end to your  \nwars and to your life.' Far flew these wild words of Liger. The  \nTrojan was preparing a reply to his enemy, but it was not in  \nwords \u2013 it was his javelin he hurled. Lucagus had been leaning  \nforward over his horses to urge them on by beating them with  \nthe flat of his spear. Now, when he had planted his left foot to  \nthe front and was preparing for battle, through the bottom rim  \nof his shining shield came the spear of Aeneas and pierced his  \n590 left groin. He was pitched from his chariot and as he lay dying  \non the ground, good Aeneas addressed these bitter words to  \nhim: 'It is not the panic of your horses, Lucagus, that has brought  \nyour chariot to grief. They did not shy away from the shadow  \nof their enemy. It is your own doing, leaping off the car and  \nabandoning your team!' With these words Aeneas caught the  \nhorses' bridles. The wretched brother of Lucagus fell from the  \nchariot and stretched out his helpless hands to Aeneas: 'Great  \nTrojan, I implore you by your own self and by the parents who  \nbrought such a man as you into the world, spare this life of mine  \nand take pity on a suppliant.' Aeneas cut short his appeal. 'This  \n600 is not what I heard you say a moment ago. Die now. A brother's  \nplace is with his brother.' And as he spoke the point of his sword  \nopened the breast of Liger, the hiding place of his soul. So did  \nthe Trojan leader deal out death all over the plain like a raging  \ntorrent of water or a storm of black wind, until at last the young  \nAscanius and his warriors sallied forth and left the camp. The  \nsiege was lifted.\n\nIn the meanwhile Jupiter came to Juno and said to her: 'O my  \ntrue sister and most pleasing of wives, you are right, it is Venus,  \nas you thought, who is maintaining the strength of the Trojans,  \n610 not the warlike vigour of their right arms nor their fierce  \nand danger-hardened spirit.' Humbly Juno replied: 'O finest of  \nhusbands, why do you cause me anguish when I am in despair  \nand in terror of your harsh commands? If your love for me had  \nthat power which once it had, and should have still, you who  \ncan do all things would not be refusing me this. I should be able  \nto withdraw Turnus from the battle and keep him safe for his  \nfather Daunus. But as things are, let him die. Let him pay the  \npenalty to the Trojans with his righteous blood. Nevertheless  \nhe is descended from our stock, Pilumnus was his ancestor in  \n620 the fourth generation and his generous hand has often weighed  \ndown your threshold with abundant gifts.' The King of  \nHeavenly Olympus made brief reply: 'If what you ask is a stay  \nof the death that is upon him and respite for a young man who  \nmust die, and if you accept that this is what I ordain, then rescue  \nTurnus. Let him flee. Snatch him from the Fates that tread upon  \nhis heels. There is room for me to grant you indulgence thus far.  \nBut if there is some deeper thought of mercy underlying these  \nappeals of yours, and if you believe that the whole course of the  \nwar can be affected or its outcome changed, the hopes which  \nyou nourish are empty.' Juno replied, weeping as she spoke:  \n'What if your heart wished to give what your words refuse?  \n630 What if you listened to me and let Turnus live? As it is, although  \nhe is innocent, a cruel death is waiting for him, unless I am wide  \nof the mark and there is no truth in me. But oh how I wish my  \nfears were false and I were deluded! How I wish you would  \nrecast your plans, for you can do so, and choose a better course!'\n\nAs soon as the goddess had finished speaking, she flew down  \nfrom the heights of heaven swathed in cloud and driving a great  \nstorm before her towards the battle line of the Trojans and the  \nLaurentine camp. Then she fashioned out of empty vapour an  \neffigy in the form of Aeneas, a weird sight, a shade without  \nstrength or substance, armed with Trojan weapons. She copied  \nhis shield and the crest on his godlike head and gave the phantom  \n640 power to speak its empty words. Sound without thought she  \ngave it, and moulded its strides as it moved. It was like the  \nflitting shapes which men say are the ghosts of the dead, or like  \nthe dreams which delude our sleeping senses. There in high glee  \nin front of the first line of warriors pranced this apparition  \nand goaded Turnus by brandishing weapons and shouting  \nchallenges. Turnus attacked, throwing his whirring spear from  \nlong range. The apparition turned tail and fled. At that moment  \nTurnus believed that Aeneas had turned his back on him and  \nwas running away. Taking a wild draught from the empty cup  \nof hope, he cried: 'Where are you running to, Aeneas? You must  \nnot leave. Your marriage is arranged. This is the land you  \n650 crossed the seas to find and my right hand will give it to you!'  \nShouting such taunts, he went in pursuit with his sword drawn  \nand flashing and did not see that all his exultation was scattering  \nto the winds.\n\nThe ship which king Osinius had sailed from the land of  \nClusium happened to be moored to a high shelf of rock, with  \nher ladders and gangway out. Here the panic-stricken phantom  \nof Aeneas fled and hid itself, with Turnus hard behind it. Nothing  \ncould delay him. He leapt across the gangways, high above  \nthe water, and scarcely had he set foot on the prow when  \n660 Saturnian Juno tore the ship from her moorings, breaking the  \nropes, and took her quickly out to sea on the ebbing tide. But  \nby this time the phantom was no longer looking for a place to  \nhide. It had flown high into the air and melted into a black  \ncloud. Meanwhile, Aeneas was calling on Turnus to fight, and  \nthere was no Turnus, but every man who crossed his path he  \nsent down to death, and all the time the wind was blowing  \nTurnus round and round in mid-ocean. Looking back to the  \nshore in bewilderment and thanking no one for his safety, he  \nraised his arms in prayer and lifted up his voice to the stars of  \nheaven: 'All-powerful Father, have you decided that I deserve  \nthis disgrace? Have you decreed that I must endure this punishment?  \n670 Where am I being taken? What have I left behind me?  \nHow can I go back after running away? What sort of Turnus  \nwould that be? Shall I ever see my camp and the walls of the  \nLaurentines again? And what about that band of great warriors  \nwho have followed me and followed my sword? The horror of  \nit \u2013 I have left them all to die! I see them wandering about  \nwithout a leader. I hear them groaning as they fall. What am I  \nto do? If only the earth could open deep enough to swallow me!  \nOr rather I pray to the winds, and pray to them from my heart,  \nto take pity on me and drive my ship on to the rocks and cliffs,  \nor run it aground on some shoal of deadly sand, where there  \nwill be no Rutulian and no word of my shame can follow me.'  \n680 Even as he spoke, his mind was tossed this way and that, in  \ndespair at his disgrace. Should he fall on his sword and drive  \nthe raw steel through his ribs? Should he throw himself into the  \nsea and try to swim from mid-ocean back into the curve of the  \nbay to face the weapons of the Trojans once again? Three times  \nhe tried each way, and three times mighty Juno held him back,  \npitying the young man in her heart, and would not let him move.  \nCutting the deep water, he floated on a favouring tide and  \nfollowing waves, and came to land in the ancient city of his  \nfather Daunus.\n\nBut Mezentius meanwhile, by the promptings of Jupiter, took  \n690 the place of Turnus in the battle and fell furiously on the triumphant  \nTrojans. Instantly all the Etruscan troops converged on  \nhim alone, united in their hatred, and pressed him hard under a  \nhail of weapons. He stood like a rock jutting out into the ocean  \nwastes, exposed to the threats and fury of wind and wave and  \nbearing all the violence of sea and sky, unmoved. He felled  \nHebrus, son of Dolichaon, and Latagus with him, and Palmus  \nas he ran. Latagus he stopped by hitting him full in the face and  \nmouth with a rock, a huge block broken off a mountain, but he  \n700 cut the hamstrings of Palmus and left him rolling helpless on  \nthe ground. His armour he gave to Lausus to put on his shoulders,  \nand his crest to fix on his helmet. Then it was the turn of  \nEuanthes the Phrygian, and Mimas, the same age as Paris and  \nhis comrade in war. In one night Theano, wife of Amycus,  \nbrought him into the light of life, while Hecuba, daughter of  \nCisseus, pregnant with a torch, was giving birth to Paris. Paris  \nfell in the city of his fathers, but Mimas lies a stranger on the  \nLaurentine shore. Like the wild boar who has long kept his  \ncitadel among the pines of Mount Vesulus, and long have the  \n710 Laurentine marshes fed him in the reed beds of the forest; when  \nthe great beast is driven down from the mountains with the dogs  \nsnapping at him, and is caught between the nets, he stands at  \nbay snorting, and the bristles rise on his shoulders and no one  \nhas the courage to clash with him or go near him, but they  \nattack from a safe distance with javelins and shouts, while he  \nstands his ground unafraid and wondering in which direction  \nto charge, grinding his teeth and shaking the spears out of his  \nback \u2013 even so, none of those men who had just cause of anger  \nagainst Mezentius was minded to draw the sword and run upon  \nhim, but instead they stood well back and bombarded him with  \nmissiles and deafening shouts.\n\n720 Acron was a Greek who had come from the ancient land  \nof Corythus, driven into exile while waiting to be married.  \nMezentius saw him from a distance causing havoc in the middle  \nof the battle line in the purple feathers and purple cloak given  \nhim by his promised bride. Just as a ravening lion scouring the  \ndeep lairs of wild beasts, driven mad by the pangs of hunger, if  \nhe sights a frightened she-goat, or sees a stag's antlers rising, he  \nopens his great jaws in delight, his mane bristles, and he springs  \nand fastens on the flesh with foul gore washing his pitiless mouth  \n\u2013 just so did Mezentius charge hot-haste into the thick of the  \n730 enemy and felled the unlucky Acron, who breathed out his life  \ndrumming the black earth with his heels and blooding the  \nweapons broken in his body. Orodes fled, but Mezentius did  \nnot deign to cut him down as he ran, or deal him a wound,  \nunseen, from the back, but came to bar his way and meet him  \nface to face, proving himself the better man by strength in arms  \nand not by stealth. He then put his foot on his prostrate enemy  \nand leaned on his spear, calling out: 'Here, comrades, lies no  \nsmall part of their battle strength, Orodes, that stood so tall.'  \nHis men shouted their glad paean of victory after him, but with  \nhis dying breath Orodes replied: 'Whoever you are that have  \n740 conquered me, I shall be revenged. You will not enjoy your  \nvictory for long. The same fate is looking out for you, and we  \nshall soon be lying in the same fields.' Half smiling, half in anger,  \nMezentius replied: 'Die now. As for me, that will be a matter  \nfor the Father of the Gods and the King of Men,' and at these  \nwords he drew his spear out of the body of Orodes. A cruel rest  \nthen came to him, and an iron sleep bore down upon his eyes  \nand closed them in everlasting night.\n\nCaedicus cut down Alcathous, Sacrator Hydaspes; Rapo  \nkilled Parthenius and Orses, a strong and hardy warrior. Messapus  \nput an end to Clonius and Erichaetes, son of Lycaon,  \n750 Erichaetes being on foot, but Clonius lying on the ground,  \nhaving lost his reins and fallen from his horse. On foot also was  \nAgis the Lycian, who had come out in front of the battle line,  \nbut Valerus had some spark of his family's courage and overthrew  \nhim. Thronius was killed by Salius, and Salius by Nealces,  \nfamed for his javelin and far-shot arrows.\n\nPitiless Mars was now dealing grief and death to both sides  \nwith impartial hand. Victors and vanquished killed and were  \nkilled and neither side thought of flight. In the halls of Jupiter  \nthe gods pitied the futile anger of the two armies and grieved  \n760 that men had so much suffering, Venus looking on from one  \nside and Saturnian Juno from the other, while in the thick of all  \nthe thousands raged the Fury Tisiphone, pale as death.\n\nThen came Mezentius storming over the plain, brandishing a  \nhuge spear, and as tall as Orion who walks in mid-ocean cleaving  \nhis path through its deepest pools with his shoulders rising clear  \nof the waves, or strides along carrying an ancient ash from the  \nmountain tops with his feet on the ground and his head hidden  \nin the clouds \u2013 so did Mezentius advance in his massive armour.  \n770 Aeneas had picked him out in the long ranks of men in front of  \nhim and was going to meet him. Mezentius held his ground,  \nunafraid, and the huge bulk of him stood fast waiting to receive  \nhis great-hearted enemy. Measuring a spear-cast with his eye,  \nhe cried: 'Let the right hand which is my god not fail me now,  \nnor the spear which I brandish to throw. My vow is to strip the  \narmour from that brigand's body and clothe you with it, Lausus.  \nMy trophy over Aeneas will be my own son!' With these words  \nhe threw his spear from long range. Hissing as it flew, it bounced  \noff Aeneas' shield and struck the noble Antores as he stood  \nsome distance away, entering his body between flank and groin.  \nAntores had been a comrade of Hercules. He had come from  \n780 Argos but attached himself to Evander, settling with him in his  \ncity in Italy. And so, falling cruelly by a wound intended for  \nanother, he looked up at the sky and remembered his beloved  \nArgos as he died.\n\nThen the devout Aeneas hurled his spear. Through the circle  \nof Mezentius' convex shield it flew, the triple bronze, the  \nlayers of linen, the three stitched bull-hides, and it stuck low in  \nMezentius' groin, but it had lost its force. Exultant at the sight  \nof the Etruscan's blood, Aeneas tore the sword from the scabbard  \n790 at this thigh. Seeing Mezentius in distress and Aeneas  \nbearing down on him in hot fury, Lausus moaned bitterly for  \nthe father whom he loved and the tears rolled down his face.  \nNow Lausus, I shall tell of your cruel death and glorious deeds  \nin the hope that the distance of time may lead men to believe  \nyour great exploit. Never will it be my wish to be silent about  \nyou, Lausus \u2013 you are a warrior who does not deserve to be  \nforgotten. Mezentius was falling back, defenceless and encumbered,  \ndragging his enemy's spear behind him, stuck in his  \nshield, when young Lausus leapt forward and threw himself  \nbetween them. Just as Aeneas was standing to his full height and  \nraising his arm to strike, he came in beneath the sword blade,  \nblocking Aeneas and checking his advance. Lausus' comrades  \nraised a great shout and supported him by bombarding Aeneas  \n800 and harassing him with their missiles from long range, till the  \nfather could withdraw protected by the shield of the son. Aeneas,  \nenraged, kept under cover. Just as when the clouds descend in a  \nsudden storm of hail, and all the ploughmen and all the workers  \nin the fields scatter across the open ground and the traveller  \nfinds a sure fortress to hide in under a river bank or the arch of  \nsome high-vaulted rock till the rain stops falling on the earth,  \nso that they can continue to do the work of the day when the  \nsunshine is restored \u2013 just so Aeneas, overwhelmed by missiles  \n810 from all sides, weathered the storm of war till the last roll of its  \nthunder, and then it was Lausus he challenged, and Lausus he  \nthreatened: 'Why are you in such a haste to die? Why do you  \ntake on tasks beyond your strength? You are too rash. Your  \nlove for your father is deceiving you.' But Lausus was in full cry  \nand his madness knew no check. At this the anger rose even  \nhigher in the heart of the leader of the Trojans and the Fates  \ngathered up the last threads for Lausus. Aeneas drove his mighty  \nsword through the middle of the young man's body, burying it  \nto the hilt, the point going straight through his light shield, no  \nproper armour to match the threats he had uttered. It pierced,  \ntoo, the tunic his mother had woven for him with a soft thread  \nof gold and filled the folds of it with blood. Then did his life  \n820 leave his body and go in sorrow through the air to join the  \nshades.\n\nBut when Aeneas, son of Anchises, saw the dying face and  \nfeatures, the face strangely white, he groaned from his heart in  \npity and held out his hand, as there came into his mind the  \nthought of his own devoted love for his father, and he said:  \n'What will the devout Aeneas now give to match such merit?  \nWhat gift can he give that will be worthy of a heart like yours?  \nTake your armour, that gave you so much pleasure. Now I  \nreturn you to the shades and the ashes of your ancestors, if that  \nis any comfort for you. In your misfortune you will have one  \n830 consolation for your cruel death, that you fell by the hand of  \nthe great Aeneas.' At this he turned on Lausus' comrades, railing  \nat them as they hung back, while he lifted Lausus off the ground  \nwhere he was soiling his carefully tended hair with blood.\n\nMeanwhile by the bank of the river Tiber Lausus' father was  \nstaunching his wounds with water and leaning against the trunk  \nof a tree to rest. Nearby, his bronze helmet hung from the  \nbranches and his weighty armour lay quiet on the grass. About  \nhim stood his chosen warriors as he bathed his neck, gasping  \nwith pain, and his great beard streamed down his chest. Again  \nand again he asked about Lausus, and kept sending men to  \n840 recall him and take him orders from his anxious father. But  \nLausus was dead and his weeping comrades were carrying him  \nback on his shield, a mighty warrior laid low by a mighty wound.  \nMezentius had a presentiment of evil. He heard the wailing in  \nthe distance and knew the truth. Then, fouling his grey hair with  \ndust, he raised both hands to heaven and flung himself on his  \nson's body: 'Was I so besotted with the pleasure of living that I  \nallowed my own son to take my place under my enemy's sword?  \nIs the father to be saved by the wounds of the son? Have you  \n850 died so that I might live? Now for the first time is death bitter  \nto me! Now for the first time does a wound go deep. And I have  \neven stained your name, my son, by my crimes. Men hated me  \nand drove me from the throne and sceptre of my fathers. I owed  \na debt to my country and my people who detested me, and I  \nwould to heaven I had paid it with this guilty life of mine by  \nevery death a man can die! But I am still alive. I have still not  \nleft the world of men and the light of day. But leave it I shall!'  \nEven as he was speaking, he was raising himself on his wounded  \nthigh, and slow as he was with the violence of the pain deep  \nin his wound, his spirit was unsubdued. He ordered his horse to  \nbe brought. This was his glory and his comfort, and on it he had  \n860 ridden home victorious from all his wars. Seeing it pining, he  \nspoke to it in these words: 'We have lived a long time, Rhaebus,  \nif any mortal life is long. Either you will be victorious today and  \ncarry back the head of Aeneas with the blood-stained spoils  \nstripped from his body, and you and I shall avenge the sufferings  \nof Lausus; or else, if that road is barred and no force can open  \nit, we shall fall together. I do not think, with courage like yours,  \nthat you will accept instructions from any other man or take  \nkindly to Trojan masters.' With these words Mezentius mounted  \nand Rhaebus took on his back the weight of the rider he knew  \nso well. Both his hands were laden with sharp-pointed javelins  \nand on his head he wore his helmet of gleaming bronze with its  \n870 shaggy horsehair crest. So armed, he galloped into the thick of  \nbattle, fierce shame, frenzy and grief all seething together in his  \nheart. Three times he shouted the name of Aeneas. Aeneas knew  \nhis voice and offered up this joyful prayer: 'Let this be the will  \nof the Father of the Gods. Let this be the will of high Apollo.  \nStand and fight with me.' He said no more, but made for  \nMezentius with spear at the ready. Mezentius replied: 'Now  \nthat you have taken my son, you savage, you need not try to  \nfrighten me. That was the only way you could have found to  \n880 destroy me. Death holds no terrors for us and we give not a  \nthought for the gods. Enough words. I have come here to die.  \nBut first I have these gifts for you.' He spoke and hurled a  \nspear at his enemy, then another and another, planting them in  \nAeneas' shield as he flew round him in a great circle, but the  \ngolden boss of the shield held fast. Aeneas stood there and  \nMezentius rode round him three times hurling his spears and  \nkeeping Aeneas on his left side. Three times the Trojan pivoted  \nwith him, turning his huge bronze shield, with its bristling forest  \nof bronze spears. Then, weary of all the delay, weary of plucking  \njavelins out of his shield and hard-pressed in this unequal battle,  \n890 Aeneas, after turning many plans over in his mind, at last burst  \nforward and threw his spear, catching Mezentius' warhorse in  \nthe hollow between its temples. Up it reared thrashing the air  \nwith its hooves and throwing its rider. Then as it came down  \nwith all its weight, dislocating its shoulder, it fell head first on  \ntop of Mezentius and pinned him to the ground. The sky blazed  \nwith the shouts of Trojans and Latins as Aeneas rushed up  \ntearing his sword from the sheath and crying: 'Where is the bold  \nMezentius now? Where is that fierce spirit of his?' The Etruscan  \nlooked up, drinking in the bright air of heaven as he came back  \n900 to his senses, and replied: 'You are my bitter enemy. Why jeer  \nat me and threaten me with death? There is no sin in killing. I  \ndid not come into battle on those terms and my son Lausus  \nstruck no such bargain with you on my behalf. One thing I ask,  \nif the defeated can ask favours from their enemies, to let my  \nbody be buried in the earth. I know the bitter hatred of my  \npeople is all about me. Protect me, I beg you, from their fury  \nand let me lie in the grave with my son.' These were his last  \nwords. He then took the sword in the throat with full knowledge  \nand poured out his life's breath in wave upon wave of blood all  \nover his armour.\n\n## BOOK 11  \nDRANCES AND CAMILLA\n\nMeanwhile the Goddess of the Dawn had risen from Ocean,  \nand anxious and eager as Aeneas was to give time to burying  \nhis comrades, distraught as he was in mind at their deaths, at  \nfirst light the victor was paying his vows to the gods. Cutting all  \nthe branches off a huge oak, he set it up on a mound as a trophy  \nto the great god mighty in war, and clothed it in the shining  \narmour he had stripped from the body of the enemy leader  \nMezentius. There he set the hero's crest dripping its dew of  \n10 blood, the broken spears and the breastplate struck and pierced  \nthrough in twelve places. On the left he bound the bronze shield  \nand from the neck he hung the ivoried sword. He then addressed  \nhis comrades (for all the Trojan leaders were pressing close  \naround him), and these were the words he spoke to urge them  \non in their hour of triumph: 'The greatest part of our work is  \ndone, my friends. In what remains there is nothing to fear. These  \nare spoils I have taken from a proud king, the first fruits of this  \nwar. This is Mezentius, and my hands have set him in this place.  \nOur way now lies towards the king of the Latins and the walls  \nof their city. Make ready your weapons. Fill your minds and  \nyour hopes with the thought of war, so that no man shall hesitate  \n20 or not know what to do when the gods permit us to pull up our  \nstandards and lead the army out of camp. When that time  \ncomes, there must be no faintheartedness or sluggishness in our  \nthoughts to slow us down. In the meanwhile, let us consign the  \nunburied bodies of our comrades to the earth, for that is the  \nonly honour a man has in the underworld. Go,' he said, 'and  \ngrace these noble spirits with their last rites, for they have shed  \ntheir blood to win this land for us. But first let Pallas be sent  \nback to the stricken city of Evander. This was a warrior who  \ndid not fail in courage when his black day took him from us and  \ndrowned him in the bitterness of death.'\n\nSo he spoke, weeping, and made his way back to his own  \n30 threshold where the body of Pallas lay guarded by old Acoetes.  \nAcoetes had once been the armour-bearer of Arcadian Evander,  \nbut the auspices were no longer so favourable when he was  \nappointed as companion to his dear ward, Pallas. About them  \nstood the whole throng of their attendants and all the Trojans  \nand the women of Troy with their hair unbound in mourning  \nafter the manner of their people. But when Aeneas entered his  \nhigh doorway, they beat their breasts and raised their wild  \nlament to the sky till the palace rang with the sound of their  \n40 grief. When he himself saw the head of Pallas cushioned there  \nand his white face, and the open wound torn in that smooth  \nbreast by the Italian spear, the tears welled up and he spoke  \nthese words: 'Oh the pity of it! Fortune came to me with smiles,  \nbut took you from me while you were still a boy, and would not  \nlet you live to see us in our kingdom, or to ride back in triumph  \nto your father's house. This is not what I promised Evander for  \nhis son, when he took me in his arms as I left him, and sent me  \nout to take up this great command, warning me with fear in his  \nheart that these were fierce warriors, that this was a hardy race  \n50 I had to meet in battle. Even now, deluded by vain hopes, he  \nmay be making vows and heaping altars with offerings, while  \nwe bring him with tears and useless honours a young warrior  \nwho owes no more debts to any heavenly power. With what  \neyes will you look at the dead body of your son? Is this how we  \nreturn from war? Are these the triumphs expected of us? Is this  \nmy great pledge? But you will not see a wound on him, Evander,  \nof which you need to be ashamed. You will not be a father who  \nhas the terrible wish that his son who is alive were dead. The  \nland of Italy has lost a great bulwark, and great too is your loss,  \nIulus.'\n\n60 After he had his fill of weeping, he ordered them to take up  \nthe pitiable corpse, and from the whole army he sent a thousand  \nchosen men as escort to pay a last tribute and join their tears  \nwith those of Evander, a small comfort for a great sorrow, but  \na debt that was owed to the stricken father. Others were not  \nslow to weave a soft wickerwork bier of arbutus and oak shoots  \nto make a raised couch, shaded by a canopy of green, where  \nthey laid the young warrior high on his bed of country straw.  \nThere he lay like a flower cut by the thumbnail of a young girl,  \n70 a soft violet or drooping lily, still with its sheen and its shape,  \nthough Mother Earth no longer feeds it and gives it strength.  \nThen Aeneas brought out two robes stiffened with gold and  \npurple threads which Sidonian Dido had long since made for  \nhim with her own hands, picking out the warp in fine gold, and  \nthe work had been a joy to her. With grief in his heart he put  \none of these on the young man's body as his last tribute and in  \na fold of it he veiled the hair that would soon be burned.  \nThen he gathered a great heap of spoil from the battle on the  \nLaurentine fields and ordered it to be brought to the pyre in a  \n80 long procession, adding to it the horses and weapons he had  \ntaken from the enemy. Then came the captives, whose hands he  \nhad bound behind their backs to send them as offerings to the  \nshades of the dead and sprinkle the funeral pyre with the blood  \nof their sacrifice. He also commanded the leaders of the army  \nto carry in their own arms tree trunks draped with weapons  \ncaptured from the enemy and inscribed with their hated names.  \nAcoetes, worn out with age, was led along in the procession,  \nbeating his breast with clenched fists and tearing his face with  \nhis nails, but he collapsed and lay all his length on the ground.  \nChariots were drawn along drenched with Rutulian blood, and  \nthen came Pallas' warhorse Aethon, stripped of all its trappings  \n90 with the tears rolling down in great drops and soaking its face.  \nThere were men to carry his spear and his helmet. The victorious  \nTurnus had the rest. A great phalanx of mourners followed, all  \nthe Trojans and the Etruscans and the Arcadians with their arms  \nreversed. After this procession of all the comrades of Pallas had  \nmarched well clear of the camp, Aeneas halted, and with a deep  \ngroan he spoke these words: 'The same grim destiny of war calls  \nus away from here to weep other tears. For ever hail, great  \nPallas, and farewell for ever.' He said no more but set off  \ntowards his high-built fortifications and marched back into  \ncamp.\n\n100 And now envoys appeared from the city of the Latins bearing  \nolive branches wreathed in wool and asking for a truce. The  \nbodies of their dead were all over the plain where the steel had  \nlaid them, and they begged Aeneas to give them back and let  \nthem go to their graves in the earth, for he could have no quarrel  \nwith men who were defeated and had lost the light of life; he  \nmust show mercy to those who had once been called his hosts  \nand the kinsmen of his bride. Good Aeneas could not refuse this  \npetition. He honoured the envoys, granted what they asked and  \nadded these words: 'What cruel Fortune is this, men of Latium,  \nthat has embroiled you in war and made you run away from us,  \n110 who are your friends? You ask me for peace for the dead, whose  \ndestiny has been to die in battle: I for my part would have been  \nwilling to grant them peace when they were still alive. Nor  \nwould I ever have come to this land if the Fates had not offered  \nme a place here to be my home. I do not wage war with your  \npeople. It was your king who abandoned our sworn friendship  \nand preferred to put his trust in the weapons of Turnus. It is not  \nthese men who should have risked their lives but Turnus. If it is  \nhis plan to put an end to this war by the strength of his arm,  \nand drive out the Trojans, he should have faced me and these  \nweapons of mine in battle. One of us would have lived. God or  \nour own right hands would have seen to that. Go now and light  \n120 fires beneath the bodies of your unfortunate citizens.' Aeneas  \nhad spoken. They were astonished and stood looking at each  \nother in silence.\n\nThen Drances, an older man who had always hated the young  \nwarrior Turnus, and spoken against him, began to make his  \nreply: 'O Trojan great in fame, and greater still in arms, what  \nwords of mine could raise you to the skies? What shall I first  \npraise? Your justice, or your labours in war? Gratefully shall we  \ncarry these words of yours back to our native city, and if Fortune  \nshows us a way, we shall reconcile you to our king Latinus.  \n130 Turnus can make his own treaties. We shall do more. We shall  \ndelight to raise the massive walls Fate has decreed for you and  \nlift up the building stones of Troy on our shoulders!'\n\nAll to a man they murmured in agreement when he had  \nfinished speaking. Twelve days they decided on, and during that  \ntime, with peace as mediator between them, Trojans and Latins  \nwere together in the hills and wandered the woods, and no man  \nharmed another. The iron axe rang upon tall ash trees and  \nbrought down skyward-thrusting pines. They never rested from  \ntheir labours, splitting the oak and fragrant cedar with wedges  \nand carrying down the ash trees on carts from the mountains.\n\n140 But Rumour was already on the wing, overwhelming Evander  \nand the house and city of Evander with the first warnings of  \nanguish. The talk was no longer of Pallas, conqueror of Latium.  \nThe Arcadians rushed to the gates, snatching up funeral torches  \naccording to their ancient practice. The road was lit by a long  \nline of flames which showed up the fields far on either side.  \nNearer and nearer came the throng of Trojans till it joined the  \ncolumns of mourners. When the mothers of Pallanteum saw  \nthem entering the walls, the stricken city was ablaze with their  \ncries. No power on earth could restrain Evander. Coming into  \nthe middle of the throng where the bier had been laid on the  \n150 ground, he threw himself on the body of Pallas and clung to it  \nweeping and moaning until at last grief freed a path for his  \nvoice: 'O Pallas, this is not what you promised your father! You  \nsaid you would not be too rash in trusting yourself to the cruel  \nGod of War. I well knew the glory of one's first success in arms,  \nthe joy above all other joys of one's first battle. These are bitter  \nfirst fruits for a young man. A hard schooling it has been in war,  \nand you did not have far to go for it. None of the gods listened  \nto my vows and prayers. O my dear wife, most blessed of  \nwomen, you were fortunate in your death, in not living to see  \n160 this day. But I have outstayed my time. A father should not  \nsurvive his son. If only I had followed our Trojan allies into  \nbattle and the Rutulians had buried me under their spears! If  \nonly I had given up my own life and this procession was bringing  \nhome my body and not the body of Pallas. I would not wish to  \nblame you, Trojans, nor our treaties, nor regret the joining of  \nour right hands in friendship. The death of my son was a debt I  \nwas fated to pay in my old age. But if an early death was his  \ndestiny, I shall rejoice to think that first he killed thousands of  \nVolscians and fell while leading the Trojans into Latium. Nor  \nwould I wish you any other funeral than this, Pallas, given you  \n170 by good Aeneas and the great men from Phrygia, the leaders of  \nthe Etruscans and all the soldiers of Etruria, bearing the great  \ntrophies of the warriors your right hand has sent to their deaths.  \nAnd you too, Turnus, would now be standing in the fields, a  \nhuge headless trophy, had Pallas been your equal in age, had  \nthe years given you both equal strength. But why does my grief  \nkeep the Trojans from their arms? Go now, take this charge to  \nyour king and do not forget it. If I drag out my hated life now  \nthat Pallas is killed, the reason, Aeneas, lies in your right arm.  \nYou know it owes the life of Turnus to the son and to the father.  \nThis is the one field where you must put your courage and your  \n180 fortune to the test. I seek no joy in life \u2013 that is not what the  \ngods have willed \u2013 only to take this satisfaction down to my son  \namong the dead.'\n\nAurora meanwhile had lifted up her life-giving light for miserable  \nmortals, bringing back their toil and sufferings. Both Tarchon  \nand Father Aeneas soon built funeral pyres on the curving  \nshore and carried there the bodies of their dead, each after the  \nfashion of their fathers. They then set black-burning torches to  \nthe fires and the heights of heaven were plunged into pitchy  \n190 darkness. Three times they ran round the blazing pyres in gleaming  \narmour. Three times they rode in solemn procession round  \nthe fires of the dead with wails of lamentation. Tears fell upon  \ntheir armour and fell upon the earth beneath. The clamour of  \nmen and the clangour of trumpets rose to heaven as some threw  \ninto the flames spoils torn from the corpses of the Latins, their  \nsplendid swords and helmets, the bridles of horses and scorching  \nchariot wheels, while others burned the familiar possessions of  \ntheir dead friends, the shields and spears which Fortune had not  \nblessed. All around, oxen were being sacrificed and their bodies  \noffered to the God of Death, while bristling swine and flocks  \ncarried off from the fields were slaughtered over the fires. All  \n200 along the shore they watched the bodies of their comrades burn  \nand tended the dying flames, nor would they be torn away till  \ndank Night turned over the heavens and showed a sky studded  \nwith burning stars.\n\nThe mourning Latins too had built countless pyres some  \ndistance apart from the Trojans. Many bodies of men they  \nburied in the earth; many they took up and carried back to the  \ncity or to their homes nearby in the countryside. The rest they  \nburned uncounted and unhonoured, a huge pile of jumbled  \ncorpses, and all the wide land on every side was lit by fire upon  \n210 fire, each brighter than the other. When the third day had risen  \nand dispersed the chill darkness of the sky, the mourners levelled  \non the pyres the deep ash in which the bones of the dead were  \nmingled, and weighed it down with mounds of warm earth.  \nThat day in their homes in the city of king Latinus, famous for  \nhis wealth, the noise of grief was at its loudest. That day their  \nlong mourning reached its height. Here were the mothers and  \nheart-broken wives of the dead. Here were loving sisters beating  \ntheir breasts, and children who had lost their fathers, all cursing  \nthis deadly war and Turnus' marriage; he was the man who  \nshould be deciding this matter with his own sword and shield  \nsince he was the man who was claiming the kingdom of Italy  \n220 and the highest honours for himself. The bitter Drances heaped  \nfuel on the fire and swore that Turnus was the only man whose  \nname was being called; nobody else was being asked to fight.  \nBut at the same time many voices were raised for Turnus and  \nmuch was said on his behalf. The great name of the queen cast  \nits protecting shadow and also in his favour was all the fame  \nand all the trophies he had won in his wars.\n\nIn the middle of this disturbance, while the dispute was still  \nraging, to crown all, the envoys suddenly arrived back with a  \ngloomy answer from the city of Diomede. They had achieved  \nnothing for all the efforts they had expended; their gifts, their  \n230 gold, their earnest prayers had failed; the Latins would have to  \nlook elsewhere for reinforcements or plead for peace with the  \nTrojan king. At this bitter blow even king Latinus lost heart.  \nAeneas was chosen by Fate and brought there by the express  \nwill of heaven \u2013 this was what the anger of the gods was telling  \nthem; this was the message of these tombs newly raised before  \ntheir eyes. With such thoughts in mind he summoned a great  \ncouncil, commanding the leaders of his people to come within  \nhis lofty doors. They duly gathered, filling the streets as they  \nstreamed to the royal palace. Greatest in age and first of those  \nwho carried the sceptre, Latinus sat in the middle with sadness  \n240 on his brow and asked the envoys who had returned from the  \ncity of the Aetolians to tell what reply they brought, demanding  \nto hear every detail in due order. The assembly was called to  \nsilence. Venulus obeyed the command and began to speak:  \n'Fellow-citizens, we have seen Diomede and the Argive camp.  \nWe have paced out the road and lived through all the chances  \nof the journey. We have touched the hand that brought down  \nthe land of Ilium. There in the fields near Mount Garganus, in  \nthe Apulian kingdom of Iapyx, the victorious Diomede was  \nfounding his city called Argyripa after the home of his fathers  \nat Argos. After we were admitted to his presence and given leave  \nto speak, we offered our gifts, telling him our names and the  \n250 land from which we came, who had brought war among us and  \nwhat had taken us to Arpi. He heard us out and made this reply  \nin words of peace:\n\n' \"The peoples of your land are blest by Fortune. Yours are the  \nkingdoms of Saturn, the ancient Ausonians, but what Fortune is  \nit that disturbs your peace and persuades you to stir up wars  \nyou do not understand? Those of us whose swords violated the  \nfields of Ilium \u2013 let me not speak of all we endured as we fought  \nbeneath her walls or of our men drowned in her river Simois \u2013  \nwe are scattered over the round earth, paying unspeakable  \npenalties and suffering all manner of punishment for our crimes.  \nWe are a band of men that even Priam might pity. The deadly  \n260 star of Minerva knows us well. So do the rocks of Euboea and  \nCaphereus, the cape of vengeance. From that campaign we have  \nbeen washed up on many a different shore: Menelaus, son of  \nAtreus, is in exile in distant Egypt at the pillars of Proteus; Ulixes  \nhas seen the Cyclopes on Etna; shall I speak of the kingdom of  \nNeoptolemus in Epirus? Of the new home of Idomeneus in  \nCalabria? Of Locrians living on the shores of Libya? Even the  \nleader of the great Achivi from Mycenae was struck down by  \nthe hand of his evil queen the moment he stepped over his own  \nthreshold! The adulterous lover had been waiting for Asia to  \nfall. To think that the envious gods forbade me to return to the  \n270 altars of my fathers or to see the wife I longed for and my  \nbeautiful homeland of Calydon. Even now I am pursued by the  \nsight of hideous portents. My lost comrades have taken to the  \nsky on wings. They have become birds and haunt the rivers \u2013 so  \ncruelly have my people been punished \u2013 weeping till the rocks  \nring with the sound of their voices. From that moment of madness  \nwhen I attacked the body of a goddess and my spear defiled  \nthe hand of Venus, I should have known that this was bound to  \ncome. Do not, I beg you, do not urge me to take part in any  \nsuch battle. I have had no quarrel with the Trojans since the  \n280 uprooting of their citadel of Pergamum, and I do not remember  \nold wrongs or take any pleasure in them. As for the gifts you  \nbring me from your country, give them rather to Aeneas. We  \nhave faced each other, spear against deadly spear, and closed in  \nbattle. Believe me, for I have known it, how huge he rises behind  \nhis shield, with what a whirr he spins his javelin. If the land of  \nIlium had borne two other such heroes, the Trojan would have  \ncome in war to the cities of the Greek, the Fates would have  \nchanged and Greece would now be in mourning. As for all the  \nlong delay before the stubborn walls of Troy, it was the hands  \nof Hector and Aeneas \u2013 both men noble in their courage, noble  \n290 in their skill in arms, but Aeneas the greater in piety \u2013 that held  \nback the victory of the Greeks and did not let it come till the  \ntenth year. Let your hands join in a treaty of peace while the  \nchance is offered, but take care not to let your weapons clash  \non his!\"\n\n'You have heard, O best of kings, the answer of a king. You  \nhave heard his judgement on this great war.'\n\nThe envoys had scarcely finished before a confused roar was  \nrunning through the troubled ranks of the Italians, as when  \nrocks resist a river in spate and the trapped waters eddy and  \ngrowl while the banks on either side roar with the din of the  \n300 waves. As soon as calm returned to their minds and the words  \nof fear were stilled on their lips, the king on his high throne  \naddressed the gods and then began. 'For my part, O men of  \nLatium, I would have wished, and it would have been better so,  \nto have decided this great issue long since, and not be summoning  \na council at a time like this with the enemy sitting by our  \nwalls. We are fighting a misguided war, fellow-citizens, against  \nunconquerable heroes and the sons of gods. Battle does not  \nweary them, and even in defeat they cannot take their hands  \nfrom the sword. If you had any hope of recruiting the Aetolians  \nas your allies, lay it aside. To everyone his own hopes, but you  \n310 can see how feeble this one is. All other resource is shattered  \nand lies in ruins. You can see this with your own eyes. The  \nwhole truth is there at your finger tips. I accuse no one. Courage  \nhas done all that courage could do. The whole body of the  \nkingdom has fought this fight. But now the time has come for  \nme to express an opinion which has formed in my doubting  \nmind. Give me your attention, and I shall tell it in a few words.  \nNear the Tuscan river Tiber I have long owned some land which  \nstretches away to the west beyond the land of the Sicani. Here  \nAuruncans and Rutulians sow their seeds, wearying the stony  \n320 hills with the plough and grazing the roughest of them. Let this  \nwhole area with the pine forests clothing its high mountains be  \ngiven to the Trojans as a token of our friendship, and let us  \npropose a treaty in just terms, inviting them to become partners  \nin our kingdom. Let them settle here, if their hearts are so set  \non it, and build their walls. But if it is their wish to go elsewhere  \nand seize the land of some other nation, and if it is within their  \npower to leave this country of ours, let us weave the timbers of  \ntwenty ships in Italian oak, or more if they can man them. The  \nwood is all lying on the shore. Let them say what ships they  \nwant and how many, and we can provide the bronze, the dockyards  \n330 and the hands to do the work. I propose also that a  \nhundred envoys, men of the highest rank in the Latin race, be  \nsent to carry this message and conclude this treaty, holding out  \nthe branches of peace in their hands and bearing gifts, talents of  \ngold and ivory, and the throne and robe which are the emblems  \nof our royal power. Consider this together, and rescue our  \ncrippled fortunes.'\n\nThen rose Drances, hostile as ever, who always looked askance  \nat Turnus' great reputation and was goaded by bitter  \njealousy. He was generous with his wealth and readier still with  \nhis tongue, but his hand did not warm to battle. His voice had  \n340 some weight in council and was always a force for discord. His  \nmother's breeding gave him pride of rank; his father's origins  \nwere unknown. These were the words he spoke to add force  \nand substance to their anger: 'What you propose, good king  \nLatinus, is clear to all and needs no words of mine to support  \nit. Everyone knows, and admits that he knows, what Fortune  \nhas in store for the people, but they are all afraid to utter it. It  \nis time for the man whose auspices the gods reject to blow a  \nlittle less hard and give us freedom to speak. It is because of his  \nfatal recklessness \u2013 I, for one, shall not be silent though he draw  \nhis sword and threaten me with death \u2013 we have seen so many  \nof our leaders, who have been the lights of our people, extinguished,  \n350 and the whole of our city now slumped in grief, while he  \nstorms the Trojan camp and frightens the sky with his weapons,  \nknowing he can save his own life by taking to his heels. There  \nis still one thing you must add, O best of kings, to all those  \nmany proposals and gifts you tell us to send to the sons of  \nDardanus, one thing only, and no man's violence should be able  \nto overrule your right as a father to give your own daughter to  \na noble husband in a marriage that will be worthy of her, sealing  \nthis peace in a treaty for all time. But if our hearts and minds  \nare so beset with fear of the man, let us beg and beseech him to  \ngive her up and restore to his king and to his fatherland the  \n360 rights which are their due. Why do you keep throwing your  \nunfortunate fellow-citizens into the jaws of danger, Turnus, you  \nwho are the single source and cause of all these sufferings of  \nLatium? War will never save us. We are all asking you for peace,  \nand the one inviolable pledge of that peace. I am the first to  \ncome to you as a suppliant \u2013 you imagine I am your enemy and  \nthat causes me no distress \u2013 look at me! I beg you to pity your  \npeople and lay down your pride. You are defeated. You must  \nleave the field. We have been routed often enough and have seen  \nenough funerals. We have stripped our wide fields bare. But if  \nfame drives you on, if you have the strength in your heart, if  \nyou have such a yearning to receive a palace as a dowry, then  \n370 be bold, have the confidence to go and stand face to face with  \nyour enemy. So that Turnus can get himself a royal bride, our  \nlives are cheap. We, the rank and file, are to litter the fields,  \nunburied and unwept. But you too, if there is any strength in  \nyou, if you have any of the fighting spirit of your fathers, stand  \nup to your challenger and look him in the face.'\n\nAt this, Turnus groaned, and blazed up into a violent rage.\n\nThe words burst from the depths of his heart: 'You have always  \na good supply of words, Drances, when war calls for action.  \n380 When the senate is summoned, you are the first to appear. But  \nthis is no time for filling the council chamber with talk, for  \npouring out high-flown speeches in comfort while our walls and  \nramparts are all that keep the enemy from us, and we are waiting  \nfor the ditches to fill with blood. By all means, Drances, you can  \nthunder out your eloquence in your usual style and accuse me  \nof cowardice, when your right hand has heaped up as many  \nTrojan corpses as mine has and all the fields are studded with  \nyour trophies. But now is our chance to test our vigour and our  \nvalour. We do not have to look too far for enemies \u2013 they are  \nstanding all round the walls. Shall we advance to meet them?  \nYou hesitate? Where is your martial spirit? Will it always be in  \n390 your long tongue and nimble feet? You say I have been defeated.  \nYou scum of the earth, who can say I am defeated when he sees  \nthe Thybris rising, swollen with Trojan blood, the house of  \nEvander destroyed root and branch and the Arcadians stripped  \nof their arms? This is not how great Pandarus and Bitias found  \nme, nor the thousand men I sent down to Tartarus on my day  \nof victory when I was trapped inside the walls and rampart of  \nthe enemy. You say that war will never save us. That prophecy  \n400 is for the Trojan and for yourself, you fool. But go on, stirring  \nup panic everywhere and praising to the skies the strength of a  \nrace of men who have been twice defeated. Go on insulting the  \narmies of Latinus. Now, it seems, the leaders of the Myrmidons  \nare afraid of Phrygian weapons! Now it seems that Diomede  \nand Achilles of Larisa are taking fright, and the river Aufidus is  \nflowing backwards in full retreat from the waves of the Adriatic!  \nDrances even pretends to be terrified when I speak \u2013 a rogue's  \ntrick! The fear is a pretence to add sting to his charges against  \nme. But there is no need for you to be alarmed. My hand will  \nnever take the breath of life from a man like you. It is welcome  \nto stay where it is in that breast of yours.\n\n410 'But now, father, I come to you and to your great plan. If you  \nno longer hold out any hope for our arms, if we are left to  \nfight on utterly alone, if after one setback we are completely  \ndestroyed, and Fortune has abandoned us never to return, let us  \nstretch out our defenceless arms and sue for peace. But if only  \nthere were a spark of our old courage left in us! Any man who  \nhas fallen and bitten the dust of death rather than live to see  \nsuch a thing, I count him fortunate in his life's labours, the  \nnoblest spirit amongst us! Surely we still have untapped resources  \nand warriors who have not yet engaged and there are  \n420 still cities and peoples in Italy to help us? And surely the Trojans  \nhave paid a heavy price in blood for the glory they have won!  \nThey too have had their funerals. The same storm has fallen on  \nall of us. Why then do we disgrace ourselves by stumbling on  \nthe threshold? Why do our knees start shaking before we hear  \nthe trumpet? Many things change for the better with the passing  \nof the days and the ever-varying workings of time. Fortune  \ncomes and goes. She has mocked many a man, and then set his  \nfeet back on solid ground. So the Aetolian Diomede and his city  \nof Arpi will not help us. But Messapus will, and Tolumnius,  \n430 blessed by the gods, and all the leaders who have come to us  \nfrom so many peoples, and great will be the glory for the chosen  \nmen of Latium and the Laurentine fields. We have Camilla too,  \nfrom the noble Volscian race, leading her mounted column and  \nher squadrons flowering with bronze. But if I am the only one  \nthe Trojans want to meet in battle, if that is your will and I am  \nsuch a great obstacle to the good of all, then the Goddess of  \nVictory has not entirely abandoned me, nor is she so ill-disposed  \nto these hands of mine that I should refuse any undertaking for  \nwhich I have such hopes. I shall go and face him with my spirits  \n440 high were he mightier than Achilles and with armour the equal  \nof his, made like his by the hands of Vulcan. To all of you, and  \nto Latinus, father of my bride, I, Turnus, second in courage to  \nnone of those who have gone before me, have offered up my  \nlife. Is Aeneas challenging me, and me alone? Let him challenge.  \nIt is the answer to my prayer. If this is the anger of the gods I  \nwould not have Drances appease it; if it is a moment for courage  \nand glory, I would not give it to Drances.'\n\nSo they disputed among themselves in deep uncertainty.  \nAeneas, meanwhile, had struck camp and was moving his army.  \nSuddenly there came a messenger rushing wildly through the  \nroyal palace and causing panic all over the city: the Trojans,  \n450 drawn up in line of battle, the Etruscan squadron with them,  \nwere coming down the valley of the Tiber and filling the whole  \nplain. There was instant confusion and dismay among the people  \nand hearts were roused by the sharp spur of anger. With wild  \ngestures the young men asked for arms. 'Arms!' they shouted,  \nwhile their fathers wept and murmured. On every side a great  \nclamour of dissenting voices rose to the winds like the sound of  \nflocks of birds settling in groves of tall trees, or swans whose  \nharsh calls ring across the chattering pools of the river Padusa,  \nso rich in fish. 'Do not disturb yourselves, citizens!' shouted  \n460 Turnus, seizing the moment. 'Convene your council and sit there  \npraising peace while your enemies invade your kingdom with  \nswords in their hands.' These were his only words to them as he  \nleapt to his feet and rushed from the lofty palace shouting: 'You,  \nVolusus, tell the Volscian contingents to arm! And take the  \nRutulians with you! Deploy the cavalry, Messapus, and you  \ntoo Coras with your brother, in battle array over the whole  \nplain! Some of you reinforce the approaches to the city and man  \nthe towers. The rest of you come and advance with me where I  \norder.'\n\nIn an instant they poured on to the walls from all over the  \n470 city. Father Latinus himself left the council and abandoned his  \nhigh designs till a later time, in deep distress at the troubles of  \nthe hour. Again and again he blamed himself for not eagerly  \nwelcoming Trojan Aeneas and taking him into the city as his  \nson-in-law. Meanwhile men were digging pits in front of the  \ngates and bringing up rocks and stakes. The shrill trumpet blew  \nthe signal for bloody battle and mothers and sons went to make  \na motley ring round the walls of the city. Their last labour called  \nthem and they came. The queen too, with a great retinue of the  \nmothers of the city, rode in her carriage to bring offerings to the  \ntemple of Pallas on the heights of the citadel. With her went the  \n480 maiden Lavinia, the cause of all this suffering, her lovely eyes  \ndowncast. The mothers followed them and filled the temple  \nwith the smoke of incense, pouring out their sad prayers from  \nits high threshold: 'Mighty in arms, ruler of the battle, Tritonian  \nmaiden, break with your hand the spear of the Phrygian pirate  \nand throw him to the ground. Spread out his body beneath your  \nhigh gates.' Turnus in a fury was eagerly arming himself for  \nbattle, and soon had on his breastplate glowing red with bristling  \nscales of bronze, and his golden greaves. His head was still bare,  \n490 but the sword was girt to his side as he ran down from the  \nheights of the citadel in a blaze of gold, ardent and exulting and  \nalready grappling with the enemy in hope and expectation. He  \nwas like a stallion that has broken his tether and burst from his  \nstall; free at last he gains the open plain and runs to the fields  \nwhere the herds of mares are pastured or gallops off to bathe in  \nthe river which he used to know so well, tossing high his head  \nand whinnying with delight while the mane streams over his  \nneck and flanks.\n\nThe princess Camilla came to meet him with her Volscians in  \nbattle order. Under the very gates of the city she leapt down  \n500 from her horse, and all her squadron followed her example,  \ndismounting in one flowing movement. These were her words:  \n'Turnus, if the brave are right to have faith in themselves, I dare  \nto meet the Trojan cavalry \u2013 this is my undertaking \u2013 and go  \nalone against the horsemen of Etruria. Give me leave to try the  \nfirst hazard of war, while you stay on foot by the walls and  \nguard the city.'\n\nAt these words Turnus fixed his eyes on this formidable  \nwarrior maiden and replied: 'O Camilla, glory of Italy, I cannot  \n510 hope to express my gratitude in words or deeds. But now, since  \nthat spirit of yours knows no limits, come share with me the  \nheat of battle. According to a firm report my scouts have brought  \nme, that scoundrel Aeneas has sent his light-armed cavalry  \nahead to scour the plains, while he himself is coming to the city  \nalong a ridge in deserted mountain country. I am planning an  \nambush where there is a sunken path through a wood, and shall  \npost armed men where the road enters and where it leaves the  \ngorge. You go to meet the Etruscan cavalry and engage them.  \nBold Messapus will be with you with the horsemen of Latium  \nand the squadron of Tiburtus, and you will have the task of  \n520 leading them.' So he spoke and with like words urged Messapus  \nand the leaders of his allies into battle, while he went to meet  \nhis enemy.\n\nThere is a winding valley well suited to stealth and stratagem  \nin war. Hemmed in on both sides, it is darkened by the dense  \nfoliage of trees, and a narrow path leads into it making a  \ntreacherous approach through a ravine. Above this valley,  \namong the viewpoints on the hilltop, there lies a little-known  \nplateau which gives safe cover whether you wish to engage the  \nenemy on your right flank or on your left or stand on the  \n530 ridges rolling down great boulders. Marching by paths he knew,  \nTurnus took up position here and settled into ambush in this  \ndangerous forest.\n\nMeanwhile in the palace of the heavens Diana, daughter of  \nLatona, spoke to swift Opis, one of the sacred company of girls  \nwho were her companions, and these were her sad words:  \n'Camilla is going to a cruel war. Dear as she is to me above all  \nothers, she has put on our armour, and it will avail her nothing.  \nThis is no new love, believe me, that has come to move the heart  \n540 of Diana with sudden sweetness. When Metabus, hated by his  \npeople for his arrogant use of power, was driven from his throne,  \nhe left the ancient city of Privernum and took his infant daughter  \nwith him through all his wars and battles, to be his companion  \nin exile. He called her Camilla, changing part of her mother's  \nname, Casmilla. Carrying her in his arms, he made for the long  \nridges and the lonely woods, cruel spears pressing him hard on  \nevery side and Volscian soldiers on the move all about him.  \nSuddenly he found his way blocked by the river Amasenus in  \nfull spate, foaming to the top of its banks \u2013 such a deluge of rain  \nhad burst from the clouds. He was about to leap into the water  \n550 to swim across, but checked himself out of love for his child and  \nfear for the burden he so loved. As he pondered all the dangers,  \na painful resolve soon formed in his mind. He took the warrior's  \nspear he chanced to have in his hand, a mighty weapon of  \nsolid, knotted, well-seasoned wood, and wrapping the baby in  \ncork-tree pith and bark, he lashed her tightly to the middle of  \nthe spear. Then brandishing it in his mighty hand, he cried out  \nto heaven: \"To you, kindly maiden, lover of woods and daughter  \nof Latona, I dedicate my daughter as your handmaiden. She is  \nyour suppliant, and as she flies through the air to escape her  \n560 enemies, the first weapon she holds is yours. O goddess, I  \nsolemnly pray, receive her as your own as I now commit her to  \nthe hazard of the winds.\" At these words he drew back his arm  \nand sent the weapon spinning. The waters rang with the sound  \nas helpless Camilla flew over the wild river on the whistling  \njavelin. But by now a great throng of his enemies was pressing  \nMetabus even closer, and he threw himself into the water. Then,  \nin triumph on the other side, he wrenched from the turf spear  \nand the maiden with it, his dedication to Diana.\n\n'No cities took him under their roofs or within their walls \u2013  \nhe himself was too savage to have submitted to them \u2013 but he  \n570 spent his whole life on the lonely mountains among the herdsmen.  \nThere in the scrub among the rough dens of beasts he fed  \nhis daughter with milk from the udders of wild brood-mares,  \nputting the teats to her soft lips, and as soon as she had taken  \nthe first steps on her infant feet, he put a keen-edged javelin in  \nher hand and slung a bow and arrows from her little shoulder.  \nInstead of gold in her hair and a long cloak to cover her, a tiger  \nskin hung from her head all down her back. While her hand was  \nstill soft, she was spinning her baby javelins and whirling the  \n580 sling round her head on its tapering thong to shoot the white  \nswan or crane from the river Strymon. Many a mother in the  \ntowns of Etruria longed in vain to see her married to her son,  \nbut all she cared for was Diana. Undefiled, she preserved a  \nconstant love for her weapons and her chastity. If only she had  \nnever been caught up in such a war as this, daring to challenge  \nthe Trojans! I would have loved her and she would now have  \nbeen one of my companions. But come now, since a bitter fate  \nis closing in on her, glide down from the sky, Opis my nymph,  \nand visit the land of Latium, where a dreadful battle is being  \n590 fought and all the omens are adverse. Take these weapons, and  \ndraw an avenging arrow from my quiver. Then, with that same  \nshaft, whoever violates that sacred body with a wound, be he  \nTrojan or Italian, must pay to me an equal penalty in blood.  \nThen I shall put a cloud round her poor body and her armour  \nand take them undespoiled to lie in a tomb in her own country.'  \nThe goddess spoke, and Opis, veiled in a dark storm, glided  \nlightly down through the breezes of the sky, whirring as she  \nflew.\n\nBut all this time nearer and nearer to the walls came the  \nTrojan column, the Etruscan leaders and the whole cavalry  \n600 army drawn up in regular squadrons. Horses were prancing and  \nsnorting all over the plain, fretting at the reins that held them in  \nand plunging to one side after another. Far and wide the field  \nbristled with the steel of the spears, and all the land was a blaze  \nof light from uplifted weapons. There too, coming to oppose  \nthem, appeared Messapus and the swift Latins, Coras with his  \nbrother, and the squadron of Camilla. Their right arms were  \ndrawn back, their lances thrust forward with tips quivering.  \nMen were arriving. Horses were neighing. The whole plain was  \nablaze. They had now come within a spear-cast of each other  \nand stopped. Then, with a sudden shout, they galloped forward,  \n610 urging their horses to frenzy, and showering weapons thick as  \nsnow till the sky was curtained with shadow. Tyrrhenus and  \nbold Aconteus were first to charge each other, riding full force  \nwith levelled spears, and great was the din and fearful the fall  \nas they crashed their warhorses against each other, smashing  \nbreast on breast. Aconteus was thrown forward a great distance  \nand fell like a thunderbolt, or a rock hurled from a catapult,  \nscattering his life's breath into the breezes.\n\nIn that instant the battle lines were thrown into disorder.  \nPutting their shields on to their backs, the Latins turned and  \n620 rode back towards the city walls driven by the Trojan squadrons  \nunder Asilas. But when they were almost at the gates, they raised  \nanother shout and pulled round the supple necks of their horses,  \nwhile the Trojans fled in their turn, galloping with slack reins in  \na long retreat. As the sea advances wave by wave, now rushing  \nto the land, throwing foam over the rocks and soaking the edge  \nof the sand in the bay; now turning and hurrying back, sucking  \ndown the stones and rolling them along in its undertow while  \nthe shallows retreat and the shore is left dry \u2013 just so the  \nEtruscans twice turned and drove the Rutulians to the city walls,  \n630 and twice they were repulsed and had to cover their backs with  \ntheir shields and look over their shoulders at their enemies. But  \nwhen they clashed in battle for the third time, and all the ranks  \nwere embroiled together, each man singled out his own enemy,  \nand then the groans of the dying could be heard, weapons  \nand bodies lay deep in blood, half-dead horses rolled about  \nentangled with the corpses of men, and ever fiercer and fiercer  \ngrew the battle. Orsilochus did not dare go near Remulus, but  \nhurled his spear at his horse and its steel point stuck under its  \near. Maddened by the blow, it reared, heaving its chest high and  \nlashing its hooves, unable to endure the pain of the wound.  \n640 Remulus was thrown and sent rolling on the ground, Catillus  \nfelled Iollas and then Herminius, great in stature, in spirit, and  \nin arms. His head of golden hair was bare, his shoulder bare,  \nand he had no fear of wounds, so vast he stood and open to the  \nweapons of his enemies. Catillus' spear drove right through  \nhim and stood out between his broad shoulders quivering, and  \nHerminius doubled up in agony. Black blood was flowing everywhere  \nas they dealt out slaughter with the steel, searching for  \ndeath and glory among the wounds.\n\nThere in the middle of all this bloodshed, exulting in it, was  \nthe Amazon Camilla with the quiver on her shoulder, and one  \n650 side bared for battle. Sometimes the pliant spears came thick  \nfrom her hand; sometimes, unwearied, she caught up her mighty  \ndouble axe, and the golden bow and arrows of Diana rang on  \nher shoulder. Whenever she was forced to retreat, she turned  \nher bow and aimed her arrows while still in flight. The girls she  \nhad chosen as her companions were all about her, Larina, Tulla,  \nand Tarpeia brandishing her bronze axe, all of them daughters  \nof Italy, chosen by the servant of the gods Camilla to do her  \nhonour by their beauty and to be her own trusted attendants in  \npeace and war. They were like the Amazons of Thrace whose  \n660 horses' hooves drum on the frozen waters of the river Thermodon  \nwhen they fight round Hippolyte in their brightly coloured  \narmour, or when Penthesilea, daughter of Mars, rides home in  \nher chariot and her army of women with their crescent shields  \nexult in a great howling tumult.\n\nWhom first did your spear bring down from his horse? Whom  \nlast, fierce warrior maiden? How many bodies of dying men did  \nyou strew on the ground? Eunaeus, son of Clytius, was the first.  \nWhen he stood face to face with Camilla and she drove the long  \npine shaft of her spear through his unprotected chest, he vomited  \nrivers of blood and champed the gory earth with his teeth,  \n670 twisting himself round his wound as he died. Then she brought  \ndown Liris and Pagasus on top of him: Liris when he was trying  \nto collect the reins after his wounded horse had reared and  \nthrown him, Pagasus when he came and stretched out an undefended  \nright hand to support Liris as he fell; but they both  \nwent flying head over heels. Then she sent Amastrus, the son of  \nHippotas, to join them, and raced after Tereus and Harpalycus,  \nDemophoon and Chromis, pressing them hard even at long  \nrange with her spear, and for every dart that flew from her hand,  \na Trojan hero fell. The huntsman Ornytus was rushing past in  \nstrange armour, mounted on his horse Iapyx. This was a warrior  \n680 who wore on his broad shoulders the hide of a bullock, while  \nhis head was encased in the huge gaping jaws of a wolf, complete  \nwith cheekbones and white teeth. A country spear shaped like  \na sickle armed his hand as he moved in the middle of the press,  \ntaller by a head than them all. She caught him \u2013 it was not  \ndifficult, for the whole column had turned and run \u2013 and when  \nshe had pierced him through, she spoke these bitter taunts over  \nhim: 'So you thought you were driving game in the woods, my  \nEtruscan friend? The day has come when you have been proved  \nwrong by a woman's weapons! But it is no mean name you will  \nbe taking to your fathers when you tell them you fell by the  \nspear of Camilla.'\n\n690 Instantly then she struck Orsilochus and Butes, the two tallest  \nof the Trojans. Butes was turned away from her and the tip of  \nher spear went in between helmet and breastplate where his  \nneck shone white as he sat in the saddle with the shield hanging  \nloose on his left arm. She fled from Orsilochus, but after he had  \ndriven her in a great circle, she cut inside the arc and began to  \npursue her pursuer. Then, rising above him, she struck again  \nand again with her mighty axe, hacking through his armour and  \nhis bones as he begged and pleaded with her and the axe-blows  \n700 spilt the hot brains down his face. The warrior son of Aunus of  \nthe Apennines then came upon her and stood stock still in  \nsudden terror at the sight. He was not the least of the Ligurians  \nwhile the Fates gave him leave to tell his lies. So, when he saw  \nthat it was too late to save himself by running away, and that  \nthe princess was upon him and would not be deflected, he began  \nto play his tricks, using all his cunning and calculation. 'What  \nis so wonderful,' he said, 'if a woman depends on the courage  \nof a horse? Give up your chance of running away, and risk your  \nlife in close combat with me on level ground. Gird yourself to  \nfight on foot and you will soon discover that the winds are  \nblowing you only the illusion of glory.' These words stung  \n710 Camilla to a burning fury of resentment. Handing her horse to  \na companion, she stood there to face him without a trace of  \nfear, armed like her enemy with a naked sword and a plain light  \nshield. The moment he thought his ruse had succeeded, the  \nwarrior took to his heels himself. Jerking the reins around, he  \nmade off, driving his horse to the gallop with steel spurs. 'You  \nLigurian fool!' she cried. 'You are the one who has been carried  \naway by the empty winds of pride! You have taken to the  \nslippery arts of your ancestors, but little good will they do you.  \nTrickery will not bring you safe back home to your treacherous  \nfather Aunus.' These were her words, and on nimble feet she  \nran as swift as fire in front of the horse and stood full in its path.  \n720 Then, seizing the reins, she exacted punishment from her enemy  \nin blood, as easily as the sacred falcon flies from his crag to  \npursue a dove high in the clouds, catches it, holds it and rips out  \nits entrails with hooked claws while blood and torn feathers  \nfloat down from the sky.\n\nBut the Father of Gods and Men was not blind to this as he  \nsat high above on the top of Olympus, and he roused Tarchon  \nthe Etruscan to bitter battle, laying on him the sharp goad of  \n730 anger. So Tarchon rode among the slaughter in the ranks of his  \nretreating squadrons, whipping them up with all manner of  \ncries, calling on each man by name and rallying the routed to  \ndo battle: 'What are you afraid of, you Etruscans? Will you  \nnever know shame? Will you always be so spiritless? This is  \nrank cowardice! One woman has turned this whole army and is  \nscattering you to all points of the compass! What are weapons  \nfor? Why do we carry swords in our hands and not use them?  \nYou are not so sluggish when it comes to lovemaking and night  \ncampaigns, or when the curved pipe calls you up to the dancing  \nchorus of Bacchus! Wait, then, for feasts and goblets from  \ngroaning tables. That is what you love. That is what you care  \nabout. Do nothing till the soothsayer gives his blessing and  \n740 announces the festival and the fat victim calls you into the deep  \ngroves.' When this harangue was over, he spurred his horse into  \nthe thick of the enemy \u2013 he too was willing to die \u2013 and made a  \nwild charge at Venulus. Tearing him off his horse and clasping  \nhim in his right arm, he rode off at full gallop with his enemy  \nheld in front of him. A shout rose to the sky and all the Latins  \nturned to look as Tarchon flew like fire across the plain carrying  \nman and armour with him. Then he broke off the steel head of  \nVenulus' spear and with it probed for exposed flesh where  \n750 he could give the fatal wound. Venulus fought back to keep  \nTarchon's hand from his throat, pitting strength against violence,  \njust as when a tawny eagle has seized a snake and flown  \nup into the sky, winding its talons round it and digging in its  \nclaws; meanwhile the wounded serpent writhes in sinuous coils,  \nits scales stiff and rough, and hisses as it reaches up with its  \nhead; but for all its struggles, the eagle never stops tearing at it  \nwith its great hook of a beak, beating the air all the time with  \nits wings \u2013 just like such an eagle did the victorious Tarchon  \ncarry off his prey from the Tiburtine ranks. Following their  \nleader's example, and seeking like success, the Etruscans, the  \nmen from Maeonia, rushed into battle. Then Arruns, whose life  \n760 was owed to the Fates, circled round Camilla to find where  \nFortune would offer the easiest approach. She was swift of foot,  \nbut he was more than her equal with the javelin and far superior  \nin cunning. Wherever she went on her wild forays through the  \nthick of battle, Arruns was behind her, quietly following in her  \ntracks. Wherever she went as she returned in triumph and  \nwithdrew from her enemies, Arruns pulled on his swift reins  \nand kept out of sight. Round a whole circle he went, trying now  \none approach, now another, brandishing the fatal spear that  \nnever missed its mark.\n\nIt then so chanced that Chloreus appeared, a man who had  \nbeen consecrated to Cybele on her mountain, and in days long  \npast had been a priest. She saw him a long way off, resplendent  \n770 in his Phrygian armour and spurring his foaming warhorse. The  \nhorse-cloth was of hide with gold stitching and overlapping  \nbrass scales in the shape of feathers. He himself shone with  \nexotic indigo and purple. The arrows he shot from his Lycian  \nbow were from Gortyn in Crete and the bow hanging from his  \nshoulder was of gold. Gold too was the helm on the head of the  \npriest, and on that day he had gathered the rustling linen folds  \nof his saffron-yellow cloak into a knot with a golden brooch. He  \nwore an embroidered tunic and barbaric embroidered trousers  \ncovered his legs. Whether her intention was to nail his Trojan  \narmour to the temple doors or to sport captive gold on her  \n780 hunting expeditions, she picked him out in the press of battle,  \nand blind to all else and unthinking, she tracked him through  \nthe whole army, burning with all a woman's passion for spoil  \nand plunder. At last the lurking Arruns saw his moment and  \nhurled his spear, offering up this prayer to heaven: 'O highest  \nof the gods, guardian of the holy mountain of Soracte, Apollo,  \nwe are the first to worship you. We heap up the wood of the  \npine to feed your flames, and in your holy rites, sure in our faith,  \nwe walk on fire, sinking our feet deep in the hot ash. Grant  \n790 now, All-powerful Father, that our arms be wiped clean of this  \ndisgrace. My mind is not set on spoils won from a girl or a  \ntrophy set up for routing her or for any form of booty. My fame  \nwill come from my other feats of arms. But let this deadly  \nscourge be defeated and fall to my spear, and I shall go back to  \nthe cities of my fathers and claim no credit.'\n\nPhoebus Apollo heard, and part of his prayer he decided to  \nanswer, part he scattered to the swift breezes of air. He granted  \nhis prayer to surprise Camilla and lay her low in death, but did  \nnot allow the mountains of his native land to see him ever again.  \nA sudden squall took these words and blew them far away to  \nthe winds of the south. So, when the spear that left his hand  \nwent whirring through the air and the Volscians, all of them,  \n800 turned their minds and eyes intently to their queen, she was not  \nthinking of whirring or of air or of weapons coming out of the  \nsky, and the shaft struck home beneath her naked breast and  \nlodged there drinking deep of her virgin blood. Her companions  \nrushed in panic to support their falling queen, and Arruns fled,  \nmore terrified than anyone, joy mixed with his fear. He had lost  \nhis faith in his spear and was afraid to face the weapons of the  \nwarrior maiden. As when a wolf has killed a shepherd or a great  \n810 ox, and goes at once to hide high in the trackless hills before the  \navenging spears can come to look for him; he knows what he  \nhas done, and takes fright, comforting his quivering tail by  \ntucking it under his belly as he makes for the woods \u2013 just so  \ndid Arruns disappear from sight in wild confusion, happy to  \nescape and mingle in the press of battle. Camilla was dying. She  \ntried to pull out the spear, but its steel point stood deep in the  \nwound between the bones of her ribs. She was swooning from  \nloss of blood, her eyes dimming in the chill of death, and the  \n820 flush had faded from her cheeks. With her dying breath she  \nspoke to Acca, alone of all her young friends. She was her most  \nfaithful companion and to her alone she used to open her heart.  \n'I can do no more, Acca, my sister. This cruel wound is taking  \nall my strength, and everything is going dark around me. Run  \nfrom this place and take my last commands to Turnus. He must  \ncome into battle and keep the Trojans away from the city. And  \nnow, farewell.' Even as she was speaking she was losing her  \nhold on her reins and in spite of all her efforts she slid to the  \nground. Then, growing cold, she little by little freed herself  \n830 from her body. Her neck drooped and she laid down her head,  \nyielding to death and letting go her weapons, as her life left her  \nwith a groan and fled in anger down to the shades. At this a  \nmeasureless clamour rose and struck the golden stars. Now that  \nCamilla had fallen, the battle raged as never before. Charging  \nin one solid mass came the whole army of the Trojans, the  \nEtruscan nobles and the Arcadian squadrons of Evander.\n\nOpis, Diana's sentinel, had long been at her post high in the  \nmountains, watching the fighting and knowing no fear. But  \nwhen, far beneath her in the press of warriors shouting in the  \nfrenzy of battle, she saw Camilla receive the bitter stroke of  \n840 death, she groaned and spoke these words from the depths of  \nher heart: 'Alas, Camilla! You have paid too cruel a price for  \ndaring to challenge the Trojans in war, nor has it profited you  \nthat alone in the wild woods you have worshipped Diana and  \nworn our quiver on your shoulder. But your queen has not left  \nyou unhonoured now at your last hour. This death of yours will  \nnot be forgotten among the peoples of this earth, and no one  \nshall say that you have died unavenged. Whoever has desecrated  \nyour body with a wound will pay just penalty with his life.'\n\nAt the foot of a high mountain there was a huge mound of  \n850 earth shaded by dense ilex trees. It was the tomb of Dercennus,  \nan ancient king of the Laurentines. Here the lovely goddess first  \nalighted on her swift flight, keeping watch for Arruns from the  \nhigh mound. When she saw him gleaming in his armour and  \nswollen with empty pride, she called out: 'Why are you leaving?  \nTurn round and come in this direction. Come here and die! You  \nmust receive your reward for Camilla. Come, even a man can die  \nby the weapons of Diana!' When she had spoken, the Thracian  \n860 nymph took a winged arrow from her gilded quiver and drew  \nher deadly bow. Far back she stretched the string until the  \ncurved horns of the bow were close together, her hands level,  \nthe left on the steel point of the arrow, the right holding the  \nstring against her breast. Arruns heard the hiss of the arrow and  \nthe whirr in the air, and in that same moment the steel was  \nplanted in his flesh. His comrades paid no heed. They left him  \nbreathing his last and groaning in some place unknown in the  \ndust of the plain, while Opis soared on her wings to heavenly  \nOlympus.\n\nThe light-armed squadron of Camilla were the first to flee  \n870 when they lost their queen; then the Rutulians in a rout; then  \nbold Asilas and all the scattered leaders and leaderless columns  \nmade for safety, wheeling their horses and galloping for the  \nwalls. No weapon could check the deadly onset of the Trojans  \nand no one could stand against them. Back rode the Latins with  \nslack bowstrings on slumped shoulders, and the four-hooved  \nbeat of their galloping horses drummed on the crumbling plain.  \nAs the black cloud of swirling dust rolled up to the walls, the  \nmothers stood on the watch-towers beating their breasts and  \nthe wailing of women rose to the stars in the sky. The first Latins  \n880 to burst into the open gates were pressed hard by a pursuing  \ncolumn of enemies mingled with friends and did not escape a  \npitiable death. There, on the very threshold, within the walls of  \ntheir native city and in the safe refuge of their own homes, their  \nbodies were pierced and they breathed out their life's breath.  \nSome shut the gates and dared not open them to take their own  \npeople within the walls for all their pleading, and there was  \npiteous slaughter of the armed men guarding the approaches  \nand of men rushing to death on their weapons. Of those who  \nwere shut out before the weeping eyes of their own parents,  \nsome rolled headlong down into the ditches with the weight of  \nthe rout behind them, while others came on blindly at full gallop  \n890 and crashed into the massive gates with their firm-set posts.  \nEven the mothers strove their utmost \u2013 the true love of their  \nnative land showed them the way and Camilla was their example.  \nWildly they hurled missiles from the walls and rushed to  \ndo the work of steel with stumps and stakes of oak wood  \nhardened in the fire, longing to be the first to die in defence of  \nthe walls of their city.\n\nMeanwhile the warrior Turnus was still in the wood when  \nthe bitter news came and filled his heart to overflowing. The  \nwords of Acca brought him great turmoil of spirit: the battle  \nforces of the Volscians were destroyed; Camilla had fallen;  \n900 the enemy were attacking fiercely and had carried everything  \nirresistibly before them; panic was already reaching the city  \nwalls. In a frenzy \u2013 and this is what the implacable will of Jupiter  \ndecreed \u2013 he came down from the hills where he had kept his  \nambush and left the wild woods behind him. Scarcely was he  \nout of sight and moving on to the plains when Father Aeneas  \nentered the open pass, came over the ridge and then emerged  \nfrom the woods. So then they were both making for the walls at  \nspeed, with their whole armies marching not many paces from  \neach other. Aeneas saw the Laurentine columns and the long  \nline of dust smoking on the plains at one and the same moment  \n910 as Turnus recognized Aeneas advancing relentlessly under arms  \nand heard the drumming of approaching hooves and the  \nbreathing of horses. They would have joined battle instantly  \nand tried the fortunes of war if the rose-red sun had not been  \ndipping its weary horses in the Iberian sea, drawing down the  \nlight of day and bringing on the night. They both encamped  \nbefore the city and built stockades on their ramparts.\n\n## BOOK 12  \nTRUCE AND DUEL\n\nWhen Turnus saw the line of the Latins broken, the battle going  \nagainst them and their spirits flagging, when he realized that the  \ntime had come to honour his promises and that all eyes were  \nupon him, no more was needed. He burned with implacable  \nrage and his courage rose within him. Just as a lion in the fields  \nround Carthage, who does not move into battle till he has  \nreceived a great wound in his chest from the hunters, and then  \nrevels in it, shaking out the thick mane on his neck; fearlessly  \nhe snaps off the shaft left in his body by the ruffian that threw  \nit, and opens his gory jaws to roar \u2013 just so did the violent  \n10 passion rise in Turnus. At last he spoke these wild words to the  \nking: 'Turnus keeps no man waiting. There is no excuse for  \nAeneas and his cowards to go back on their word or fail to keep  \ntheir agreement. I am coming to meet them. Bring out the  \nsacraments, father, and draw up the terms of the treaty. Either  \nthis right hand of mine will send this Trojan who has deserted  \nAsia down into Tartarus \u2013 the Latins can sit and watch \u2013 and  \none man's sword shall refute a charge brought against a whole  \npeople, or else he can rule over those he has defeated and have  \nLavinia as his wife.'\n\n20 Latinus answered him, and his voice was calm: 'You are a  \ngreat-hearted young warrior. The more you excel in fierce courage,  \nthe more urgent is my duty to take thought, to weigh all  \npossible chances and to be afraid. You have the kingdom of  \nyour father Daunus. You have all the cities your right hand has  \ntaken. I too, Latinus, have some wealth and some generosity of  \nspirit. In Latium and the Laurentine fields there are other women  \nfor you to marry, and of the noblest families. This is not easy to  \nsay. Allow me to speak openly and honestly, and as you listen,  \nlay these words to your heart. For me it would have been wrong  \nto unite my daughter with any of those who came to ask for her  \nin the past. It was forbidden by all the prophecies of gods and  \n30 men. But I gave way to my love for you. I gave way to the  \nkinship of blood and to the grief and tears of my wife. Breaking  \nall the ties that bound me, I seized Lavinia from the man to  \nwhom she had been promised and took up arms in an unjust  \ncause. From that moment you see the calamities of war that fall  \nupon me, and the suffering that you bear more than any other.  \nTwice we have been crushed in great battles, and we can scarcely  \nprotect within our city the future hopes of Italy. The current of  \nthe Thybris is even now warm with our blood and the broad  \nplains white with our bones. Why do I always give way? Why  \ndo I change my resolve? What folly this is! I am ready to accept  \nthem as allies if Turnus is killed; why not put an end to the war  \n40 while he is still alive? What will your kinsmen the Rutulians,  \nwhat will the whole of the rest of Italy say if I betray you and  \nsend you to your death \u2013 which Fortune forbid \u2013 when you are  \nasking to marry my daughter? Remember the many accidents  \nof war and take pity on your old father waiting with heavy heart  \nfar away in your native Ardea.' These words had no effect on  \nTurnus. The violence of his fury mounted. The healing only  \nheightened the fever. As soon as he could bring himself to speak,  \nout came his reply: 'This concern you are so kind as to show for  \nmy sake, I beg of you for my sake, forget it, and allow me to  \n50 barter my life for glory. We too have weapons, father. We too  \nhave some strength in our right arm to throw the steel around,  \nand when we strike a man, the blood flows from the wound.  \nHis mother the goddess will not be at hand with her woman's  \ntricks, lurking in the treacherous shadows and trying to hide  \nhim in a cloud when he turns tail!'\n\nTerrified by this new turn in the fortunes of battle, queen  \nAmata began to weep. Seeing her own death before her, she  \ntried to check the frenzy of Turnus, the man she had chosen to  \nbe the husband of her daughter: 'By these tears, Turnus, by any  \n60 respect for me that touches your heart, Amata begs of you this  \none thing. You are the one hope and the one relief of my old  \nage. In your hands rest the honour and the power of Latinus.  \nOur whole house is falling and you are its one support. Do not  \npersist in meeting the Trojans in battle. Whatever fate awaits  \nyou in that encounter, waits also for me. If you die, I too will  \nleave the light I loathe. I shall never live to be a captive and see  \nAeneas married to Lavinia.' When Lavinia heard these words  \nof her mother, her burning cheeks were bathed in tears and the  \ndeep flush glowed and spread over her face. As when Indian  \nivory has been stained with blood-red dye, or when white lilies  \nare crowded by roses and take on their red, such were the  \n70 colours on the maiden's face. Turnus was distraught with love  \nand fixed his eyes on Lavinia. Burning all the more for war, he  \nthen spoke these few words to Amata: 'Do not, I beg of you,  \nmother, send me to the harsh encounters of war with tears and  \nwith such an evil omen. Turnus is not free to hold back the day  \nof his death. Go as my messenger, Idmon, and take these words  \nof mine to the leader of the Phrygians, and little pleasure will  \nthey give him: when tomorrow's dawn reddens in the sky, borne  \non the crimson wheels of Aurora's chariot, let him not lead  \nTrojans against Rutulians. Let the Trojan and Rutulian armies  \n80 be at peace. His blood, or mine, shall decide this war. This is  \nthe field where the hand of Lavinia shall be won.'\n\nWhen he had finished speaking and rushed back into the  \npalace, he called for his horses and it gladdened his heart to see  \nthem standing there before him neighing. Orithyia, wife of  \nBoreas, had given them to Turnus' grandfather Pilumnus to  \nhonour him, and they were whiter than the snow and swifter  \nthan the winds. The impatient charioteers stood round them,  \ndrumming on the horses' chests with cupped hands and combing  \ntheir streaming manes. Then Turnus himself drew over his  \nshoulders the breastplate with scales of gold and pale copper  \nand fitted on his sword and shield and his helmet with its red  \n90 crests in horned sockets. The God of Fire himself had made the  \nsword for Turnus' father Daunus, dipping it white-hot in the  \nwaters of the Styx. Then instantly he snatched up his mighty  \nspear which was leaning there against a great column in the  \nmiddle of the palace, spoil taken from Actor the Auruncan, and  \nbrandished it till it quivered, shouting: 'You, my spear, have  \nnever failed me when I have called upon you. Now the time is  \nhere. Mighty Actor once wielded you. Now it is the right of  \nTurnus. Grant me the power to bring down that effeminate  \nPhrygian, to tear the breastplate off his body and rend it with  \n100 my bare hands, to foul in the dust the hair he has curled with  \nhot steel and steeped in myrrh!' Such was the blazing fury that  \ndrove him on. Sparks flew from his whole face and his piercing  \neyes flashed fire. He was like a bull coming into his first battle,  \nbellowing fearfully and gathering his anger into his horns by  \ngoring a tree trunk and slashing the air, pawing the sand and  \nmaking it fly as he rehearses for battle.\n\nAeneas meanwhile, arrayed in the arms his mother had given  \nhim, was no less ferocious. He too was sharpening his spirit and  \nrousing himself to anger, rejoicing that the war was being settled  \n110 by the treaty he had proposed. He then reassured his allies and  \ncomforted the fears and anxieties of Iulus, telling of the future  \nthat had been decreed, ordering envoys to return a firm answer  \nto Latinus and lay down the conditions for peace.\n\nThe next day had scarcely risen, sprinkling the mountain tops  \nwith brightness. When the horses of the Sun first reared up from  \nthe deep sea and raised their nostrils to breathe out the light,  \nthe Rutulians and Trojans were measuring a field for the duel  \nunder the walls of the great city, setting out braziers between  \nthe two armies and building altars of turf to the gods they shared.  \n120 Others, wearing sacrificial aprons, their foreheads bound with  \nholy leaves, brought fire and spring water. The Ausonian legion  \nadvanced, armed with javelins, filling the gateways as they  \nstreamed out of their city in serried ranks. On the other side the  \nwhole Trojan and Etruscan army came at the run in all their  \nvaried armour, drawn up with weapons at the ready as though  \nit were the bitter business of battle that was calling them out.  \nThere too, in the middle of all these thousands, the leaders  \nhovered in the pride of purple and gold, Mnestheus of the  \nline of Assaracus, brave Asilas and Messapus, tamer of horses,  \nson of Neptune. The signal was given. They all withdrew to  \ntheir places, planting their spears in the ground and propping  \n130 their shields against them. Then in a sudden rush the  \nmothers, those who could not bear arms and the weak old men  \ntook up their seats on the towers and roofs of the city or stood  \nhigh on the gates.\n\nBut Juno looked out from the top of what is now the Alban  \nMount \u2013 in those days it had neither name nor honour nor glory  \n\u2013 and saw the plain, the two armies of Laurentines and Trojans,  \nand the city of Latinus. Immediately the goddess Juno addressed  \n140 the goddess who was the sister of Turnus, the ruler of lakes and  \nroaring rivers, an honour granted by Jupiter the High King of  \nHeaven as the price of her ravished virginity: 'Nymph, pride of  \nall rivers, dearest to our heart, you know how I have favoured  \nyou above all the other women of Italy who have mounted the  \nungrateful bed of magnanimous Jupiter, and have gladly set you  \nin your place in the skies, learn now the grief which is yours,  \nJuturna, and do not lay the blame on me. As long as Fortune  \nseemed to permit it, as long as the Fates allowed all to go well  \nwith Latium, I have protected the warrior Turnus and your  \nwalls. But now I see he is confronting a destiny to which he is  \n150 not equal. The day of the Fates and the violence of his enemy  \nare upon him. My eyes cannot look at this battle or at this  \ntreaty. If you dare to stand closer and help your brother, go. It  \nis right and proper. You suffer now. Perhaps a better time will  \ncome.' She had scarcely spoken when the tears flooded from  \nJuturna's eyes, and three times and more she beat her lovely  \nbreasts. 'This is no time for tears,' said Juno, daughter of Saturn.  \n'Go quickly and if you can find a way, snatch your brother from  \ndeath or else stir up war and dash from their hands this treaty  \nthey have drawn up. You dare. I sanction.' With these words  \n160 she urged her on, then left her in doubt and confusion and  \nwounded to the heart.\n\nMeanwhile the kings arrived, Latinus mighty in his four-horse  \nchariot, with twelve gold rays encircling his shining temples,  \nproof of his descent from his grandfather the God of the Sun.  \nTurnus was in his chariot drawn by two white horses, gripping  \ntwo broad-bladed spears in his hand. From the other side,  \nadvancing from the camp, came Father Aeneas, the founder of  \nthe Roman race, with his divine armour blazing and his shield  \nlike a star. Beside him were Ascanius, the second hope for the  \nfuture greatness of Rome, and a priest arrayed in pure white  \n170 vestments, driving to the burning altars a yearling ewe as yet  \nunshorn and the young of a breeding sow. Turning their eyes  \ntowards the rising sun, the leaders stretched out their hands  \nwith offerings of salted meal, marked the peak of their victims'  \nforeheads with their blades and poured libations on the altars  \nfrom their goblets.\n\nThen devout Aeneas drew his sword and prayed: 'I now call  \nthe Sun to witness, and this land for which I have been able to  \nendure such toil; I call upon the All-powerful Father of the  \nGods, and you his wife, Saturnian Juno \u2013 and I pray you,  \ngoddess, from this moment look more kindly on us \u2013 and you,  \n180 glorious Mars, under whose sway all wars are disposed; I call  \nupon springs and rivers; I call upon all the divinities of high  \nheaven and all the gods of the blue sea: if victory should chance  \nto fall to Ausonian Turnus, it is agreed that the defeated withdraw  \nto the city of Evander. Iulus will leave these lands, and  \nafter this the people of Aeneas will not rise again in war, or  \nbring their armies here, or disturb this kingdom with the sword.  \nBut if Victory grants the day to us and to our arms \u2013 as I believe  \nshe will, and may the gods so rule \u2013 I shall not order Italians to  \n190 obey Trojans, nor do I seek royal power for myself. Both nations  \nshall move forward into an everlasting treaty, undefeated, and  \nequal before the law. I shall give the sacraments and the gods.  \nLatinus, the father of my bride, will have the armies and solemn  \nauthority in the state. For me the Trojans will build the walls of  \na city and Lavinia will give it her name.'\n\nSo prayed Aeneas, and Latinus followed him, looking up and  \nstretching his right hand towards the sky: 'I too swear, Aeneas,  \nby the same: by earth and sea and stars; by the two children of  \nLatona and by two-browed Janus; by the divine powers beneath  \n200 the earth and the holy house of unyielding Dis; and let the Father  \nhimself, who sanctions treaties by the flash of his lightning, hear  \nthese my words. I touch his altar. I call to witness the gods and  \nthe fires that stand between us. The day shall not come when  \nmen of Italy shall violate this treaty or break this peace, whatever  \nchance will bring. This is my will and no power will set it aside,  \nnot if it dissolve the earth in flood and pour it into the sea, not  \nif it melt the sky into Tartarus, just as this sceptre' \u2013 at that  \nmoment he was holding his sceptre in his hand \u2013 'will never  \nsprout green or cast a shadow from delicate leaves, now that it  \nhas been cut from the base of its trunk in the forest, leaving its  \nmother tree and losing its limbs and leafy tresses to the steel.  \n210 What was once a tree, skilled hands have now clad in the beauty  \nof bronze and given to the fathers of Latium to bear.' With such  \nwords they sealed the treaty between them in full view of the  \nleaders of the peoples. Then, taking the duly consecrated victims,  \nthey cut their throats on to the altar fires, and, tearing the  \nentrails from them while they still lived, they heaped the altars  \nfrom laden platters.\n\nBut it had long seemed to the Rutulians that this was not an  \neven contest and their hearts were still more confused and  \ndismayed when the two men appeared before their eyes and  \nthey saw at close range the difference in their strength. Their  \n220 fears were increased by the sight of Turnus stepping forward  \nquietly with downcast eyes to worship at the altar like a suppliant.  \nHis cheeks were like a boy's and there was a pallor over all  \nhis youthful body. As soon as his sister Juturna saw that such  \ntalk was spreading and that men's minds were weakening and  \nwavering, she came into the battle lines in the guise of Camers,  \nwhose family had been great from his earliest ancestors, whose  \nfather had won fame for his courage, and who himself was the  \nboldest of the bold in the use of arms. Into the middle of the  \nbattle lines she advanced, well knowing what she had to do, and  \nthere with these words she sowed the seeds of many different  \n230 rumours: 'Is it not a disgrace, Rutulians, to sacrifice the life of  \none man for all of us? Are we not their equals in numbers and  \nin strength? Look, these few here are all they have, the Trojans,  \nArcadians and the army sent by Fate \u2013 the Etruscans who hate  \nTurnus! We are short of enemies, even if only half our number  \nwere to engage them in battle. As things are, the fame of Turnus  \nwill rise to the gods on whose altars he now dedicates himself,  \nand he will live on the lips of men, but if we lose our native land,  \nwe shall be forced to obey proud masters, who now sit here  \nidling in our fields!'\n\nBy such words she more and more inflamed the minds of the  \n240 warriors, and murmurs crept through their ranks. Even the  \nLaurentines had a change of heart, even the Latins, and men  \nwho a moment ago were longing for a rest from fighting and  \nsafety for their people, now wanted their weapons and prayed  \nthat the treaty would come to nothing, pitying Turnus and the  \ninjustice of his fate. At this moment Juturna did even more and  \nshowed a sign high in the sky, the most powerful portent that  \never confused and misled men of Italy. The tawny eagle of  \nJupiter was flying in the red sky of morning, putting to clamorous  \nflight the winged armies of birds along the shore, when he  \n250 suddenly swooped down to the waves and seized a noble swan  \nin his pitiless talons. The men of Italy thrilled at the sight, the  \nbirds all shrieked and \u2013 a wonder to behold \u2013 they wheeled in  \ntheir flight, darkening the heavens with their wings, and formed  \na cloud to mob their enemy high in the air until, exhausted by  \ntheir attacks and the weight of his prey, he gave way, dropping  \nit out of his talons into the river below and taking flight far  \naway into the clouds.\n\nThe Rutulians greeted the portent with a shout and their  \nhands were quick to their swords. Tolumnius, the augur, was  \n260 the first to speak: 'At last!' he cried. 'At last! This is what I have  \nso often prayed to see. I accept the omen and acknowledge the  \ngods. It is I who will lead you. Now take up your arms, O my  \npoor countrymen, into whose hearts the pitiless stranger strikes  \nthe terror of war. You are like the feeble birds and he is attacking  \nand plundering your shores. He will take to flight and sail far  \naway over the sea, but you must all be of one mind, mass your  \nforces into one flock and fight to defend your king whom he has  \nseized.' When he had spoken he ran forward and hurled his  \ncornel-wood spear at the enemy standing opposite. It whirred  \nthrough the air and flew unerringly. In that moment a great  \nshout arose. In that moment all the ranks drawn up in wedge  \nformation were thrown into disorder, and in the confusion  \n270 men's hearts blazed with sudden passion. The spear flew on. By  \nchance nine splendid brothers had taken their stand opposite  \nTolumnius, all of them sons borne by the faithful Tyrrhena to  \nher Arcadian husband Gylippus. It struck one of these in the  \nwaist where the sewn belt chafed the belly and the buckle bit  \nthe side-straps. He was noble in his looks and in the brilliance  \nof his armour, and the spear drove through his ribs and stretched  \nhim on the yellow sand. Burning with grief, his brothers, a whole  \nphalanx of spirited warriors, drew their swords or snatched up  \n280 their throwing spears and rushed blindly forward. The ranks of  \nthe Laurentines ran to meet them while from the other side the  \nmassed Trojans came flooding up with Etruscans from Agylla  \nand Arcadians in their brightly coloured armour. One single  \npassion drove them on \u2013 to settle the matter by the sword. They  \ntore down the altars and a wild storm of missiles filled the whole  \nsky and fell in a rain of steel. The mixing bowls and braziers  \nwere removed, and now that the treaty had come to nothing  \neven Latinus took to flight with his rejected gods. Some bridled  \nthe teams of their chariots; some leapt on their horses and stood  \nat the ready with drawn swords.\n\n290 Messapus, eager to wreck the treaty, rode straight at the  \nEtruscan Aulestes, a king wearing the insignia of a king, and the  \ncharging horse drove him back in terror. He fell as he retreated,  \nand crashed violently head and shoulders into the altar behind  \nhim. Riding furiously, Messapus flew to him and, towering over  \nhim with a lance as long as a housebeam, he struck him his  \ndeath blow even as he poured out prayers for mercy. 'So much  \nfor Aulestes!' cried Messapus. 'This is a better victim to offer to  \nthe great gods!' and the men of Italy ran to strip the body while  \nit was still warm. Corynaeus came to meet them, snatching a  \nhalf-burnt torch from an altar. Ebysus made for him, but before  \n300 he could strike a blow, Corynaeus filled his face with fire.  \nHis great beard flared up and gave off a stench as it burned.  \nCorynaeus pressed his attack and, clutching the hair of his  \nhelpless enemy in his left hand, he forced him to the ground,  \nkneeling on him with all his weight, and sunk the hard steel  \nin his flank. Meanwhile Podalirius had been following the  \nshepherd Alsus as he rushed through the hail of missiles in the  \nfront line of battle and was now poised over him with the naked  \nsword. But, drawing back his axe, Alsus struck him full in  \nthe middle of the forehead and split it to the chin, bathing all  \nhis armour in a shower of blood. It was a cruel rest then for  \n310 Podalirius. An iron sleep bore down upon him and closed his  \neyes in everlasting night.\n\nBut true to his vow Aeneas, unhelmeted, stretched out his  \nweaponless right hand and called to his allies: 'Where are you  \nrushing? What is this sudden discord rising among you? Control  \nyour anger! The treaty is already struck and its terms agreed. I  \nalone have the right of conflict. Leave me to fight and forget  \nyour fears. We have a treaty, and my right hand will make it  \ngood. The rituals we have performed have made Turnus mine.'  \nWhile he was still speaking, while words like these were still  \npassing his lips, an arrow came whirring in its flight and struck  \n320 him, unknown the hand that shot it and the force that spun it  \nto its target, unknown what chance or what god brought such  \nhonour to the Rutulians. The shining glory of the deed is lost in  \ndarkness, and no man boasted that he had wounded Aeneas.\n\nWhen Turnus saw him leaving the field and the leaders of the  \nallies in dismay, a sudden fire of hope kindled in his heart.  \nHorses and arms he demanded both at once, and in a flash he  \nleapt on his chariot with spirits soaring and gathered up the  \nreins. Then many a brave hero he sent down to death as he flew  \n330 along, and many half-dead bodies he sent rolling on the ground,  \ncrushing whole columns of men under his chariot wheels as he  \ncaught up their spears and showered them on those who had  \ntaken to flight. Just as Mars, spattered with blood, charges along  \nthe banks of the icy river Hebrus, clashing sword on shield and  \ngiving full rein to his furious horses as he stirs up war; they fly  \nacross the open plain before the winds of the south and the  \nwest, till Thrace roars to its furthest reaches with the drumming  \nof their hooves as his escort gallops all round him, Rage, Treachery  \nand the dark faces of Fear \u2013 just so did bold Turnus lash his  \nhorses through the thick of battle till they smoked with sweat,  \nand as he trampled the pitiable bodies of his dead enemies, the  \n340 flying hooves scattered a dew of blood and churned the gore  \ninto the sand. Sthenelus he sent to his death with a throw from  \nlong range; then Thamyrus and Pholus, both in close combat.  \nFrom long range, too, he struck down the Imbrasidae, Glaucus  \nand Lades, whom their father Imbrasus himself had brought up  \nin Lycia, and gave them armour that equipped them either to  \ndo battle or to outstrip the winds on horseback.\n\nIn another part of the field, Eumedes was charging into the  \nfray. He was a famous warrior, son of old Dolon, bearing his  \ngrandfather's name, but his spirit and his hand for war were his  \n350 father's. It was Dolon who dared to ask for the chariot of  \nAchilles as a reward for going to spy on the camp of the Greeks.  \nBut Diomede provided a different reward for his daring, and he  \nsoon ceased to aspire to the horses of Achilles. When Turnus  \ncaught sight of Eumedes far off on the open plain, he struck him  \nfirst with a light javelin thrown over the vast space that lay  \nbetween. Then, halting the two horses that drew his chariot, he  \nleapt down and stood over his dying enemy with his foot on his  \nneck. He wrenched the sword out of Eumedes' hand, and it  \nflashed as he dipped it deep in his throat, saying: 'There they  \n360 are, Trojan. These are the fields of Hesperia you tried to take  \nby war. Lie there and measure them! This is my reward for those  \nwho test me by the sword. This is how they build their cities.'  \nNext, with a throw of his javelin, he sent Asbytes to join him,  \nthen Chloreus, Sybaris, Dares, Thersilochus and Thymoetes,  \nwhose horse had fallen and thrown him over its head. Just as  \nwhen the breath of Thracian Boreas sounds upon the deep  \nAegean as he pursues the waves to the shore, and wherever the  \nwinds put out their strength the clouds take to flight across the  \nsky, just so, wherever Turnus cut his path, the enemy gave way  \nbefore him, their ranks breaking and running, and his own  \n370 impetus carried him forward with the plumes on his helmet  \ntossing as he drove his chariot into the wind. Phegeus could not  \nendure this onslaught of Turnus and his wild shouting, but leapt  \nin front of the chariot and pulled round the horses' heads as  \nthey galloped at him, foaming at their bits. Then, as he was  \ndragged along hanging from the yoke, the broad blade of  \nTurnus' lance struck his unprotected side, piercing and breaking  \nthe double mesh of his breastplate and grazing the skin of his  \nbody. He put up his shield and was twisting round to face his  \n380 enemy when he fell and was caught by the flying wheel and axle  \nand stretched out on the ground. Turnus, following up, struck  \nhim between the bottom of the helmet and the top edge of the  \nbreastplate, cutting off his head and leaving the trunk on  \nthe sand.\n\nWhile the victorious Turnus was dealing death on the plain,  \nAeneas was taken into the camp by Mnestheus and faithful  \nAchates. Ascanius was with them. Aeneas was bleeding and  \nleaning on his long spear at every other step. He was in a fury,  \ntugging at the arrowhead broken in the wound and demanding  \nthat they should take the quickest way of helping him, make a  \n390 broad cut with the blade of a sword, slice open the flesh where  \nthe arrow was embedded and get him back into battle. But now  \nthere came Iapyx, son of Iasus, whom Phoebus Apollo loved  \nabove all other men. Overcome by this fierce love, Apollo had  \nlong since offered freely and joyfully to give him all his arts and  \nall his powers, prophecy, the lyre, the swift arrow, but, in order  \nto prolong the life of his dying father, Iapyx chose rather to ply  \na mute, inglorious art and know the virtues of herbs and the  \n400 practice of healing. There, with the grieving Iulus, in the middle  \nof a great crowd of warriors, stood Aeneas, growling savagely,  \nleaning on his great spear and unmoved by their tears. The old  \nman, with his robe caught up and tied behind him after the  \nfashion of Apollo Paeon, tried anxiously and tried in vain all he  \ncould do with his healing hands and the potent herbs of Apollo.  \nIn vain his right hand worked at the dart. In vain the forceps  \ngripped the steel. Fortune did not show the way and his patron  \nApollo gave no help. And all the time the horror of battle grew  \nfiercer and fiercer on the plain, and nearer and nearer drew  \nthe danger. They soon could see a wall of dust in the sky. The  \ncavalry rode up, and showers of missiles were falling into  \nthe middle of the camp. A hideous noise of shouting rose to  \n410 the heavens as young men fought and fell under the iron hand  \nof Mars.\n\nAt this Venus, dismayed by her son's undeserved suffering,  \npicked some dittany on Mount Ida in Crete. The stalk of this  \nplant has a vigorous growth of leaves and its head is crowned  \nby a purple flower. It is a herb which wild goats know well and  \nfeed on when arrows have flown and stuck in their backs. This  \nVenus brought down, veiled in a blinding cloud, and with it  \ntinctured the river water they had poured into shining bowls,  \nimpregnating it secretly and sprinkling in it fragrant panacea  \n420 and the health-giving juices of ambrosia. Such was the water  \nwith which old Iapyx, without knowing it, bathed the wound,  \nand suddenly, in that moment, all the pain left Aeneas' body  \nand the blood was staunched in the depths of the wound. Of its  \nown accord the arrow came away in the hand of Iapyx and fresh  \nstrength flowed into Aeneas, restoring him to his former state.  \nIt was Iapyx who was the first to fire their spirits to face the  \nenemy. 'Bring the warrior his arms, and quickly!' he cried. 'Why  \nstand there? This cure was not effected by human power, nor  \nby the guidance of art. It is not my right hand that saved you,  \nAeneas. Some greater power, some god, is driving you and  \n430 sending you back to greater deeds.' Aeneas was hungry for  \nbattle. He had already sheathed his calves in his golden greaves  \nand was brandishing his flashing spear, impatient of delay. When  \nthe shield was fitted to his side and the breastplate to his back,  \nhe took Ascanius in an armed embrace and kissed him lightly  \nthrough the helmet, saying: 'From me, my son, you can learn  \ncourage and hard toil. Others will teach you about Fortune. My  \nhand will now defend you in war and lead you where the prizes  \nare great. I charge you, when in due course your years ripen and  \nyou become a man, do not forget, but as you go over in your mind  \n440 the examples of your kinsmen, let your spirit rise at the thought  \nof your father Aeneas and your uncle Hector.'\n\nWhen he had finished speaking, he moved through the gates  \nin all his massive might, brandishing his huge spear, and there  \nrushed with him in serried ranks Antheus and Mnestheus and  \nall his escort, streaming from the camp. A blinding dust then  \ndarkened the plain. The very earth was stirred and trembled  \nunder the drumming of their feet. As they advanced, Turnus  \nsaw them from the rampart opposite. The men of Ausonia also  \nsaw them and cold tremors of fear ran through the marrow of  \ntheir bones. But before all the Latins, Juturna heard the sound  \n450 and knew its meaning. She fled, trembling, but Aeneas came  \nswiftly on, leading his dark army over the open plain. Just as  \nwhen a cloud blots out the sun and begins to move from mid-ocean  \ntowards the land; long-suffering farmers see it in the far  \ndistance and shudder to the heart, knowing what it will bring,  \nthe ruin of trees, the slaughter of their crops and destruction  \neverywhere; the flying winds come first, and their sound is first  \nto reach the shore \u2013 just so the Trojan leader from Rhoeteum  \ndrove his army forward against the enemy in wedge formation,  \neach man shoulder to shoulder with his neighbour. Fierce Osiris  \nwas struck by the sword of Thymbraeus. Mnestheus cut down  \n460 Arcetius, Achates Epulo, and Gyas Ufens. Tolumnius himself  \nfell, the augur who had been the first to hurl a spear against his  \nenemies. The shouting rose to the sky and now it was the  \nRutulians who turned and fled over the fields, raising the dust  \non their backs. Aeneas did not think fit to cut down men who  \nhad turned away from him, nor did he go after those who stood  \nto meet him in equal combat or carried spears. He was looking  \nfor Turnus, and only Turnus, tracking him through the thick  \nmurk. Turnus was the only man he asked to fight.\n\nSeeing this and being stricken with fear, the warrior maiden  \n470 Juturna threw out Metiscus, the driver of Turnus' chariot, from  \nbetween the reins and left him lying where he fell, far from the  \nchariot pole. She herself took over the reins and whipped them  \nup to make them ripple, the very image of Metiscus in voice and  \nform and armour, like a black swallow flying through the great  \nhouse of some wealthy man, and collecting tiny scraps of food  \nand dainties for her young chattering on the nest; sometimes  \nher twittering is heard in empty colonnades, sometimes round  \nmarshy pools \u2013 just so did Juturna ride through the middle of  \nthe enemy and the swift chariot flew all over the field. Now  \nhere, now there she gave glimpses of her brother in triumph,  \n480 but then she would fly off and not allow him to join in the battle.  \nBut Aeneas was no less determined to meet him and followed  \nhis every twist and turn, tracking him and calling his name at  \nthe top of his voice all through the scattered lines of battle.  \nEvery time he caught sight of his enemy, he tried to match the  \nspeed of his wing-footed horses, and every time Juturna swung  \nthe chariot round and took to flight. What was Aeneas to do?  \nConflicting tides seethed in his mind, but no answer came, and  \ndifferent passions drove him to opposing thoughts. Then the  \nnimble Messapus, who was running with two pliant steel-tipped  \n490 javelins in his left hand, aimed one of them at Aeneas and hurled  \nit true. Aeneas checked himself and crouched on one knee behind  \nhis shield, but the flying spear sheared off the peak of his helmet  \nand carried away the plumes from the top of it. At this his anger  \nrose. Treachery had given him no choice. When he saw Turnus'  \nhorses pull the chariot round and withdraw, again and again he  \ncalled upon Jupiter and the altars of the broken treaty, and then,  \nand not till then, he plunged into the middle of his enemies. He  \nwas terrible in his might and Mars was aiding him. Sparing no  \nman, he roused himself to savage slaughter and gave full rein to  \nhis anger.\n\n500 What god could unfold all this bitter suffering for me? What  \ngod could express in song all the different ways of death for  \nmen and for their leaders, driven back and forth across the  \nplain, now by Turnus, now by Trojan Aeneas? Was it your will,  \nO Jupiter, that peoples who were to live at peace for all time  \nshould clash so violently in war?\n\nAeneas met Sucro the Rutulian \u2013 this was the first clash to  \ncheck the Trojan charge \u2013 but Sucro did not detain them long.  \nAeneas caught him in the side and drove the raw steel through  \nthe cage of the ribs to the breast where death comes quickest.  \n510 Turnus, now on foot, met Diores and his brother Amycus who  \nhad been unhorsed. As Diores rode at him he struck him with  \nhis long spear; Amycus he dispatched with his sword. Then,  \ncutting off both their heads, he hung them from his chariot and  \ncarried them along with him, dripping their dew of blood.  \nAeneas sent Talos, Tanais and brave Cethegus to their deaths,  \nall three in one encounter, then the gloomy Onites, who bore a  \nname linked with Echion of Thebes and whose mother was  \nPeridia. Turnus killed the brothers who came from the fields of  \nApollo in Lycia, then young Menoetes, who hated war \u2013 but  \nthat did not save him. He was an Arcadian who had plied his  \nart all round the rivers of Lerna, rich in fish. His home was poor  \n520 and he never knew the munificence of the great. His father  \nsowed his crops on hired land. Like fires started in different  \nplaces in a dry wood or in thickets of crackling laurel; or like  \nfoaming rivers roaring as they run down in spate from the high  \nmountains to the sea, sweeping away everything that lies in their  \npath \u2013 no more sluggish were Aeneas and Turnus as they rushed  \nover the field of battle. Now if ever did the anger seethe within  \nthem; now burst their unconquerable hearts and every wound  \nthey gave, they gave with all their might.\n\n530 Murranus was sounding the names of his father's fathers and  \ntheir fathers before them, his whole lineage through all the kings  \nof Latium, when Aeneas knocked him flying from his chariot  \nwith a rock, a huge boulder he sent whirling at him, and  \nstretched him out on the ground. The wheels rolled him forward  \nin a tangle of yoke and reins and his galloping horses had  \nno thought for their master as they trampled him under their  \nclattering hooves. Hyllus made a wild charge, roaring hideously,  \nbut Turnus ran to meet him and spun a javelin at his gilded  \nforehead. Through the helmet it went and stuck in his brain. As  \nfor you, Cretheus, bravest of the Greeks, your right hand did  \nnot rescue you from Turnus; nor was Cupencus protected by  \n540 his gods when Aeneas came near, but his breast met the steel  \nand the bronze shield did not hold back the moment of his  \ndeath. You too, Aeolus. The Laurentine plains saw you fall, and  \nyour back cover a broad measure of their ground. The Greek  \nbattalions could not bring you down, nor could Achilles who  \noverturned the kingdom of Priam, but here you lie. This was the  \nfinishing line of your life. Your home was in the hills below  \nMount Ida, a home in the hills of Lyrnesus, but your grave is in  \nLaurentine soil. The two armies were now wholly turned to face  \none another. All the Latins and all the Trojans \u2013 Mnestheus and  \n550 bold Serestus, Messapus, tamer of horses, and brave Asilas \u2013  \nthe battalion of Etruscans and the Arcadian squadrons of  \nEvander were striving each man with all his resources of strength  \nand will, waging this immense conflict with no rest and no  \nrespite.\n\nAt that moment Aeneas' mother, loveliest of the goddesses,  \nput it into his mind to go to the city, to lead his army instantly  \nagainst the walls and throw the Latins into confusion at this  \nsudden calamity. Turning his eyes this way and that as he  \ntracked down Turnus through all the different battle lines,  \nhe noticed the city, untouched by this great war, quiet and  \n560 unharmed, and his spirit was fired by the sudden thought of a  \ngreater battle he could fight. Calling the leaders of the Trojans  \ntogether, Mnestheus, Sergestus and the brave Serestus, he took  \nup position on some rising ground and the whole of the Trojan  \nlegion joined them there in close formation without laying down  \ntheir shields or spears. Aeneas addressed them standing in the  \nmiddle of a high mound of earth: 'There must be no delay in  \ncarrying out my commands. Jupiter is on our side. No man must  \ngo to work half-heartedly, because my plan is new to him. The  \ncity is the cause of this war. It is the very kingdom of Latinus,  \nand if they do not this day agree to submit to the yoke, to accept  \ndefeat and to obey, I shall root it out and level its smoking roofs  \n570 to the ground. Am I to wait until Turnus thinks fit to stand up  \nto me in battle and consents to meet the man who has already  \ndefeated him? O my fellow-citizens, this city is the head and  \nheart of this wicked war. Bring your torches now and we shall  \nclaim our treaty with fire!'\n\nWhen he had finished speaking, they formed a wedge, all of  \nthem striving with equal resolve in their hearts, and moved  \ntowards the walls in a solid mass. Ladders suddenly appeared.  \nFire came to hand. They rushed the gates and cut to pieces the  \nfirst guards that met them. They spun their javelins and darkened  \nthe heavens with steel. Aeneas himself, standing among the  \n580 leaders under the city wall with his right hand outstretched,  \nlifted up his voice to accuse Latinus, calling the gods to witness  \nthat this was the second time he had been forced into battle;  \ntwice already the Italians had shown themselves to be his  \nenemies; this was not the first treaty they had violated. Alarm  \nand discord rose among the citizens. Some wanted the city to be  \nopened up and the gates thrown wide to receive the Trojans and  \nthey even dragged the king himself on to the ramparts; others  \ncaught up their weapons and rushed to defend the walls: just as  \nwhen a shepherd tracks some bees to their home, shut well away  \ninside a porous rock, and fills it with acrid smoke; the bees,  \n590 alarmed for their safety, rush in all directions through their  \nwax-built camp, sharpening their wrath and buzzing fiercely;  \nthen as the black stench rolls through their chambers, the inside  \nof the rock booms with their blind complaints and the smoke  \nflies to the empty winds.\n\nWeary as they were, a new misfortune now befell the Latins  \nand shook their whole city to its foundations with grief. As  \nsoon as the queen, standing on the palace roof, saw the enemy  \napproaching the city, the walls under attack, fire flying up to the  \nroofs, no Rutulian army anywhere to confront the enemy and  \nno sign of Turnus' columns, she thought in her misery that he  \nhad been killed in the cut and thrust of battle. In that instant  \n600 her mind was deranged with grief and she screamed that she  \nwas the cause, the guilty one, the fountainhead of all these evils.  \nPouring her heart out in sorrow and madness, she resolved to  \ndie. Her hand rent her purple robes, and she died a hideous  \ndeath in the noose of a rope tied to a high beam. When the  \nunhappy women of Latium heard of this, her daughter Lavinia  \nwas the first to tear her golden hair and rosy cheeks. The  \nwhole household was wild with grief around her, and their  \nlamentations rang all through the palace. From there the report  \nspread through the whole city and gloom was everywhere.  \n610 Latinus went with his garments torn, dazed by the death of his  \nwife and the downfall of his city, fouling his grey hair with  \nhandfuls of dirt and dust.\n\nMeanwhile, on a distant part of the plain, the warrior Turnus  \nwas chasing a few stragglers. He was less vigorous now,  \nand less and less delighted with the triumphant progress of his horses,  \nwhen the wind carried to him this sound of shouting and of  \nunexplained terror. He pricked up his ears. It was a confused  \n620 noise from the city, a murmuring with no hint of joy in it. 'What  \nis this?' he cried in wild dismay, pulling on the reins to stop the  \nchariot. 'Why such grief and distress on the walls and all this  \nclamour streaming from every part of the city?' His sister, who  \nwas driving the chariot in the shape of Metiscus and had control  \nof the horses and the reins, protested: 'This way, Turnus. Let us  \ngo after these Trojans. This is where our first victories showed  \nus the way. There are others whose hands can defend the city.  \nAeneas is bearing hard on Italians in all the confusion of battle;  \n630 we too can deal out death without pity to Trojans. You will kill  \nas many as he does and not fall short in the honours of war.'\n\nTurnus made his reply: 'O my sister, I recognized you some  \ntime ago when first you shattered the treaty with your scheming  \nand engaged in this war, and you do not deceive me now,  \npretending not to be a goddess. But whose will is it that you  \nhave been sent down from Olympus to endure this agony? Was  \nit all to see the cruel death of your pitiable brother? For what  \nam I to do? What stroke of Fortune could grant me safety now?  \nNo one is left whom I love as much as I loved Murranus, and I  \n640 have seen him before my own eyes calling for me as he fell, a  \nmighty warrior laid low by a mighty wound. The luckless Ufens  \nhas died rather than look on my disgrace, and the Trojans have  \nhis body and his arms. Shall I stand by and see our homes  \ndestroyed? This is the one indignity that remained. And shall I  \nnot lift my hand to refute the words of Drances? Shall I turn  \ntail? Will this land of Italy see Turnus on the run? Is it so bad a  \nthing to die? Be gracious to me, you gods of the underworld,  \nsince the gods above have turned their faces from me. My spirit  \nwill come down to you unstained, knowing nothing of such  \ndishonour and worthy of my great ancestors to the end.'\n\n650 Scarcely had he finished speaking when Saces suddenly came  \ngalloping up on his foaming horse having ridden through the  \nmiddle of the enemy with an arrow wound full in his face. On  \nhe rushed, calling the name of Turnus and imploring him: 'You  \nare our last hope of safety, Turnus. You must take pity on your  \npeople. The sword and spear of Aeneas are like the lightning  \nand he is threatening to throw down the highest citadels of Italy  \nand give them over to destruction. Firebrands are already flying  \nto the roofs. Every Latin face, every Latin eye, is turned to you.  \nThe king himself is at a loss. Whom should he choose to marry  \n660 our daughters? What treaties should he turn to? And then the  \nqueen, who placed all her trust in you, has taken her own life.  \nFear overcame her and she fled the light of day. Alone in front  \nof the gates Messapus and bold Atinas are holding the line and  \nall round them on every side stand the battalions of the enemy  \nin serried ranks. Their drawn swords are a crop of steel bristling  \nin the fields. And you are out here wheeling your chariot in the  \ndeserted grasslands.'\n\nTurnus was thunderstruck, bewildered by the changing shape  \nof his fortune, and stood there dumb and staring. In that one  \nheart of his there seethed a bitter shame, a grief shot through  \nwith madness, love driven on by fury, and a consciousness of  \nhis own courage. As soon as the shadows lifted from his mind  \n670 and light returned, he forced his burning eyes round towards  \nthe walls, looking back in deep dismay from his chariot at the  \ngreat city. There, between the storeys of a tower, came a tongue  \nof flame, rolling and billowing to the sky. It was taking hold of  \nthe tower, which he had built himself, putting the wheels under  \nit and fitting the long gangways. 'Sister,' he said, 'the time has  \ncome at last. The Fates are too strong. You must not delay them  \nany longer. Let us go where God and cruel Fortune call me. I  \nam resolved to meet Aeneas in battle. I am resolved to suffer  \nwhat bitterness there is in death. You will not see me put to  \n680 shame again. This is madness, but before I die, I beg of you, let  \nme be mad.' No sooner had he spoken than he leapt to the  \nground from his chariot and dashed through all his enemies and  \ntheir weapons, leaving his sister behind him to grieve as his  \ncharge broke through the middle of their ranks. Just as a boulder  \ncomes crashing down from the top of a mountain, torn out by  \ngales, washed out by flood water or loosened by the stealthy  \npassing of the years; it comes down the sheer face with terrific  \nforce, an evil mountain of rock, and bounds over the plain,  \n690 rolling with it woods and flocks and men \u2013 so did Turnus crash  \nthrough the shattered ranks of his enemies towards the walls of  \nthe city where all the ground was wet with shed blood and the  \nair sang with flying spears. There he made a sign with his hand,  \nand in the same moment he called out in a loud voice: 'Enough,  \nRutulians! Put up your weapons, and you too, Latins! Whatever  \nFortune brings is mine. It is better that I should be the one man  \nwho atones for this treaty for all of you, and settles the matter  \nwith the sword.' At these words the armies parted and left a  \nclear space in the middle between them.\n\nBut when Father Aeneas heard the name of Turnus, he abandoned  \nthe walls and the lofty citadel, sweeping aside all delay  \n700 and breaking off all his works of war. He leapt for joy and  \nclashed his armour with a noise as terrible as thunder. Huge he  \nwas as Mount Athos or Mount Eryx or Father Appenninus  \nhimself roaring when the holm-oaks shimmer on his flanks and  \ndelighting to raise his snowy head into the winds. Now at last  \nthe Rutulians and the Trojans and all the men of Italy, the  \ndefenders guarding the high ramparts and the besiegers  \npounding the base of the walls with their rams, they all turned  \ntheir eyes eagerly to see and took the armour off their shoulders.\n\nKing Latinus himself was amazed at the sight of these two huge  \nheroes born at opposite sides of the earth coming together to  \n710 decide the issue by the sword. There, on a piece of open ground  \non the plain, they threw their spears at long range as they  \ncharged, and when they clashed the bronze of their shields rang  \nout and the earth groaned. Blow upon blow they dealt with  \ntheir swords as chance and courage met and mingled in confusion.  \nJust as two enemy bulls on the great mountain of Sila or  \non top of Taburnus bring their horns to bear and charge into  \nbattle; the herdsmen stand back in terror, the herd stands silent  \nand afraid, and the heifers low quietly together waiting to see  \nwho is to rule the grove, who is to be the leader of the whole  \n720 herd; meanwhile the bulls are locked together exchanging blow  \nupon blow, gouging horn into hide till their necks and shoulders  \nare awash with blood and all the grove rings with their lowing  \nand groaning \u2013 just so did Aeneas of Troy and Turnus son of  \nDaunus rush together with shields clashing and the din filled the  \nheavens. Then Jupiter himself lifted up a pair of scales with the  \ntongue centred and put the lives of the two men in them to  \ndecide who would be condemned in the ordeal of battle, and  \nwith whose weight death would descend.\n\nTurnus leapt forward thinking he was safe, and lifting his  \n730 sword and rising to his full height, he struck with all his strength  \nbehind it. The Trojans shouted and the Latins cried out in their  \nanxiety, while both armies watched intently. But in the height  \nof his passion the treacherous sword broke in mid-blow and left  \nhim defenceless, had he not sought help in flight. Faster than  \nthe east wind he flew, when he saw his own right hand holding  \nnothing but a sword handle he did not recognize. The story goes  \nthat when his horses were yoked and he was mounting his  \nchariot in headlong haste to begin the battle, he left his father's  \nsword behind and caught up the sword of his charioteer  \nMetiscus. For some time, while the Trojans were scattered and  \nin flight, that was enough. But when it met the divine armour  \n740 made by Vulcan, the mortal blade was brittle as an icicle and  \nshattered on impact, leaving its fragments glittering on the  \ngolden sand. At this Turnus fled in despair and tried to escape  \nto another part of the plain, weaving his uncertain course now  \nto this side now to that, for the Trojans formed a dense barrier  \nround him, hemming him in between a huge marsh and the  \nhigh walls.\n\nNor did Aeneas let up in his pursuit. Slowed down as he was  \nby the arrow wound, his legs failing him sometimes and unable  \nto run, he still was ablaze with fury and kept hard on the heels  \n750 of the terrified Turnus, like a hunting dog that happens to trap  \na stag in the bend of a river or in a ring of red feathers used as a  \nscare, pressing him hard with his running and barking; the stag  \nis terrified by the ambush he is caught in or by the high river  \nbank; he runs and runs back a thousand ways, but the untiring  \nUmbrian hound stays with him with jaws gaping; now he has  \nhim; now he seems to have him and the jaws snap shut, but he  \nis thwarted and bites the empty air; then as the shouting rises  \nlouder than ever, all the river banks and pools return the sound  \nand the whole sky thunders with the din. As he ran Turnus kept  \nshouting at the Rutulians, calling each of them by name and  \n760 demanding the sword he knew so well. Aeneas on the other  \nhand was threatening instant death and destruction to anyone  \nwho came near. Much as that alarmed them, he terrified them  \neven more by threatening to raze their city to the ground, and  \nthough he was wounded he did not slacken in his pursuit. Five  \ntimes round they ran in one direction, five times they rewound  \nthe circle. For this was no small prize they were trying to win at  \ngames. What they were competing for was the lifeblood of  \nTurnus.\n\nIt so chanced that a bitter-leaved wild olive tree had stood on  \nthis spot, sacred to Faunus and long revered by sailors. On it  \nmen saved from storms at sea used to nail their offerings to the  \nLaurentine god, and dedicate the clothes they had vowed for  \n770 their safety. But the Trojans, making no exception for the sacred  \ntree trunk, had removed it to clear space for the combat. In this  \nstump the spear of Aeneas was now embedded. The force of his  \nthrow had carried it here and lodged it fast in the tough wood  \nof the root. He strained at it and tried to pull it out so that he  \ncould hunt with a missile the quarry he could not catch on foot.  \nWild now with fear, Turnus cried: 'Pity me, I beg of you, Faunus,  \nand you, good Mother Earth, hold on to that spear, if I have  \nalways paid you those honours which Aeneas and his men have  \n780 profaned in war.' So he prayed and he did not call for the help  \nof the god in vain. Aeneas was long delayed struggling with the  \nstubborn stump and no strength of his could prise open the bite  \nof the wood. While he was heaving and straining with all his  \nmight, the goddess Juturna, daughter of Daunus, changed once  \nmore into the shape of the charioteer Metiscus and ran forward  \nto give Turnus his sword. Venus was indignant that the nymph  \nwas allowed to be so bold, so she came and wrenched out  \nAeneas' spear from deep in the root. Then these glorious warriors,  \ntheir weapons and their spirits restored to them, one  \nrelying on his sword, the other towering and formidable behind  \n790 his spear, stood there breathing hard, ready to engage in the  \ncontest of war.\n\nMeanwhile the King of All-powerful Olympus saw Juno  \nwatching the battle from a golden cloud and spoke these words  \nto her: 'O my dear wife, what will be the end of this? What is  \nthere left for you to do? You yourself know, and admit that you  \nknow, that Aeneas is a god of this land, that he has a right to  \nheaven and is fated to be raised to the stars. What are you  \nscheming? What do you hope to achieve by perching there in  \nthose chilly clouds? Was it right that a god should suffer violence  \nand be wounded by the hand of a mortal? Was it right that  \nTurnus should be given back the sword that was taken from  \nhim? For what could Juturna have done without your help?  \n800 Why have you put strength into the arm of the defeated? The  \ntime has come at last for you to cease and give way to our  \nentreaties. Do not let this great sorrow gnaw at your heart in  \nsilence, and do not make me listen to grief and resentment for  \never streaming from your sweet lips. The end has come. You  \nhave been able to harry the Trojans by sea and by land, to light  \nthe fires of an unholy war, to soil a house with sorrow and mix  \nthe sound of mourning with the marriage song. I forbid you to  \ngo further.'\n\nThese were the words of Jupiter. With bowed head the goddess  \nJuno, daughter of Saturn, made this reply: 'Because I have  \nknown your will, great Jupiter, against my own wishes I have  \n810 abandoned Turnus and abandoned the earth. But for your will,  \nyou would not be seeing me sitting alone in mid-air on a cloud,  \nsuffering whatever is sent me to suffer. I would be clothed in  \nfire, standing close in to the line of battle and dragging Trojans  \ninto bloody combat. It was I, I admit it, who persuaded Juturna  \nto come to the help of her unfortunate brother, and with my  \nblessing to show greater daring for the sake of his life, but not  \nto shoot arrows, not to stretch the bow. I swear it by the  \nimplacable fountainhead of the river Styx, the one oath which  \nbinds the gods of heaven. And now I, Juno, yield and quit these  \n820 battles which I so detest. But I entreat you for the sake of Latium  \nand the honour of your own kin, to allow what the law of Fate  \ndoes not forbid. When at last their marriages are blessed \u2013 I  \noffer no obstruction \u2013 when at last they come together in peace  \nand make their laws and treaties together, do not command the  \nLatins to change their ancient name in their own land, to become  \nTrojans and be called Teucrians. They are men. Do not make  \nthem change their voice or native dress. Let there be Latium.  \nLet the Alban kings live on from generation to generation and  \nthe stock of Rome be made mighty by the manly courage of  \nItaly. Troy has fallen. Let it lie, Troy and the name of Troy.'\n\nHe who devised mankind and all the world smiled and replied:  \n830 'You are the true sister of Jupiter and the second child of Saturn,  \nsuch waves of anger do you set rolling from deep in your heart.  \nBut come now, lay aside this fury that arose in vain. I grant  \nwhat you wish. I yield. I relent of my own free will. The people  \nof Ausonia will keep the tongue of their fathers and their ancient  \nways. As their name is, so shall it remain. The Trojans will join  \nthem in body only and will then be submerged. Ritual I will give  \nand the modes of worship, and I will make them all Latins,  \nspeaking one tongue. You will see that the people who arise  \nfrom this admixture of Ausonian blood will be above all men,  \n840 above the gods, in devotion and no other race will be their equals  \nin paying you honour.' Juno nodded in assent. She rejoiced and  \nforced her mind to change, leaving the cloud behind her and  \nwithdrawing from the sky.\n\nThis done, the Father of the Gods pondered another task in  \nhis mind and prepared to dismiss Juturna from her brother's  \nside. There are two monsters named Dirae born to the goddess  \nof the dead of night in one and the same litter with Megaera of  \nTartarus. The heads of all three she bound with coiling snakes  \n850 and gave them wings to ride the wind. These attend the throne  \nof savage Jupiter in his royal palace, and sharpen the fears of  \nsuffering mortals whenever the King of the Gods sets plagues or  \nhideous deaths in motion or terrifies guilty cities by the visitation  \nof war. One of these Jupiter sent swiftly down from the heights  \nof heaven with orders to confront Juturna as an omen. She flew  \nto earth, carried in a swift whirlwind. Like an arrow going  \nthrough a cloud, spun from the bowstring of a Parthian who  \nhas armed the barb with a virulent poison for which there is no  \ncure, a Parthian, or a Cretan from Cydonia; and it whirrs as it  \n860 flies unseen through the swift darkness \u2013 so flew the daughter  \nof Night, making for the earth. When she saw the Trojan battle  \nlines and the army of Turnus, she took in an instant the shape  \nof the little bird which perches on tombs and the gables of empty  \nhouses and sings late its ill-omened song among the shades of  \nnight. In this guise the monster flew again and again at Turnus'  \nface, screeching and beating his shield with her wings. A strange  \nnumbness came over him and his bones melted with fear. His  \nhair stood on end and the voice stuck in his throat.\n\n870 His sister Juturna recognized the Dira from a long way off by  \nthe whirring of her wings, and grieved. She loosened and tore  \nher hair. She scratched her face and beat her breast, crying:  \n'What can your sister do to help you now, Turnus? Much have  \nI endured but nothing now remains for me, and I have no art  \nthat could prolong your life. How can I set myself against such  \na portent? At last, at last, I leave the battle. Do not frighten me,  \nyou birds of evil omen. I am already afraid. I know the beating  \nof your wings and the sound of death. I do not fail to understand  \nthe proud commands of great-hearted Jupiter. Is this his reward  \nfor my lost virginity? For what purpose has he granted me  \n880 eternal life? Why has he deprived me of the state of death? But  \nfor that I could at least have put an end to my suffering and  \nborne my poor brother company through the shades. So this is  \nimmortality! Will anything that is mine be sweet to me without  \nyou, my brother? Is there no abyss that can open deep enough  \nto take a goddess down to the deepest of the shades?' At these  \nwords, covering her head in a blue-green veil and moaning  \nbitterly, the goddess plunged into the depths of her own river.\n\nAeneas kept pressing his pursuit with his huge spear flashing,  \nas long as a tree, and these were the words he spoke in his anger:  \n'What is the delay now? Why are you still shirking, Turnus?  \n890 This is not a race! It is a fight with dangerous weapons at close  \nquarters. Turn yourself into any shape you like. Scrape together  \nall your resources of spirit and skill. Pray to sprout wings and  \nfly to the stars of heaven, or shut yourself up and hide in a hole  \nin the ground!' Turnus replied, shaking his head: 'You are fierce,  \nAeneas, but wild words do not frighten me. It is the gods that  \ncause me to fear, the gods and the enmity of Jupiter.' He said  \nno more but looked round and saw a huge rock, a huge and  \nancient rock which happened to be lying on the plain, a boundary  \n900 stone put there to settle a dispute about land. Twelve  \npicked men like those the earth now produces could scarcely lift it up  \non to their shoulders, but he caught it up in his trembling  \nhands and, rising to his full height and running at speed, he  \nhurled it at his enemy. But he had no sense of running or going,  \nof lifting or moving the huge rock. His knees gave way. His  \nblood chilled and froze and the stone rolled away under its own  \nimpetus over the open ground between them, but it did not go  \nthe whole way and it did not strike its target. Just as when we  \nare asleep, when in the weariness of night rest lies heavy on our  \n910 eyes, we dream we are trying desperately to run further and not  \nsucceeding, till we fall exhausted in the middle of our efforts;  \nthe tongue is useless; the strength we know we have fails our  \nbody; we have no voice, no words to obey our will \u2013 so it was  \nwith Turnus. Wherever his courage sought a way, the dread  \ngoddess barred his progress. During these moments, the  \nthoughts whirled in his brain. He gazed at the Rutulians and  \nthe city. He faltered with fear. He began to tremble at the death  \nthat was upon him. He could see nowhere to run, no way to  \ncome at his enemy, no chariot anywhere, no sister to drive it.\n\n920 As he faltered the deadly spear of Aeneas flashed. His eyes  \nhad picked the spot and he threw from long range with all his  \nweight behind the throw. Stones hurled by siege artillery never  \nroar like this. The crash of the bursting thunderbolt is not so  \nloud. Like a dark whirlwind it flew carrying death and destruction  \nwith it. Piercing the outer rings of the sevenfold shield and  \nlaying open the lower rim of the breastplate, it went whistling  \nthrough the middle of the thigh. When the blow struck, down  \nwent great Turnus, bending his knee to the ground. The Rutulians  \nrose with a groan which echoed round the whole mountain,  \nand far and wide the high forests sent back the sound of their  \n930 voices. He lowered his eyes and stretched out his right hand to  \nbeg as a suppliant. 'I have brought this upon myself,' he said,  \n'and for myself I ask nothing. Make use of what Fortune has  \ngiven you, but if any thought of my unhappy father can touch  \nyou, I beg of you \u2013 and you too had such a father in Anchises \u2013  \ntake pity on the old age of Daunus, and give me back to my  \npeople, or if you prefer it, give them back my dead body. You  \nhave defeated me, and the men of Ausonia have seen me defeated  \nand stretching out my hands to you. Lavinia is yours. Do not  \ncarry your hatred any further.'\n\n940 There stood Aeneas, deadly in his armour, rolling his eyes,  \nbut he checked his hand, hesitating more and more as the words  \nof Turnus began to move him, when suddenly his eyes caught  \nthe fatal baldric of the boy Pallas high on Turnus' shoulder with  \nthe glittering studs he knew so well. Turnus had defeated and  \nwounded him and then killed him, and now he was wearing his  \nbelt on his shoulder as a battle honour taken from an enemy.  \nAeneas feasted his eyes on the sight of this spoil, this reminder  \nof his own wild grief, then, burning with mad passion and  \nterrible in his wrath, he cried: 'Are you to escape me now,  \nwearing the spoils stripped from the body of those I loved? By  \nthis wound which I now give, it is Pallas who makes sacrifice of  \nyou. It is Pallas who exacts the penalty in your guilty blood.'  \n950 Blazing with rage, he plunged the steel full into his enemy's  \nbreast. The limbs of Turnus were dissolved in cold and his life  \nleft him with a groan, fleeing in anger down to the shades.\n\n## Appendix I: The Parade of Future  \nRomans in the Underworld  \n(Book 6, lines 756\u2013892)\n\n**_Silvius_** : According to Jupiter's prophecy at 1.257-77, Rome is to be founded in four stages. Aeneas will build his city at Lavinium and live for three years. His son Ascanius Iulus will reign for thirty years and transfer the city to Alba Longa. After their descendants, the Alban kings, rule for three hundred years, Romulus (Quirinus), son of Mars and Ilia, will found his city at Rome. But here at 6.763, where Aeneas begins his survey of the Alban kings waiting in the Underworld, Ascanius, being still alive, is not in the parade, and the first to be mentioned is Silvius, a son of Aeneas not yet born.\n\n**_Alban kings_ :** Virgil offers five names to cover the years from about 1053 to 753 BC.\n\n**_Romulus_ :** Romulus restored his grandfather Numitor to the throne which Numitor's younger brother had usurped. Romulus then founded Rome in 753 BC.\n\n**_Caesar_** : Julius Caesar, 102\u201344 BC, adopted his grand-nephew Octavian as his son and heir.\n\n**_Augustus_ :** Name adopted by Octavian in 27 BC.\n\n( ** _Numa_** ): From the village of Cures, he gave Rome religion and laws. His traditional dates are 715\u2013673 BC.\n\n**_Tullus_** : Tullius Hostilius, the warrior king, 673\u2013642 BC.\n\n**_Ancus_** : Ancus Marcius, 642\u2013617 BC, here only appears as a king who courted popular favour.\n\n**_Tarquins_** : L. Tarquinius Priscus, 616\u2013579 BC, and L. Tarquinius Superbus, 534\u2013510 BC.\n\n**_Brutus_** : L. Junius Brutus led a rising against Tarquinius Superbus to avenge the rape of Lucretia. Later, as one of the first two consuls of Rome, in 510 BC, he executed his own two sons who tried to restore the Tarquins. The rods and axes carried by the consuls signified their right to flog and execute. This passage alludes also to the other avenging Brutus who assassinated Julius Caesar in 44 BC.\n\n**_Decii_** : P. Decius Mus, father and son of the same name, were famous for self-immolation, each taking his own life to secure victory for Roman armies, the father in 340 BC in the Latin War and the son in 295 BC in battle against the Samnites.\n\n**_Drusi_** : Livia, wife of Augustus from 38 BC till his death in ad 14, was a member of this notable Roman family.\n\n**_Torquatus_** : T. Manlius Torquatus led the Romans against the Gauls in 361 BC, and in 340 BC in the Latin War he executed his own son for disobeying orders in engaging and defeating an enemy champion.\n\n**_Camillus_** : M. Furius Camillus recovered not gold, but the standards said to have been the price of the Gaulish withdrawal from Rome in 390 BC. This passage may also be read as an oblique tribute to Augustus, who, after long negotiations, recovered in 20 BC the standards lost to the Parthians at Carrhae in 53 BC.\n\n( ** _Pompey_** ): Gnaeus Pompeius and Julius Caesar are the two spirits in gleaming armour. Caesar defeated Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC.\n\n( ** _Mummius_** ): L. Mummius sacked Corinth in 146 BC.\n\n( ** _Paullus_** ): L. Aemilius Paullus is here credited with the conquest of Greece for his defeat of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, at the battle of Pydna in 168 BC.\n\n**_Cato_** : M. Porcius Cato, Cato the Elder, 234\u2013149 BC, was famed as the custodian of traditional Roman virtues.\n\n**_Cossus_** : A. Cornelius Cossus defeated Tolumnius, king of the Veientes, in single combat, perhaps in 246 BC.\n\n**_Gracchi_** : Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (died 133 BC), and his brother Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (died 121 BC), the two reforming tribunes, were members of this famous Roman family.\n\n**_Scipios_** : Scipio Africanus Maior defeated Hannibal at Zama in 202 BC. Scipio Africanus Minor destroyed Carthage in 146 BC.\n\n**_Fabricius_** : Gaius Fabricius Luscinus fought against Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, in 80\u201379 BC. The power he found in poverty is an allusion to his rejection of Pyrrhus' gifts.\n\n**_Serranus_** : Gaius Atilius Regulus was sowing seed ( _serere_ : to sow) on his farm when he was called to the consulship in 257 BC. He therefore acquired the name Serranus.\n\n**_Fabii_** : Anchises at 6.845 calls out to his friends the members of the great Fabian family to ask why they are all in such a hurry to reach the light of life that they are hustling one weary spirit along with them, and then he realizes that the problem is not weariness. This is the great Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator ( _cunctator_ : delayer) who used Fabian tactics against Hannibal in 217\u2013216 BC in the Second Punic War. He is not tired. It is his nature to delay!\n\n**_Marcellus_** : M. Claudius Marcellus, consul five times, killed the Gaulish chieftain Viridomarus in single combat in 222 BC, thus becoming the third Roman, after Romulus and Cossus, to win the Supreme Spoils ( _Spolia Opima_ ). Augustus was eager to make sure that there would not be a fourth (see Livy 4.20.5). The younger M. Claudius Marcellus (42\u201323 BC) was the son of Augustus' sister Octavia, and was adopted by Augustus in 25 BC. An ancient life of Virgil ( _Vita Donati_ 32) describes how, when Virgil was reading this passage to Octavia and Augustus, Octavia swooned when he reached line 882.\n\n## Appendix II: The Shield of Aeneas  \n(Book 8, lines 626\u2013728)\n\nMost of the scenes on the shield are incidents from Italian wars (see lines 626 and 678), all depicted with vivid evocation of the colours, textures and materials used in this imaginary work of art and the sounds evoked by it.\n\nAround the outside of the circle are six scenes described in forty-one lines:\n\n**(i)** The wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, who are to found the city in 753 BC.\n\n**(ii)** The rape of the Sabine women as planned by Romulus and the subsequent war and reconciliation.\n\n**(iii)** The punishment of Mettus Fufetius, dictator of Alba Longa who will make a treaty with Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome 673\u2013642 BC, and then desert him in battle.\n\n**(iv)** Two famous scenes from the Etruscan attack on Rome in 508 BC.\n\n**(v)** At the top of the shield the attack of the Gauls in 390 BC and the origin of some traditional features of Roman religion. The matrons of Rome were permitted to drive in carriages to the games and temples in return for giving their gold and jewels to enable Camillus to build a temple to Apollo after the defeat of Veii in 396 BC.\n\n**(vi)** Presumably at the bottom of the shield, scenes in the Underworld showing Catiline whose conspiracy was put down by Cicero in 63 BC and M. Porcius Cato who fought for the Republican cause against Caesar and committed suicide after his defeat at Thapsus in 46 BC. Like his great ancestor Cato the Elder (6.841) he was regarded as a model of the uncompromising Republican virtues.\n\nIn the centre of the shield, in a ring of silver dolphins feathering with white foam the silver sea and its golden waves, is depicted Augustus' victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC and his triple triumph of 29 BC (Dalmatian, Actian and Alexandrian). To this Augustan theme Virgil devotes fifty-four lines.\n\n## Appendix III: Genealogical Trees\n\n### THE JULIAN FAMILY\n\n1. Anchises' grandfather Assaracus seems to be mentioned in a Julian connection at 1.284, 6.778, 9.259, 643.\n\n2. This gap is variously filled (see S. Weinstock, _Divus Julius_ , p. 183 n. I.).\n\n3. Augustus was born C. Octavius in 63 BC. He was adopted as Julius Caesar's son by Caesar's will in 44 BC under the name of C. Iulius Caesar Octavianus (called Octavian in English), and took the name of Augustus in January 27 BC.\n\n### THE HOUSE OF PRIAM\n\n### THE HOUSE OF ANCHISES\n\n## Maps, Gazetteer and Select Index\n\n_Rome during the reign of Augustus_\n\n### GAZETTEER\n\nI started to compile a glossary of mythological terms in the _Aeneid_ , but soon decided that it was not necessary. Such is Virgil's command of narration that the poem usually explains itself as it goes along. Where this is not so, explanations have been added to the text, for example at the beginning of Book 6 where there is an unusual concentration of such difficulties. Here, the modern reader needs to be told that the Chalcidian citadel is the Chalcidian colony of Cumae; that Phoebus in line 18 is the same god as Apollo in line 9; that Androgeos was the son of Minos and that the Athenians were held to be the descendants of Cecrops. The _Aeneid_ is first and foremost a narrative, and narratives do not thrive on interruptions. A glossary would drive readers to the end of the book. Even footnotes would take the eye to the foot of the page and the mind to scholarly furniture. It is a regrettable interference with the text of Virgil, but I have preferred to add such information to the body of the work where it is necessary rather than check the flow of the narrative.\n\nGeography is another matter. The ancients knew their Mediterranean world better than we do. I have therefore supplied maps and an index which are meant to give topographical information which may be helpful for understanding the poem. These therefore omit peoples and places whose locality is sufficiently indicated by the context, for example the lists of the Latin enemies of Aeneas at the end of Book 7 and his Etruscan allies at 10.163\u2013214.\n\nVirgil has many equivalent or nearly equivalent geographical terms at his disposal. Greeks are called Achaeans, Argives, Graians, and Pelasgians; Troy is Dardania; Ilium, Pergamum (strictly its citadel), and its people are Phrygians, Teucrians, even Laomedontiadae, as well as Trojans; Etruscans are also Lydians, Tuscans and Tyrrhenians. Where Virgil seems to be using these terms purely for metrical convenience, the translation speaks of Greeks, Trojans and Etruscans. But the variants are preserved where they are used to some effect, rhetorical at 2.324\u20136, for example, or emotive (the term 'Phrygian' usually carries a contemptuous allusion to the alleged effeminacy of the Trojans). In particular Italy is variously referred to as Ausonia, Oenotria, Hesperia (the Western Land), and sometimes these terms are used in prophecies not understood by those who hear them. This oracular obscurity is preserved in the translation since the progressive revelation of the divine will is an important aspect of the plot of the poem. The Tiber, for instance, is called the Lydian Thybris at 2.781\u20132 and Aeneas can  \nhave no idea what is meant. The Italian river is always referred to by this Greek form of its name until 6.873.\n\nIn the index these equivalents will be noted but they will not occur on the maps. So too rivers and mountains appear in the list, but normally not on the maps.\n\n### SELECT INDEX\n\nNames in brackets do not appear on the maps; names with map references appear on the map 'The Voyages of Aeneas'; other names appear on the map of Pallanteum\/Rome.\n\nAcarnania 5G\n\n(Achaeans \u2013 Greeks)\n\nAcrages 6B\n\nActium 5F\n\nAeneadae 3J\n\nAeolia 5C\n\nAgathyrsians 1GHJ\n\nAlba Longa 3B\n\n(Albunea \u2013 fountain at Tibur)\n\n(Alpheus \u2013 river in Elis)\n\n(Amasenus \u2013 river in Latium)\n\n(Amathus \u2013 town in Cyprus)\n\nAmyclae 6G\n\nAntandros 4K\n\n(Appenninus \u2013 mountain in Italy)\n\nApulia 3D\n\nAra Maxima \u2013 Greatest Altar\n\n(Araxes \u2013 river in Armenia)\n\nArcadia 5G\n\nArdea 3B\n\n(Arethusa \u2013 fountain at Syracuse)\n\nArgiletum\n\n(Argives \u2013 Greeks)\n\nArgos 5H\n\nArisba 4J\n\nArpi 3D\n\n(Asian Marsh \u2013 on coast of Asia opposite Samos)\n\nAsylum\n\n(Athos \u2013 mountain in Macedonia)\n\n(Atlas \u2013 mountain in Mauretania)\n\n(Aufidus \u2013 river in Apulia)\n\nAulis 5H\n\n(Auruncans \u2013 ancient people of central Italy)\n\n(Ausonia \u2013 Italy)\n\nAventine Mount\n\n(Avernus \u2013 lake near Cumae)\n\n(Bactrians \u2013 people east of Caspian)\n\nBaiae 4C\n\n(Bebrycians \u2013 people south of Caspian)\n\nBenacus 1A\n\n(Berecyntus \u2013 mountain in Phrygia)\n\nBoeotia 5H\n\nButhrotum 4F\n\nCaere 3B\n\nCaieta 3C\n\nCamerina 6C\n\nCampus Martius\n\nCaphereus 5J\n\nCapitol\n\nCarinae\n\nCarmental Gate\n\nCarpathos 6K\n\nCarthage 6A\n\nCaspian Sea 2K\n\nCaulonia 5D\n\nChalcis 5H\n\nChaonia 4F\n\n(Charybdis \u2013 whirlpool off Scylaceum)\n\n(Cithaeron \u2013 mountain north of Athens)\n\nClaros 5K\n\nClusium 2B\n\nCorinth 5H\n\nCorythus 2B\n\nCrete 6HJK\n\n(Crinisus \u2013 Sicilian river)\n\nCumae 3C\n\nCures 3B\n\n(Cybelus \u2013 mountain near Corinth)\n\n(Cynthus \u2013 mountain on Delos)\n\n(Cyprus \u2013 island in Eastern Mediterranean)\n\nCythera 6H\n\nDacia 1GHJ\n\n(Dahae \u2013 people east of Caspian)\n\nDaunia 3D\n\nDelos 5J\n\n(Dicte \u2013 mountain in Crete)\n\n(Dindymus \u2013 mountain in Phrygia)\n\nDodona 4F\n\nDolopians 4G\n\nDonusa 5J\n\nDrepanum 5B\n\nDryopes 4G\n\n(Dulichium \u2013 island near Ithaca)\n\nElis 5G\n\nEpirus 4F\n\n(Erymanthus \u2013 mountain in Arcadia)\n\nEryx 5B\n\nEtna 5C\n\nEtruria 2AB, 3B\n\nEuboea 5H\n\n(Euphrates \u2013 river of Mesopotamia)\n\n(Eurotas \u2013 Spartan river)\n\nForum Boarium\n\n(Gaetulians \u2013 people of the Sahara)\n\n(Garamantians \u2013 people of the Sahara)\n\n(Garganus \u2013 mountain in Apulia)\n\n(Geloni \u2013 Scythian people)\n\nGetae 2HJ\n\nGreatest Altar \u2013 see Ara Maxima\n\nGortyn 6J\n\nGryneum 4K\n\nGyaros 5J\n\n(Haemus \u2013 mountain in Thrace)\n\n(Hebrus \u2013 river in Thrace)\n\n(Helicon \u2013 mountain in Boeotia)\n\nHelorus 6C\n\n(Hermus \u2013 river in Lydia)\n\n(Hesperia \u2013 the Western Land, Italy)\n\n(Homole \u2013 mountain in Thessaly)\n\n(Hyrcanians \u2013 people near the Caspian Sea)\n\n(Ida \u2013 mountain in Crete)\n\n(Ida \u2013 mountain near Troy)\n\n(Idalium \u2013 mountain in Cyprus)\n\n(Ilium \u2013 Troy)\n\nIthaca 5F\n\nJaniculum\n\nLacinium 5D\n\nLarisa 4G\n\nLatium 3B\n\n(Laurentines \u2013 people on the coast of Latium)\n\nLavinium 3B\n\nLemnos 4J\n\nLerna 5H\n\nLeucas 5F\n\nLiburnia 1D\n\n(Libya \u2013 land east of the Syrtes)\n\nLiguria 1A\n\nLilybaeum 5B\n\nLipari 5C\n\nLocri 5D\n\nLupercal\n\n(Lycia \u2013 land on south coast of Asia Minor)\n\nLydia 5K\n\nLyrnessus 4K\n\nMacedonia 3G\n\nMaeonia 4K\n\n(Maeotians \u2013 people on north shore of Caspian)\n\nMalea 6H\n\nMantua 1A\n\n(Marpessa \u2013 mountain on Paros)\n\nMarsians 3C\n\n(Massylians \u2013 people west of Carthage)\n\nMausoleum of Augustus\n\nMegara 5H\n\nMeliboea 4G\n\n(Misenum \u2013 cape south of Cumae)\n\n(Morini \u2013 Belgian people)\n\nMycenae 5H\n\nMyconos 5J\n\nMyrmidons 4G\n\n(Nar \u2013 river in Umbria)\n\nNarycum 5H\n\nNaxos 5J\n\nNemea 5H\n\n(Neritos \u2013 island near Ithaca)\n\nNumidians \u2013 people west of Carthage\n\nOechalia 5G\n\n(Oenotria \u2013 Italy)\n\nOlearos 5J\n\n(Orthrys \u2013 mountain in Thessaly)\n\n(Ortygia \u2013 another name for Delos)\n\n(Ortygia \u2013 island in the bay of Syracuse)\n\nPachynus 6C\n\n(Pactolus \u2013 river in Lydia)\n\n(Padus \u2013 one of the mouths of the river Po)\n\nPalinurus 4C\n\nPallanteum 3B\n\n(Pantagias \u2013 river in Sicily)\n\n(Paphos \u2013 town in Cyprus)\n\nParos 5J\n\nParrhasia 5G\n\nPatavium 1B\n\n(Pelasgians \u2013 ancient north Aegean people)\n\nPelorus 5D\n\n(Pergamum \u2013 Troy, strictly its citadel)\n\nPetelia 4D\n\nPheneus 5G\n\n(Phoenicia \u2013 land on eastern seaboard of Mediterranean)\n\nPhrygia 4K\n\nPlemyrium 6C\n\nPraeneste 3B\n\nPrivernum 3B\n\nProchyta 4C\n\nPthia 5G\n\nRhoeteum 4J\n\nRutulians 3B\n\nSabines 3B\n\nSalamis 5H\n\nSallentine Plains 4E\n\nSame 5F\n\nSamnium 3C\n\nSamos 5K\n\nSamothrace 3J\n\nSaturnia\n\nScylaceum 5D\n\n(Scythia \u2013 people north of Caspian)\n\nScyros 4H\n\nSelinus 5B\n\n(Shebans \u2013 Sabaeans, Arabian people)\n\n(Sicanians \u2013 people who moved from Central Italy to Sicily)\n\n(Sidon \u2013 Phoenician city)\n\nSila 5D\n\n(Simois \u2013 Trojan river)\n\n(Soracte \u2013 mountain in Etruria)\n\nStrophades 5G\n\nSyracuse 6C\n\nSyrtes 6A\n\n(Taburnus \u2013 mountain in Samnium)\n\nTarentum 4D\n\nTarpeian Rock\n\n(Tetrica \u2013 mountain in Sabine country)\n\n(Teucrians \u2013 Trojans)\n\nThapsus 6C\n\nThebes 5H\n\nThrace 2GHJ\n\nThymbra 4J\n\nTiber 2B\n\nTibur 3B\n\nTimavus 1B\n\nTiryns 5H\n\n(Trinacria \u2013 Sicily)\n\n(Troad \u2013 the region around Troy)\n\nTroy 4J\n\n(Tuscans \u2013 Etruscans)\n\n(Tyre \u2013 Phoenician city)\n\n(Tyrrhenians \u2013 Etruscans)\n\nUmbria 2B\n\n(Velinus \u2013 lake in Sabine country)\n\n(Vesulus \u2013 mountain in Liguria)\n\nVolsci 3BC\n\n(Xanthus \u2013 river in the Troad)\n\nZacynthus 5F\n _For lines 756\u2013892_ , _seeAppendix I_.\n _For lines 626\u2013728_ , _seeAppendix II_.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n* * *\n\nMy appreciation goes out to all the pet owners and breeders for allowing me to love, mingle with, and photograph some of the most magnificent creatures in the world. The time and effort put forth by their owners and the willingness of these cats to be displayed and exhibited at cat shows throughout the world has allowed me to be a part of their lives and capture very special moments. Many thanks go out to my wife, Susan and my family for putting up with my artistry over all these years and years to come.\n\n* * *\nCopyright \u00a9 2018 by Larry Johnson\n\nAll rights reserved.\n\nAll photographs by the author unless otherwise noted.\n\nPublished by:\n\nAmherst Media, Inc., P.O. Box 538, Buffalo, N.Y. 14213\n\nwww.AmherstMedia.com\n\nPublisher: Craig Alesse\n\nSenior Editor\/Production Manager: Michelle Perkins\n\nEditors: Barbara A. Lynch-Johnt and Beth Alesse\n\nAcquisitions Editor: Harvey Goldstein\n\nAssociate Publisher: Katie Kiss\n\nEditorial Assistance from: Ray Bakos, Rebecca Rudell, Jen Sexton, Carey Miller\n\nBusiness Manager: Sarah Loder\n\nMarketing Associate: Tonya Flickinger\n\nISBN-13: 978-1-68203-311-1\n\nLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2017949330\n\n10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise, without prior written consent from the publisher.\n\nNotice of Disclaimer: The information contained in this book is based on the author's experience and opinions. The author and publisher will not be held liable for the use or misuse of the information in this book.\n\nwww.facebook.com\/AmherstMediaInc\n\nwww.youtube.com\/AmherstMedia\n\nwww.twitter.com\/AmherstMedia\nContents\n\nAbout the Author\n\nFaces\n\nThe Studio\n\nSession Sample\n\nBackgrounds\n\nBlack and White Cats\n\nBlack on Black\n\nWhite on White\n\nBlue Cats\n\nEars\n\nEyes\n\nBob Tails\n\nLong Tails\n\nNo Tails\n\nPuffy Tails\n\nBig Hair\n\nCurly Hair\n\nWavy Hair\n\nKinky Hair\n\nNo Hair\n\nPlush Coat\n\nHousehold Pets\n\nThe Standard\n\nHangers\n\nHigh Fives\n\nHolidays\n\nIn Motion\n\nGoofy\n\nGroups\n\nIn the Air\n\nKittens\n\nLarge Cats\n\nPairs\n\nProfiles\n\nProps\n\nSitting Up\n\nStanding\n\nStretching\n\nThe Wild Look\n\nTalking\n\nUp\n\nAwards\n\nAgility\n\nCombo Imagery\n\nFinal Thoughts\n\nIndex\nAbout the Author\n\nLarry's love for photography has allowed him to work with the finest cats on Earth, taking him to cities, countries, and world-class events. Larry's thirty years of experience in handling and photographing animals have gained him world renown. As a member of the Professional Photographers of America, he provides the highest quality images and professionalism.\n\nLarry was born in Chicago. He studied music and art in college. Upon graduating he taught music in the Miami-Dade Schools. Larry has attended workshops and lectures, read extensively, and studied photography. He upgraded his equipment and added a darkroom in his house where he developed skills in both black & white and color printing. In November of 1979, Larry photographed his first cat show in Miami, Florida. As he studied the images and the breed standards of purebred cats, Larry became acquainted with different breeds and their characteristics, learning how to photograph the most flattering look for each breed. In addition to cat show photography, he photographed at dog shows, grooming salons, and the Fort Lauderdale Humane Society.\n\nCurrently, he travels with a portable studio to shows throughout the U.S. and abroad. In the past year, Larry has visited over 35 different major cities in the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan, as well as working in his studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.\n\nHis primary subjects are ever-captivating cats, but he also photographs dogs, birds, horses, and even people. He has also produced travel, cat, and dog calendars.\n\n**FOR MORE INFORMATION:**\n\n\u2022 JohnsonAnimalPhoto.com\n\n\u2022 Instagram.com\/JohnsonPhoto951\n\n\u2022 Facebook.com\/Larry-Johnson-Photography-120318871864\nFaces\n\nWelcome to my world of cats\u2014expressive, inquisitive, cunning, cute, whimsical, curious, and playful. Their faces speak to me. I look for the moment to capture their thoughts.\n\nThe Studio\n\nMy job as a cat show photographer at cat shows spans the globe, so I need to be portable and secure for my subjects. Thus my setup needs to be easily compacted for travel by plane as well as by car to the locations. Signage and visibility are important but need not be extensive. A display consisting of hanging images and several portfolios will suffice. My reputation precedes me. Wherever I travel, my clients will seek me out. My area is ususally not often in the mainstream of the busy show. A quiet corner or a separate room allows my subjects to relax and allows me to feel at ease and to concentrate on capturing great images.\n\nSession Sample\n\nA typical session will be limited in time. Many sessions do not last more than fifteen minutes per cat. On occasion it may take longer or even shorter. I need to capture great images and a variety of poses in a short period of time (posed or unposed and without any set sequence). I need to be ready at a moment's notice to see their behavior, eyes, ears and body form (as per breed) and make that moment real.\n\nHere is a sample of one typical session: fifteen total final images. I have learned to shoot when the time is right and to waste few shots. While working with the cat with teasers and other toys, I can see and predict what poses are working for the cat.\n\nBackgrounds\n\nThe second most important question to my clients is which background to use. Much depends upon the owner's preference, and then, also the cat's color, eyes, and fur texture. Many times I will use my best judgment. The background can enhance, detract from, or blend with the cat. Eye color is important; coat color is important; and, contrast is important\u2014both low contrast to high contrast.\n\nI ask many questions prior to the session to determine the best background for the cat, the owner, and what is most important to emphasize. Many times the cat's best features will determine the background color or texture. Some backgrounds are unsuitable for certain cat colors. A helpful photographer's expertise is necessary. There are several options for most cat colors and patterns. Many of my clients already have a preferred color or one that will match their websites. Some clients like to experiment.\n\nPhotographs are important to my clients, so I want to have the best options available for them. Many times it is a single opportunity to photograph when the cats are at their best (bathed, groomed, fluffed, and so on). I would hate to disappoint them by using a background that is not suited for their cat. My traveling set-up has numerous available backgrounds. On many occasions, I will use only three or four, but I prefer to have options available for particular clients.\n\nBlack and White Cats\n\nBlack and white cats are sometimes referred to as tuxedo cats, which describes their patterns. Black and white refers to the cat's color. It is not a breed.\n\nBlack on Black\n\nPhotographing black cats on a black background is a dramatic way to show both the intensity of the coat color and the eye color.\n\nWhite on White\n\nSome are reluctant to photograph their white cats on white background for fear they will disappear and details will not be visible. This is erroneous. Here are some examples.\n\nBlue Cats\n\nSo many people are unaware that blue cats are not always Russian Blues. Moreover, grey cats are designated as blue. Several breeds are exclusively blue in color, as the Charteux and Korat. Blue is the most popular British Shorthair color, but they do come in a vast amount of other colors. The Korat has a blue coat but with upright ears and green eyes. The Korat was discovered in Ampur Pimai of the Korat province in Thailand. The Korat is known as a good-luck cat of Thailand. The head contains three heart-shapes. Looking straight on at the Korat, you can see the Valentine-shaped heart of the head. The second heart can be seen by looking down over the top of the Korat's head. The third heart associated with the head is the front of its nose. An additional heart can be found in the muscular area of the chest when the cat is in a sitting position. Of all the breeds the Korat adheres most closely to its original look.\n\nThe Russian Blue has green eyes, a silvery short coat, and a rounded but V shape to the head and ears. The Russian Blue is a natural breed originating from northern Russia. Some are the descendants of the cats kept by the Russian Czars. The coat color is an even, plush, bright blue, and each guard hair appears as if dipped in silver. Russian Blues are registered in only one color: blue. The Russian Blue has large, rounded, wide-set eyes that are vivid green. Its large ears are wide at the base and set rakishly toward the side of the head. The Russian Blue is a medium-sized, fine-boned, and a muscular cat.\n\nThe British Shorthair is predominately in the solid blue color, but other colors are accepted. It is a very robust cat with a rounded body and head, jowls, gold eyes, a plush coat, and smallish ears set wide on the head. These are sturdy, dense-coated, teddy bear cats with large round eyes. The oldest English breed of cat, the British Shorthair can be traced back to the domestic cats of Rome.\n\nPictured above is a Chartreux. It is a native cat from France. It has a beautiful coat not as short as the Russian Blue, but not as plush as the British Shorthair. It has brilliant gold eyes and very small upright ears. It has balance of a pear, so the smaller head and larger back body is normal.\n\nChartreux probably arrived from the Middle East to the French monasteries with knights returning from the Crusades. According to legend is that the Chartreux lived with, and were named for, the Carthusian monks of France\u2014and perhaps even shared a tipple or two of their famous Chartreuse liqueur! Nevertheless, the breed of cat was noted in documents as early as the 16th century. The Chartreux is also known for its smile. France has adopted the breed as its national cat.\nEars\n\nThe size and shape of ears is one of the most prominent features of several breeds.\n\nOriental Shorthair: The Oriental Shorthairs are closely related to the Siamese and have large ears. They come in many color patterns as well as solid colors.\n\nScottish Fold: The ears on a Scottish Fold are folded forward to cup around the head. This is a natural occurrence and not created by surgical methods.\n\nTurkish Angora: The cat has high, large ears, and its most popular color is white.\n\nAmerican Curl: The American Curl is another natural occurring mutation like the Scottish Fold. Instead their ears curl backwards with a pleasant furl and a more moderate body and head structure.\n\nSiamese: The Siamese has large ears conforming to a perfect triangle from the chin to the tip of the ears.\n\nSphynx: This is a cat without any hair (or very little hair) with very large ears.\n\nMaine Coon Cat: This is one of the largest cats and has very large erect ears.\nEyes\n\nThe eyes are the key to the cat's intellect. They are so expressive.\n\nMore photographs of eyes, which capture wonderful expressions and color.\n\nBob Tails\n\nSome breeds are distinguished by bobbed tails.\n\nAmerican Bobtail\n\nKurilian Bobtail\n\nPixiebob\n\nJapanese Bobtail Shorthair\n\nJapanese Bobtail Longhair\nLong Tails\n\nThe tail is the cat's means of balance. Cats also rely on their tails to sweep counter tops, pose, and jump to high places. Both the long-haired cats and short-haired cats show off their plumes and length.\n\nNo Tails\n\nThe Manx is the only cat that has no tail. It originated on the Isle of Man and was one of the first show cats shown in England. Manx come in both shorthair and longhair. It has a round body, round face and a smooth rounded rear with larger hind quarters, which give it its balance.\n\nPuffy Tails\n\nSeveral breeds have very full coated tails as well as full-coated bodies. The Maine Coon, the Persian (especially), the Ragdoll, and the Somali are some of these breeds. Most of these longhair cats have a fuller coats during the winter months and shed to a shorter length (but not shorthair or bald) during the summer. Most of my clients with Persians will wait to have photographs taken until the cat's coat is at its fullest.\n\nBig Hair\n\nThe bigger the coat, the better the coat. Big, full coats are the predominant trait of the Persian. Such coats do not come easily. It takes hours and hours of bathing, combing each and every day to maintain a cat in full show coat. Some coats even reach the floor when the cat is standing.\n\nCurly Hair\n\nThe Selkirk Rex has curly hair which looks much like a lamb's wool coat. Forget the comb and straightener: the coat needs to be left alone for the most part. This coat originates from a different mutation than the Cornish Rex, Devon Rex and the LaPerm. Jokingly the phrase \"bad hair day\" prevails at the shows. The coat feels silky and has both long and short hair variants. The body structure is round and full, and not too long or too short.\n\nOwners like to give their cats names that reflect their uniqueness. Like the dog \"Spot,\" the hairy and lack of hair spark creativity. Sphynx owners like bald or naked names such as Belle-of-the-Bald, Nudie Garland, Liza Skinnelli. Scottish Fold owners like names reflecting folded ears such as Foldilocks, Scottie, Tipsy, and Masqu'ear'ade. And Selkirk Rex owners use names like Twisted Sister, Curleone, and Oliver Twist.\n\nWavy Hair\n\nThe Cornish Rex has a Marseille wave to its coat, like a washboard effect. The coat is super silky and lies close to the body. This cat has large ears, long legs, and a long tail. It can leap and create havoc flying through the air. They are sweet and personable cats, but they are also very active and agile. Posing the Cornish Rex is a challenge, as I must display the waves, the ears, eyes, and the arch (as its backbone is not flat). A Cornish Rex is a fun cat to photograph due to its playfulness.\n\nKinky Hair\n\nThree breeds have the strangest coats; kinky is probably be the best general description. These are the Devon Rex, LaPerm, and the American Wirehair. The Devon Rex is the most popular of these three, and none are genetically related. They all have different coat and body structures. The Devon Rex is a small cat and all its fur has kinks as does its whiskers. It has a plushier coat than the Cornish Rex, with a silky feel. The LaPerm is a medium sized cat with a thin wild curly coat. The American Wirehair resembles an American Shorthair in stature, but the hairs have a wiry feel to them, as if they were brittle and ready to break. This cat is not combed as their hairs would break, so very little grooming is needed.\n\nNo Hair\n\nVisitors always want to see these extraordinary cats with no hair. They are called ugly and alien, and visitors will often comment, \"Is it a dog? and \"Look at its feet!\"\n\nThe Sphynx has become very popular and has a unique body and coat. The body is pudgy with wrinkled skin. The Sphynx comes in many colors but the color is on its skin and not in its hair like other cats. They appear to be pinkish as their blood vessels are super close to the skin. Without any hair (or very little hair) they can easily get scratched. They are super friendly cats that feel like a hot water bottle, a warm chamois, or a peach. If you look closely, you might see hairs behind their ears and at the base of their tail.\n\nThe Bambino is a man-made variety which resulted from mating a Sphynx with a Munchkin, which is a short legged cat. It is more popular at cat shows in Europe than in the United States.\n\nThe Peterbald is a bald to semi-hairless cat that looks like an Oriental Shorthair in body, ears, and eyes. It is also a man-made breed which originated from breeding Sphynx with Oriental Shorthairs or Siamese. The legs are long, as are their long whippy tail. The Peterbald comes in several coat types and is a most interesting cat.\n\nPlush Coat\n\nThese cats have a coat that you want to dig your fingers into. The density and texture gives them a teddy bear look. The densest coat is the British Shorthair. The Exotic Shorthair has the same physical characteristics as a Persian without the long dripping coat. These are my mushy cats and are fairly easy to photograph. With these breeds I am looking to emphasize the eyes, coat pattern, color, and their body structure.\n\nAmerican Shorthair\n\nScottish Fold\n\nBirman\n\nExotic Shorthair\n\nBritish Shorthair\nHousehold Pets\n\nHousehold pets include domestic short and longhairs, rescues, and anything else that is not a purebred (although some purebreds are shown as household pets because they lack the registration papers). They have all sorts of personalities, shapes, and colors patterns. Their origins may be unknown: some are from feral colonies, some from rescues, some from cat shelters, and some from the neighboring cats who had kittens. These cats can be shown as household pets, are neutered and spayed\u2014and do not roam the streets at night. Declawing is frowned upon. They can also stay at home and be loved.\n\nBreed Standards\n\nAbyssinian\n\nAmerican Bobtail\n\nAmerican Curl\n\nAmerican Wirehair\n\nAmerican Shorthair\n\nBalinese\n\nBengal\n\nBirman\n\nBombay\n\nBritish Longhair\n\nBritish Shorthair\n\nBurmese\n\nBurmilla\n\nChartreux\n\nChaussie\n\nCornish Rex\n\nDevon Rex\n\nColor Point Shorthair\n\nEgyptian Mau\n\nExotic Shorthair\n\nHavana Brown\n\nHimalayan Persian\n\nLykoi\n\nJapanese Bobtail\n\nJapanese Bobtail Longhair\n\nKheo Manee\n\nKorat\n\nKurilian Bobtail\n\nLaPerm\n\nMaine Coon\n\nManx\n\nManx Longhair\n\nOcicat\n\nMunchkin\n\nNorwegian Forest Cat\n\nOriental Shorthair\n\nOriental Longhair\n\nPersian, Solid White\n\nPersian, Tabby\n\nPersian, Solid Black\n\nPeterbald\n\nPersian Shaded Silver\n\nPersian, Bi-Color\n\nPixiebob\n\nRagamuffin\n\nRagdoll\n\nRussian Blue\n\nSavannah\n\nSelkirk Rex\n\nSiamese\n\nSiberian\n\nSingapura\n\nSnowshoe\n\nSomali\n\nSphynx\n\nThai\n\nTonkinese\n\nToyger\n\nTurkish Angora\n\nTurkish Van\nHangers\n\nI love my paws! So many cats hang over the counter and other places. They do not fear the edge. With a little cajoling, I can position their paws out or over the edge.\n\nCats have an amazing sense of balance when they extend their paws. They know exactly what they are doing. It makes them look attentive, playful and cute. It is a pose that can anticipate action or even no action when they are sound asleep in this precarious pose.\n\nThe Birman has four matching white paws. It is necessary to see two or even all four paws in the photograph.\n\nThe Abyssinian and the Russian Blue shows off their fine boning and length of their legs.\n\nHigh Fives\n\nIf a cat wants something but is too lazy to jump for it, they will use their paws to reach out a paw to try to catch it. The \"paw up\" pose is one of the poses I seek, but occasionally they are stretching to their limits.\n\nHolidays\n\nAs you may have noticed, I rarely use props for my images. The true reason is that my clients prefer to see all of the cat and not a prop or gimmick. Some cats will be willing to do many things but the true sense of each cat is their expression. To add a prop, distracts from that focus. Sometimes I will use some holiday props as some clients like to send holiday cards. I can make them happy with a minimal amount of clutter.\n\nIn Motion\n\nCats' movements are fluid. Capturing them in motion can be a challenge. The best time is when the cat is willing to move around my area but is still being attentive to my toys. I cannot allow them to run around the photographing area. Photographs taken while a cat is chasing my toys accentuates the attributes of certain breeds.\n\nCats are innate hunters so they \"stalk\" their prey (my toys, teasers, and feathers). Encouraging them to stalk demonstrates their sleekness, agility and ability to move around the photographing area without destroying the set. Some cats become so intense that they forget where they are and leap off or even up and over the posing area. This is when it is good that I am photographing in an enclosed tent.\n\nGoofy\n\nCats can be characters. Inside out or upside down\u2014they do not need much to entertain themselves.\n\nGroups\n\nEvery cat is a new challenge, but challenges multiply when there are more than one. So wrangling together more than two cats is a great accomplishment. No photos shown here were digitally altered in Photoshop to achieve these images. When arranging these images, I like to have all my ducks in a row. Sweat or no sweat, it is what keeps me going. I do not charge extra for more than one cat. As long as the cats get along, I can get the shot. The image of the Abyssinian litter had to have some props to keep a couple of the shyer babies feeling comfortable.\n\nWrangling cats takes expertise and timing. I work directly with each cat or group as I need them to focus on me and what I am doing. I elicit the owner(s) or my wife to assist by just being on each side of my work area table to avoid the cats leaving the scene or calming them down. Cats have a limited attention span, so I need to move quickly and be totally ready to shoot when the time is right. It may only be a split second where everyone is acting together.\n\nIn the Air\n\nWhen working with show-off cats, timing is of the essence. I use split-second shots but not rapid fire. My eyes are focused on their positions, their heads, ears, and eyes. I love the dancer. Many cats like to do the \"praying\" pose or the \"prairie dog\" pose. The challenge is to keep eye contact, because as the cats rise they will look up too high, which distorts the face and is unusable.\n\nKittens\n\nThere are kittens at shows but they are not baby kittens. Show rules restrict competition to kittens over the age of four months old. Some associations allow slightly younger kittens to be present in the show hall but not competing. Kittens compete in the kitten class until they are eight months old. At eight months old, they begin to compete as adults. I have photographed many kittens younger than four months old, but not at cat shows.\n\nLarge Cats\n\nThe largest cat in competition is the Maine Coon cat. Fully grown Maine Coons can weigh up to thirty pounds and can span tip to tail three foot or more. Its medium length shaggy coat, long tail, high ears, and squared off muzzle shows its ability to hunt in the low brush without getting snagged. Their feet have tufts of fur and allow them to walk undetected. The Maine Coon cat is known to descend from the cats that came over on the Mayflower from England. They were allowed to roam freely after landing, hence the Maine in their name.\n\nPairs\n\nExhibitors do not bring two cats to the show for the purpose of breeding. These cats are buddies, litter mates, or traveling companions. I will rarely put two cats together that do not know each other.\n\nIt thrills me when the cats enjoy and interact with each other. Having a good time is the most important objective for them to experience at the shows. The shows are a foreign environment: lots of new smells, people, crowds, kids, strollers, wheelchairs, loud speakers, and over a two-to-three day period, being handled by many judges. My goal is for the cats to enjoy their time with me and to capture the moments.\n\nProfiles\n\nProfiles are important in breed standards. No matter how good the rest of the image is, my clients will not use the images if the cat appears to have an improper profile in the image.\n\nI listen carefully to the owners when they talk about their cats. Many times they give me clues as to what to emphasize and what not to emphasize.\n\nProps\n\nI occasionally utilize props but like to keep it to a minimum and be subtle in their use. Kittens interact best with these objects. I have a selection of velvet chairs, lounges, baskets, and more. If I am asked to bring something special, I will. Since I fly to most of my shows, I usually do not bring any props. If the owners bring their own props, I will not object to photographing it with their cat.\n\nSitting Up\n\nThe \"praying\" and \"prairie dog\" poses are the cutest poses. To achieve the look and intensity, it takes a sharp eye and split second reaction. These images cannot be easily planned. If the cat is prone to balancing in this way, I will add it to the selection of poses.\n\nStanding\n\nA full stance usually occurs during the early part of the session. Full body poses are mostly needed in breeds where the coat pattern, color, and length are most important.\n\nStretching\n\nThe stretch is another pose that requires a split second reaction on my part. The cat is usually just placed on the table area and begins to stretch. It may only last a second or two. It is a totally unplanned spontaneous action. This adds a fun aspect to the work I offer my clients. My clients use many of these types of photographs on their web pages as headers or boarders. The majority of the session will consist of more properly posed images reflecting the characteristics of the breed.\n\nThe Wild Look\n\nThree of these four cat breeds have wild blood ancestry. All four are hybrid cats.\n\nThe Ocicat is a mix between an Abyssinian, Siamese, and American Shorthair. It has thumb size spots, and it resembles a wild looking cat.\n\nThe Bengal resulted from an outcross between Asian leopard cats and domestic shorthairs in the 1950s. The Bengal is the only domestic cat breed that can have rosettes like the markings on Leopards, Jaguars, and Ocelots.\n\nThe Toyger is a man-made breed a striped coat pattern. It resulted from a cross between a Bengal and a Domestic Shorthair to acquire the pattern.\n\nThe Savannah is an outcross between a Serval, Bengals, Oriental Shorthairs, and Egyptian Maus resulting in a large cat with high ears and a spotted pattern.\n\nTalking\n\nOn a rare occasion, the cat will \"talk\" to me or the teaser. Many cats like to chatter at some of the toys as if they were talking to the birds through a window. They are not ready to bite. They are just responding.\n\nUp\n\nTiming is everything. If the cat has a sense of balance and is relaxed enough, it can go up or even \"lift\" off the posing area. The Bengal shows off its belly spots that would not be visible in other poses. I love their expressions.\n\nAwards\n\nI rarely pose cats with their awards. Many awards are not as lavish as they were twenty years ago. The larger awards come at the end of the show year and are handed out at fancy banquets, where the cats are not present. Occasionally, a client will bring the award specifically for a image or two. I like encouraging the cats to interact with their awards.\n\nAgility\n\nAn agility course is offered at some shows and the goal is to lead your cat through the bars, hoops and tunnels for the fastest over all time. Several breeds are more agile that others and are more focused on the teasers than others. Turkish Angoras, American Shorthairs, Ocicats, Bengals, and Maine Coon cats tend to have the highest rate of success. It is open for all breeds and non-breeds to compete.\n\nThe owner is a leader for the cat and attempts to keep the cat attentive to their lead throughout the course. On many occasion the cat sees a distraction and just stops mid-course or wanders off. The timing to run the course has varies from nine seconds to several minutes. Agility is now scored on a national basis, and it is a wonderful event to watch. Many shows offer trial runs to see how the cat reacts and will have practice animals for kids to try their hand at course. The Turkish Angora here is with its favorite teaser toy.\n\nCombo Imagery\n\nAfter a session has been delivered, I offer my client specialty combo images. The owner selects images that express their cat at its best. My Photoshop skill allows me to produce a unique image that is printed and hangs on the client's wall. Most are very special award-winning cats. These images also make a very nice display on their website and Facebook pages.\n\nI will place ads in various show catalogues to ensure my visibility to the exhibitors. These are some samples.\n\nFinal Thoughts\n\nA big thank to all the cats that have allowed me to photograph them. It is time to say farewell for now and to take a catnap. See you again soon.\n\nFor more information about cat shows and their organizations, check out: CFA, TICA, WCF, ACFA, CCA, ACA, FIFE, GCCF, and many other associations including those in Australia and South Africa. Many groups are worldwide registries. One can find information about specific breeds by searching online for these breeds. Please remember to visit your local shelters and rescue groups for some of the most awesome cat companions.\n\nIndex\n\n**A**\n\nAbyssinian breed, , , ,\n\nAmerican Bobtail breed, ,\n\nAmerican Curl breed, ,\n\nAmerican Wirehair breed, , ,\n\nAmerican Shorthair breed, , , , ,\n\nagility, , 118\u201319\n\naward-winning cats,\n\nawards, 116\u201317\n\n**B**\n\nbackgrounds, 12\u201313, ,\n\nBalinese breed,\n\nbehavior,\n\nBengal breed, , , ,\n\nBirman breed, , ,\n\nblack cats, 16\u201317,\n\nblack and white cats, 14\u201315\n\nblue cats, 20\u201323, ,\n\nBombay breed,\n\nbreed standards, , 5\u201365,\n\nBritish Longhair breed,\n\nBritish Shorthair breed, , , ,\n\nBurmese breed,\n\nBurmilla breed,\n\n**C**\n\ncat shows, , , , ,\n\nclients, , , , , , , ,\n\ncolor, fur, , , 20\u201323, , , , ,\n\ncompanions, 94\u201395,\n\ncontrast,\n\nChartreux breed, ,\n\nChaussie breed,\n\nColor Point Shorthair breed,\n\nCornish Rex breed, , , ,\n\n**D**\n\nDevon Rex breed, , ,\n\n**E**\n\nears, , , , , , 24\u201325, , , , , , ,\n\nEgyptian Mau breed, ,\n\nexpression, , , ,\n\neye color, ,\n\nExotic Shorthair breed, ,\n\n**F**\n\nfaces, 6\u20137, ,\n\n**G**\n\ngroups, 84\u201385,\n\n**H**\n\nhair, curly, 40\u201341\n\nhair, longhair, , , , , , ,\n\nhair, none, , 46\u201347\n\nhair, shorthair, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nHavana Brown breed,\n\nHimalayan Persian breed,\n\nholidays, 74\u201375\n\n**J**\n\nJapanese Bobtail breed, ,\n\nJapanese Bobtail Longhair breed, ,\n\n**K**\n\nKheo Manee breed,\n\nkittens, , 90\u201391,\n\nKorat breed, ,\n\nKurilian Bobtail breed, ,\n\n**L**\n\nLaPerm breed, , ,\n\nlarge cats, 92\u201393,\n\nlonghair, , , , , , ,\n\nLykoi breed,\n\n**M**\n\nmotion, 76\u201377\n\nMaine Coon breed, , , , ,\n\nManx breed, ,\n\nManx Longhair breed,\n\nMunchkin breed, ,\n\n**N**\n\nNorwegian Forest Cat breed,\n\n**O**\n\nOcicat breed, , ,\n\norganizations,\n\nOriental Longhair breed,\n\nOriental Shorthair breed, , , ,\n\n**P**\n\nPersian, Solid White breed,\n\nPersian, Tabby breed,\n\nPersian, Solid Black breed,\n\npets, household, 50\u201351\n\nphotographer's expertise, 12\u201313,\n\nphotographing, , , ,\n\npositions, , ,\n\n**S**\n\nstudio, , 8\u20139\n\nshorthair, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nsession, photography, 10\u201311, , , ,\n\n**T**\n\ntails, , , ,\n\ntails, bobtails, 30\u201331\n\ntails, long, 32\u201333,\n\ntails, none, 34\u201335\n\ntails, puffy, 36\u201337\n\ntalking, 112\u201313\n\ntoys and teasers, , , ,\n\ntravel, , , ,\n\ntuxedo cats, 14\u201315\n\n**W**\n\nwhite cats,\n\nwhite, , , , \nTable of Contents\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Title Page\n  3. Copyright\n  4. Contents\n  5. About the Author\n  6. Faces\n  7. The Studio\n  8. Session Sample\n  9. Backgrounds\n  10. Black and White Cats\n  11. Black on Black\n  12. White on White\n  13. Blue Cats\n  14. Ears\n  15. Eyes\n  16. Bob Tails\n  17. Long Tails\n  18. No Tails\n  19. Puffy Tails\n  20. Big Hair\n  21. Curly Hair\n  22. Wavy Hair\n  23. Kinky Hair\n  24. No Hair\n  25. Plush Coat\n  26. Household Pets\n  27. The Standard\n  28. Hangers\n  29. High Fives\n  30. Holidays\n  31. In Motion\n  32. Goofy\n  33. Groups\n  34. In the Air\n  35. Kittens\n  36. Large Cats\n  37. Pairs\n  38. Profiles\n  39. Props\n  40. Sitting Up\n  41. Standing\n  42. Stretching\n  43. The Wild Look\n  44. Talking\n  45. Up\n  46. Awards\n  47. Agility\n  48. Combo Imagery\n  49. Final Thoughts\n  50. Index\n\n# Guide\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Contents\n  3. Title Page\n\n  1. \n  2. \n  3. \n  4. \n  5. \n  6. \n  7. \n  8. \n  9. \n  10. \n  11. \n  12. \n  13. \n  14. \n  15. \n  16. \n  17. \n  18. \n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116. \n  117. \n  118. \n  119. \n  120. \n  121. \n  122. \n  123. \n  124. \n  125. \n  126. \n  127.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nBegin Reading\n\nTable of Contents\n\nAbout the Author\n\nCopyright Page\n\n**Thank you for buying this**\n\n**St. Martin's Press ebook.**\n\nTo receive special offers, bonus content,\n\nand info on new releases and other great reads,\n\nsign up for our newsletters.\n\nOr visit us online at\n\nus.macmillan.com\/newslettersignup\n\nFor email updates on the author, click here.\nThe author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. **Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:us.macmillanusa.com\/piracy.**\nfor the weirdos & the dreamers\n\n# ONE\n\nOn the White House roof, tucked into a corner of the Promenade, there's a bit of loose paneling right on the edge of the Solarium. If you tap it just right, you can peel it back enough to find a message etched underneath, with the tip of a key or maybe a stolen West Wing letter opener.\n\nIn the secret history of First Families\u2014an insular gossip mill sworn to absolute discretion about most things on pain of death\u2014there's no definite answer for who wrote it. The one thing people seem certain of is that only a presidential son or daughter would have been daring enough to deface the White House. Some swear it was Jack Ford, with his Hendrix records and split-level room attached to the roof for late-night smoke breaks. Others say it was a young Luci Johnson, thick ribbon in her hair. But it doesn't matter. The writing stays, a private mantra for those resourceful enough to find it.\n\nAlex discovered it within his first week of living there. He's never told anyone how.\n\nIt says:\n\n> RULE #1: DON'T GET CAUGHT\n\nThe East and West Bedrooms on the second floor are generally reserved for the First Family. They were first designated as one giant state bedroom for visits from the Marquis de Lafayette in the Monroe administration, but eventually they were split. Alex has the East, across from the Treaty Room, and June uses the West, next to the elevator.\n\nGrowing up in Texas, their rooms were arranged in the same configuration, on either side of the hallway. Back then, you could tell June's ambition of the month by what covered the walls. At twelve, it was watercolor paintings. At fifteen, lunar calendars and charts of crystals. At sixteen, clippings from _The Atlantic,_ a UT Austin pennant, Gloria Steinem, Zora Neale Hurston, and excerpts from the papers of Dolores Huerta.\n\nHis own room was forever the same, just steadily more stuffed with lacrosse trophies and piles of AP coursework. It's all gathering dust in the house they still keep back home. On a chain around his neck, always hidden from view, he's worn the key to that house since the day he left for DC.\n\nNow, straight across the hall, June's room is all bright white and soft pink and minty green, photographed by _Vogue_ and famously inspired by old '60s interior design periodicals she found in one of the White House sitting rooms. His own room was once Caroline Kennedy's nursery and, later, warranting some sage burning from June, Nancy Reagan's office. He's left up the nature field illustrations in a neat symmetrical grid above the sofa, but painted over Sasha Obama's pink walls with a deep blue.\n\nTypically, the children of the president, at least for the past few decades, haven't lived in the Residence beyond eighteen, but Alex started at Georgetown the January his mom was sworn in, and logistically, it made sense not to split their security or costs to whatever one-bedroom apartment he'd be living in. June came that fall, fresh out of UT. She's never said it, but Alex knows she moved in to keep an eye on him. She knows better than anyone else how much he gets off on being this close to the action, and she's bodily yanked him out of the West Wing on more than one occasion.\n\nBehind his bedroom door, he can sit and put Hall & Oates on the record player in the corner, and nobody hears him humming along like his dad to \"Rich Girl.\" He can wear the reading glasses he always insists he doesn't need. He can make as many meticulous study guides with color-coded sticky notes as he wants. He's not going to be the youngest elected congressman in modern history without earning it, but nobody needs to know how hard he's kicking underwater. His sex-symbol stock would plummet.\n\n\"Hey,\" says a voice at the door, and he looks up from his laptop to see June edging into his room, two iPhones and a stack of magazines tucked under one arm, and a plate in her hand. She closes the door behind her with her foot.\n\n\"What'd you steal today?\" Alex asks, pushing the pile of papers on his bed out of her way.\n\n\"Assorted donuts,\" June says as she climbs up. She's wearing a pencil skirt with pointy pink flats, and he can already see next week's fashion columns: a picture of her outfit today, a lead-in for some sponcon about flats for the professional gal on the go.\n\nHe wonders what she's been up to all day. She mentioned a column for _WaPo,_ or was it a photoshoot for her blog? Or both? He can never keep up.\n\nShe's dumped her stack of magazines out on the bedspread and is already busying herself with them.\n\n\"Doing your part to keep the great American gossip industry alive?\"\n\n\"That's what my journalism degree's for,\" June says.\n\n\"Anything good this week?\" Alex asks, reaching for a donut.\n\n\"Let's see,\" June says. \" _In Touch_ says I'm... dating a French model?\"\n\n\"Are you?\"\n\n\"I wish.\" She flips a few pages. \"Ooh, and they're saying you got your asshole bleached.\"\n\n\"That one is true,\" Alex says through a mouthful of chocolate with sprinkles.\n\n\"Thought so,\" June says without looking up. After riffling through most of the magazine, she shuffles it to the bottom of the stack and moves on to _People_. She flips through absently\u2014 _People_ only ever writes what their publicists tell it to write. Boring. \"Not much on us this week... oh, I'm a crossword puzzle clue.\"\n\nFollowing their tabloid coverage is something of an idle hobby of hers, one that in turns amuses and annoys their mother, and Alex is narcissistic enough to let June read him the highlights. They're usually either complete fabrications or lines fed from their press team, but sometimes it's just funny. Given the choice, he'd rather read one of the hundreds of glowing pieces of fan fiction about him on the internet, the up-to-eleven version of himself with devastating charm and unbelievable physical stamina, but June flat-out refuses to read those aloud to him, no matter how much he tries to bribe her.\n\n\"Do _Us Weekly,_ \" Alex says.\n\n\"Hmm...\" June digs it out of the stack. \"Oh, look, we made the cover this week.\"\n\nShe flashes the glossy cover at him, which has a photo of the two of them inlaid in one corner, June's hair pinned on top of her head and Alex looking slightly over-served but still handsome, all jawline and dark curls. Below it in bold yellow letters, the headline reads: FIRST SIBLINGS' WILD NYC NIGHT.\n\n\"Oh yeah, that was a wild night,\" Alex says, reclining back against the tall leather headboard and pushing his glasses up his nose. \"Two whole keynote speakers. Nothing sexier than shrimp cocktails and an hour and a half of speeches on carbon emissions.\"\n\n\"It says here you had some kind of tryst with a 'mystery brunette,'\" June reads. \"'Though the First Daughter was whisked off by limousine to a star-studded party shortly after the gala, twenty-one-year-old heartthrob Alex was snapped sneaking into the W Hotel to meet a mystery brunette in the presidential suite and leaving around four a.m. Sources inside the hotel reported hearing amorous noises from the room all night, and rumors are swirling the brunette was none other than... _Nora Holleran,_ the twenty-two-year-old granddaughter of Vice President Mike Holleran and third member of the White House Trio. Could it be the two are rekindling their romance?'\"\n\n\"Yes!\" Alex crows, and June groans. \"That's less than a month! You owe me fifty dollars, baby.\"\n\n\"Hold on. _Was_ it Nora?\"\n\nAlex thinks back to the week before, showing up at Nora's room with a bottle of champagne. Their thing on the campaign trail a million years ago was brief, mostly to get the inevitable over with. They were seventeen and eighteen and doomed from the start, both convinced they were the smartest person in any room. Alex has since conceded Nora is 100 percent smarter than him and definitely too smart to have ever dated him.\n\nIt's not his fault the press won't let it go, though; that they _love_ the idea of them together as if they're modern-day Kennedys. So, if he and Nora occasionally get drunk in hotel rooms together watching _The West Wing_ and making loud moaning noises at the wall for the benefit of nosy tabloids, he can't be blamed, really. They're simply turning an undesirable situation into their own personal entertainment.\n\nScamming his sister is also a perk.\n\n\"Maybe,\" he says, dragging out the vowels.\n\nJune swats him with the magazine like he's an especially obnoxious cockroach. \"That's cheating, you dick!\"\n\n\"Bet's a bet,\" Alex tells her. \"We said if there was a new rumor in a month, you'd owe me fifty bucks. I take Venmo.\"\n\n\"I'm not paying,\" June huffs. \"I'm gonna kill her when we see her tomorrow. What are you wearing, by the way?\"\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"The wedding.\"\n\n\"Whose wedding?\"\n\n\"Uh, the _royal wedding,_ \" June says. \"Of England. It's literally on every cover I just showed you.\"\n\nShe holds _Us Weekly_ up again, and this time Alex notices the main story in giant letters: PRINCE PHILIP SAYS I DO! Along with a photograph of an extremely nondescript British heir and his equally nondescript blond fianc\u00e9e smiling blandly.\n\nHe drops his donut in a show of devastation. \"That's _this_ weekend?\"\n\n\"Alex, we leave in the morning,\" June tells him. \"We've got two appearances before we even go to the ceremony. I can't believe Zahra hasn't climbed up your ass about this already.\"\n\n\"Shit,\" he groans. \"I know I had that written down. I got sidetracked.\"\n\n\"What, by conspiring with my best friend against me in the tabloids for fifty dollars?\"\n\n\"No, with my research paper, smart-ass,\" Alex says, gesturing dramatically at his piles of notes. \"I've been working on it for Roman Political Thought all week. And I thought we agreed Nora is _our_ best friend.\"\n\n\"That can't possibly be a real class you're taking,\" June says. \"Is it possible you willfully forgot about the biggest international event of the year because you don't want to see your archnemesis?\"\n\n\"June, I'm the son of the President of the United States. Prince Henry is a figurehead of the British Empire. You can't just call him my 'archnemesis,'\" Alex says. He returns to his donut, chewing thoughtfully, and adds, \"'Archnemesis' implies he's actually a rival to me on any level and not, you know, a stuck-up product of inbreeding who probably jerks off to photos of himself.\"\n\n\"Woof.\"\n\n\"I'm just saying.\"\n\n\"Well, you don't have to like him, you just have to put on a happy face and not cause an international incident at his brother's wedding.\"\n\n\"Bug, when do I ever not put on a happy face?\" Alex says. He pulls a painfully fake grin, and June looks satisfyingly repulsed.\n\n\"Ugh. Anyway, you know what you're wearing, right?\"\n\n\"Yeah, I picked it out and had Zahra approve it last month. I'm not an animal.\"\n\n\"I'm still not sure about my dress,\" June says. She leans over and steals his laptop away from him, ignoring his noise of protest. \"Do you think the maroon or the one with the lace?\"\n\n\"Lace, obviously. It's England. And why are you trying to make me fail this class?\" he says, reaching for his laptop only to have his hand swatted away. \"Go curate your Instagram or something. You're the worst.\"\n\n\"Shut up, I'm trying to pick something to watch. Ew, you have _Garden State_ on your watch list? Wow, how's film school in 2005 going?\"\n\n\"I hate you.\"\n\n\"Hmm, I know.\"\n\nOutside his window, the wind stirs up over the lawn, rustling the linden trees down in the garden. The record on the turntable in the corner has spun out into fuzzy silence. He rolls off the bed and flips it, resetting the needle, and the second side picks up on \"London Luck, & Love.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIf he's honest, private aviation doesn't really get old, not even three years into his mother's term.\n\nHe doesn't get to travel this way a lot, but when he does, it's hard not to let it go to his head. He was born in the hill country of Texas to the daughter of a single mother and the son of Mexican immigrants, all of them dirt poor\u2014luxury travel is still a luxury.\n\nFifteen years ago, when his mother first ran for the House, the Austin newspaper gave her a nickname: the Lometa Longshot. She'd escaped her tiny hometown in the shadow of Fort Hood, pulled night shifts at diners to put herself through law school, and was arguing discrimination cases before the Supreme Court by thirty. She was the last thing anybody expected to rise up out of Texas in the midst of the Iraq War: a strawberry-blond, whip-smart Democrat with high heels, an unapologetic drawl, and a little biracial family.\n\nSo, it's still surreal that Alex is cruising somewhere over the Atlantic, snacking on pistachios in a high-backed leather chair with his feet up. Nora is bent over the _New York Times_ crossword opposite him, brown curls falling across her forehead. Beside her, the hulking Secret Service agent Cassius\u2014Cash for short\u2014holds his own copy in one giant hand, racing to finish it first. The cursor on Alex's Roman Political Thought paper blinks expectantly at him from his laptop, but something in him can't quite focus on school while they're flying transatlantic.\n\nAmy, his mother's favorite Secret Service agent, a former Navy SEAL who is rumored around DC to have killed several men, sits across the aisle. She's got a bulletproof titanium case of crafting supplies open on the couch next to her and is serenely embroidering flowers onto a napkin. Alex has seen her stab someone in the kneecap with a very similar embroidery needle.\n\nWhich leaves June, next to him, leaning on one elbow with her nose buried in the issue of _People_ she's inexplicably brought with them. She always chooses the most bizarre reading material for flights. Last time, it was a battered old Cantonese phrase book. Before that, _Death Comes for the Archbishop._\n\n\"What are you reading in there now?\" Alex asks her.\n\nShe flips the magazine around so he can see the double-page spread titled: ROYAL WEDDING MADNESS! Alex groans. This is definitely worse than Willa Cather.\n\n\"What?\" she says. \"I want to be prepared for my first-ever royal wedding.\"\n\n\"You went to prom, didn't you?\" Alex says. \"Just picture that, only in hell, and you have to be really nice about it.\"\n\n\"Can you believe they spent $75,000 just on the cake?\"\n\n\"That's depressing.\"\n\n\" _And_ apparently Prince Henry is going sans date to the wedding and everyone is freaking out about it. It says he was,\" she affects a comical English accent, \"'rumored to be dating a Belgian heiress last month, but now followers of the prince's dating life aren't sure what to think.'\"\n\nAlex snorts. It's insane to him that there are legions of people who follow the intensely dull dating lives of the royal siblings. He understands why people care where he puts his own tongue\u2014at least _he_ has personality.\n\n\"Maybe the female population of Europe finally realized he's as compelling as a wet ball of yarn,\" Alex suggests.\n\nNora puts down her crossword puzzle, having finished it first. Cassius glances over and swears. \"You gonna ask him to dance, then?\"\n\nAlex rolls his eyes, suddenly imagining twirling around a ballroom while Henry drones sweet nothings about croquet and fox hunting in his ear. The thought makes him want to gag.\n\n\"In his dreams.\"\n\n\"Aw,\" Nora says, \"you're blushing.\"\n\n\"Listen,\" Alex tells her, \"royal weddings are trash, the princes who have royal weddings are trash, the imperialism that allows princes to exist at all is trash. It's trash turtles all the way down.\"\n\n\"Is this your TED Talk?\" June asks. \"You do realize America is a genocidal empire too, right?\"\n\n\"Yes, _June,_ but at least we have the decency not to keep a monarchy around,\" Alex says, throwing a pistachio at her.\n\nThere are a few things about Alex and June that new White House hires are briefed on before they start. June's peanut allergy. Alex's frequent middle-of-the-night requests for coffee. June's college boyfriend, who broke up with her when he moved to California but is still the only person whose letters come to her directly. Alex's long-standing grudge against the youngest prince.\n\nIt's not a grudge, really. It's not even a rivalry. It's a prickling, unsettling annoyance. It makes his palms sweat.\n\nThe tabloids\u2014the world\u2014decided to cast Alex as the American equivalent of Prince Henry from day one, since the White House Trio is the closest thing America has to royalty. It has never seemed fair. Alex's image is all charisma and genius and smirking wit, thoughtful interviews and the cover of _GQ_ at eighteen; Henry's is placid smiles and gentle chivalry and generic charity appearances, a perfectly blank Prince Charming canvas. Henry's role, Alex thinks, is much easier to play.\n\nMaybe it is technically a rivalry. Whatever.\n\n\"All right, MIT,\" he says, \"what are the numbers on this one?\"\n\nNora grins. \"Hmm.\" She pretends to think hard about it. \"Risk assessment: FSOTUS failing to check himself before he wrecks himself will result in greater than five hundred civilian casualties. Ninety-eight percent probability of Prince Henry looking like a total dreamboat. Seventy-eight percent probability of Alex getting himself banned from the United Kingdom forever.\"\n\n\"Those are better odds than I expected,\" June observes.\n\nAlex laughs, and the plane soars on.\n\n* * *\n\nLondon is an absolute spectacle, crowds cramming the streets outside Buckingham Palace and all through the city, draped in Union Jacks and waving tiny flags over their heads. There are commemorative royal wedding souvenirs everywhere; Prince Philip and his bride's face plastered on everything from chocolate bars to underwear. Alex almost can't believe this many people care so passionately about something so comprehensively dull. He's sure there won't be this kind of turnout in front of the White House when he or June get married one day, nor would he even want it.\n\nThe ceremony itself seems to last forever, but it's at least sort of nice, in a way. It's not that Alex isn't into love or can't appreciate marriage. It's just that Martha is a perfectly respectable daughter of nobility, and Philip is a prince. It's as sexy as a business transaction. There's no passion, no drama. Alex's kind of love story is much more Shakespearean.\n\nIt feels like years before he's settled at a table between June and Nora inside a Buckingham Palace ballroom for the reception banquet, and he's irritated enough to be a little reckless. Nora passes him a flute of champagne, and he takes it gladly.\n\n\"Do either of y'all know what a viscount is?\" June is saying, halfway through a cucumber sandwich. \"I've met, like, five of them, and I keep smiling politely as if I know what it means when they say it. Alex, you took comparative international governmental relational things. Whatever. What are they?\"\n\n\"I think it's that thing when a vampire creates an army of crazed sex waifs and starts his own ruling body,\" he says.\n\n\"That sounds right,\" Nora says. She's folding her napkin into a complicated shape on the table, her shiny black manicure glinting in the chandelier light.\n\n\"I wish I were a viscount,\" June says. \"I could have my sex waifs deal with my emails.\"\n\n\"Are sex waifs good with professional correspondence?\" Alex asks.\n\nNora's napkin has begun to resemble a bird. \"I think it could be an interesting approach. Their emails would be all tragic and wanton.\" She tries on a breathless, husky voice. \"'Oh, please, I beg you, take me\u2014take me to lunch to discuss fabric samples, you beast!'\"\n\n\"Could be weirdly effective,\" Alex notes.\n\n\"Something is wrong with both of you,\" June says gently.\n\nAlex is opening his mouth to retort when a royal attendant materializes at their table like a dense and dour-looking ghost in a bad hairpiece.\n\n\"Miss Claremont-Diaz,\" says the man, who looks like his name is probably Reginald or Bartholomew or something. He bows, and miraculously his hairpiece doesn't fall off into June's plate. Alex shares an incredulous glance with her behind his back. \"His Royal Highness Prince Henry wonders if you would do him the honor of accompanying him for a dance.\"\n\nJune's mouth freezes halfway open, caught on a soft vowel sound, and Nora breaks out into a shit-eating grin.\n\n\"Oh, she'd _love_ to,\" Nora volunteers. \"She's been hoping he'd ask all evening.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" June starts and stops, her mouth smiling even as her eyes slice at Nora. \"Of course. That would be lovely.\"\n\n\"Excellent,\" Reginald-Bartholomew says, and he turns and gestures over his shoulder.\n\nAnd there Henry is, in the flesh, as classically handsome as ever in his tailored three-piece suit, all tousled sandy hair and high cheekbones and a soft, friendly mouth. He holds himself with innately impeccable posture, as if he emerged fully formed and upright out of some beautiful Buckingham Palace posy garden one day.\n\nHis eyes lock on Alex's, and something like annoyance or adrenaline spikes in Alex's chest. He hasn't had a conversation with Henry in probably a year. His face is still infuriatingly symmetrical.\n\nHenry deigns to give him a perfunctory nod, as if he's any other random guest, not the person he beat to a _Vogue_ editorial debut in their teens. Alex blinks, seethes, and watches Henry angle his stupid chiseled jaw toward June.\n\n\"Hello, June,\" Henry says, and he extends a gentlemanly hand to June, who is now blushing. Nora pretends to swoon. \"Do you know how to waltz?\"\n\n\"I'm... sure I could pick it up,\" she says, and she takes his hand cautiously, like she thinks he might be pranking her, which Alex thinks is way too generous to Henry's sense of humor. Henry leads her off to the crowd of twirling nobles.\n\n\"So is that what's happening now?\" Alex says, glaring down at Nora's napkin bird. \"Has he decided to finally shut me up by wooing my sister?\"\n\n\"Aw, little buddy,\" Nora says. She reaches over and pats his hand. \"It's cute how you think everything is about you.\"\n\n\"It should be, honestly.\"\n\n\"That's the spirit.\"\n\nHe glances up into the crowd, where June is being rotated around the floor by Henry. She's got a neutral, polite smile on her face, and he keeps looking over her shoulder, which is even more annoying. June is amazing. The least Henry could do is pay attention to her.\n\n\"Do you think he actually likes her, though?\"\n\nNora shrugs. \"Who knows? Royals are weird. Might be a courtesy, or\u2014oh, there it is.\"\n\nA royal photographer has swooped in and is snapping a shot of them dancing, one Alex knows will be leaked to _Hello_ next week. So, that's it, then? Using the First Daughter to start some idiotic dating rumor for attention? God forbid Philip gets to dominate the news cycle for one week.\n\n\"He's kind of good at this,\" Nora remarks.\n\nAlex flags down a waiter and decides to spend the rest of the reception getting systematically drunk.\n\nAlex has never told\u2014will never tell\u2014anyone, but he saw Henry for the first time when he was twelve years old. He only ever reflects upon it when he's drunk.\n\nHe's sure he saw his face in the news before then, but that was the first time he really _saw_ him. June had just turned fifteen and used part of her birthday money to buy an issue of a blindingly colorful teen magazine. Her love of trashy tabloids started early. In the center of the magazine were miniature posters you could rip out and stick up in your locker. If you were careful and pried up the staples with your fingernails, you could get them out without tearing them. One of them, right in the middle, was a picture of a boy.\n\nHe had thick, tawny hair and big blue eyes, a warm smile, and a cricket bat over one shoulder. It must have been a candid, because there was a happy, sun-bright confidence to him that couldn't be posed. On the bottom corner of the page in pink and blue letters: PRINCE HENRY.\n\nAlex still doesn't really know what kept drawing him back, only that he would sneak into June's room and find the page and touch his fingertips to the boy's hair, as if he could somehow feel its texture if he imagined it hard enough. The more his parents climbed the political ranks, the more he started to reckon with the fact that soon the world would know who he was. Then, sometimes, he'd think of the picture, and try to harness Prince Henry's easy confidence.\n\n(He also thought about prying up the staples with his fingers and taking the picture out and keeping it in his room, but he never did. His fingernails were too stubby; they weren't made for it like June's, like a girl's.)\n\nBut then came the first time he met Henry\u2014the first cool, detached words Henry said to him\u2014and Alex guessed he had it all wrong, that the pretty, flung-open boy from the picture wasn't real. The real Henry is beautiful, distant, boring, and closed. This person the tabloids keep comparing him to, whom he compares _himself_ to, thinks he's _better_ than Alex and everyone like him. Alex can't believe he ever wanted to be anything like that.\n\nAlex keeps drinking, keeps alternating between thinking about it and forcing himself not to think about it, disappears into the crowd and dances with pretty European heiresses about it.\n\nHe's pirouetting away from one when he catches sight of a lone figure hovering near the cake and the champagne fountain. It's Prince Henry yet again, glass in hand, watching Prince Philip and his bride spinning on the ballroom floor. He looks politely half-interested in that obnoxious way of his, like he has somewhere else to be. And Alex can't resist the urge to call his bluff.\n\nHe picks his way through the crowd, grabbing a glass of wine off a passing tray and downing half of it.\n\n\"When you have one of these,\" Alex says, sidling up to him, \"you should do two champagne fountains instead of one. Really embarrassing to be at a wedding with only one champagne fountain.\"\n\n\"Alex,\" Henry says in that maddeningly posh accent. Up close, the waistcoat under his suit jacket is a lush gold and has about a million buttons on it. It's horrible. \"I wondered if I'd have the pleasure.\"\n\n\"Looks like it's your lucky day,\" Alex says, smiling.\n\n\"Truly a momentous occasion,\" Henry agrees. His own smile is bright white and immaculate, made to be printed on money.\n\nThe most annoying thing of all is Alex _knows_ Henry hates him too\u2014he _must,_ they're naturally mutual antagonists\u2014but he refuses to outright act like it. Alex is intimately aware politics involves a lot of making nice with people you loathe, but he wishes that once, just once, Henry would act like an actual human and not some polished little windup toy sold in a palace gift shop.\n\nHe's too perfect. Alex wants to poke it.\n\n\"Do you ever get tired,\" Alex says, \"of pretending you're above all this?\"\n\nHenry turns and stares at him. \"I'm sure I don't know what you mean.\"\n\n\"I mean, you're out here, getting the photographers to chase you, swanning around like you hate the attention, which you clearly don't since you're dancing with my sister, of all people,\" Alex says. \"You act like you're too important to be anywhere, ever. Doesn't that get exhausting?\"\n\n\"I'm... a bit more complicated than that,\" Henry attempts.\n\n_\"Ha.\"_\n\n\"Oh,\" Henry says, narrowing his eyes. \"You're drunk.\"\n\n\"I'm just saying,\" Alex says, resting an overly friendly elbow on Henry's shoulder, which isn't as easy as he'd like it to be since Henry has about four infuriating inches of height on him. \"You could try to act like you're having fun. Occasionally.\"\n\nHenry laughs ruefully. \"I believe perhaps you should consider switching to water, Alex.\"\n\n\"Should I?\" Alex says. He pushes aside the thought that maybe the wine is what gave him the nerve to stomp over to Henry in the first place and makes his eyes as coy and angelic as he knows how. \"Am I offending you? Sorry I'm not obsessed with you like everyone else. I know that must be confusing for you.\"\n\n\"Do you know what?\" Henry says. \"I think you are.\"\n\nAlex's mouth drops open, while the corner of Henry's turns smug and almost a little mean.\n\n\"Only a thought,\" Henry says, tone polite. \"Have you ever noticed I have never once approached you and have been _exhaustively_ civil every time we've spoken? Yet here you are, seeking me out again.\" He takes a sip of his champagne. \"Simply an observation.\"\n\n\"What? I'm not\u2014\" Alex stammers. \"You're the\u2014\"\n\n\"Have a lovely evening, Alex,\" Henry says tersely, and turns to walk off.\n\nIt drives Alex _nuts_ that Henry thinks he gets to have the last word, and without thinking, he reaches out and pulls Henry's shoulder back.\n\nAnd then Henry turns, suddenly, and almost does push Alex off him this time, and for a brief spark of a moment, Alex is impressed at the glint in his eyes, the abrupt burst of an actual personality.\n\nThe next thing he knows, he's tripping over his own foot and stumbling backward into the table nearest him. He notices too late that the table is, to his horror, the one bearing the massive eight-tier wedding cake, and he grabs for Henry's arm to catch himself, but all it does is throw both of them off-balance and send them crashing together into the cake stand.\n\nHe watches, as if in slow motion, as the cake leans, teeters, shudders, and finally tips. There's absolutely nothing he can do to stop it. It comes crashing down onto the floor in an avalanche of white buttercream, some kind of sugary $75,000 nightmare.\n\nThe room goes heart-stoppingly silent as momentum carries him and Henry through the fall and down, down onto the wreckage of the cake on the ornate carpet, Henry's sleeve still clutched in Alex's fist. Henry's glass of champagne has spilled all over both of them and shattered, and out of the corner of his eye, Alex can see a cut across the top of Henry's cheekbone beginning to bleed.\n\nFor a second, all he can think as he stares up at the ceiling while covered in frosting and champagne is that at least Henry's dance with June won't be the biggest story to come out of the royal wedding.\n\nHis next thought is that his mother is going to murder him in cold blood.\n\nBeside him, he hears Henry mutter slowly, \"Oh my fucking Christ.\"\n\nHe registers dimly that it's the first time he's ever heard the prince swear, before the flash from someone's camera goes off.\n\n# TWO\n\nWith a resounding smack, Zahra slaps a stack of magazines down on the West Wing briefing room table.\n\n\"This is just what I saw on the way here this morning,\" she says. \"I don't think I need to remind you I live two blocks away.\"\n\nAlex stares down at the headlines in front of him.\n\n> THE $75,000 STUMBLE\n> \n> BATTLE ROYAL: Prince Henry and FSOTUS Come to Blows at Royal Wedding\n> \n> CAKEGATE: Alex Claremont-Diaz Sparks Second English-American War\n\nEach one is accompanied by a photo of himself and Henry flat on their backs in a pile of cake, Henry's ridiculous suit all askew and covered in smashed buttercream flowers, his wrist pinned in Alex's hand, a thin slice of red across Henry's cheek.\n\n\"Are you sure we shouldn't be in the Situation Room for this meeting?\" Alex attempts.\n\nNeither Zahra nor his mother, sitting across the table, seems to find it funny. The president gives him a withering look over the top of her reading glasses, and he clamps his mouth shut.\n\nIt's not exactly that he's afraid of Zahra, his mom's deputy chief of staff and right-hand woman. She has a spiky exterior, but Alex swears there's something soft in there somewhere. He's more afraid of what his mother might do. They grew up made to talk about their feelings a lot, and then his mother became president, and life became less about feelings and more about international relations. He's not sure which option spells a worse fate.\n\n\"'Sources inside the royal reception report the two were seen arguing minutes before the... _cake-tastrophe,_ '\" Ellen reads out loud with utter disdain from her own copy of _The Sun._ Alex doesn't even try to guess how she got her hands on today's edition of a British tabloid. President Mom works in mysterious ways. \"'But royal family insiders claim the First Son's feud with Henry has raged for years. A source tells _The Sun_ that Henry and the First Son have been at odds ever since their first meeting at the Rio Olympics, and the animosity has only grown\u2014these days, they can't even be in the same room with each other. It seems it was only a matter of time before Alex took the American approach: a violent altercation.'\"\n\n\"I really don't think you can call tripping over a table a 'violent'\u2014\"\n\n\"Alexander,\" Ellen says, her tone eerily calm. \"Shut up.\"\n\nHe does.\n\n\"'One can't help but wonder,'\" Ellen reads on, \"'if the bitterness between these two powerful sons has contributed to what many have called an icy and distant relationship between President Ellen Claremont's administration and the monarchy in recent years.'\"\n\nShe tosses the magazine aside, folding her arms on the table.\n\n\"Please, tell me another joke,\" Ellen says. \"I want so badly for you to explain to me how this is funny.\"\n\nAlex opens his mouth and closes it a couple of times.\n\n\"He started it,\" he says finally. \"I barely touched him\u2014he's the one who pushed me, and I only grabbed him to try and catch my balance, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Sugar, I cannot express to you how much the press does not give a fuck about who started what,\" Ellen says. \"As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn't your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.\"\n\nAlex clenches his jaw. He's used to doing things that piss his mother's staff off\u2014in his teens, he had a penchant for confronting his mother's colleagues with their voting discrepancies at friendly DC fund-raisers\u2014and he's been in the tabloids for things more embarrassing than this. But never in quite such a cataclysmically, internationally terrible way.\n\n\"I don't have time to deal with this right now, so here's what we're gonna do,\" Ellen says, pulling a folder out of her padfolio. It's filled with some official-looking documents punctuated with different colors of sticky tabs, and the first one says: AGREEMENT OF TERMS.\n\n\"Um,\" Alex says.\n\n\"You,\" she says, \"are going to make nice with Henry. You're leaving Saturday and spending Sunday in England.\"\n\nAlex blinks. \"Is it too late to take the faking-my-death option?\"\n\n\"Zahra can brief you on the rest,\" Ellen goes on, ignoring him. \"I have about five hundred meetings right now.\" She gets up and heads for the door, stopping to kiss her hand and press it to the top of his head. \"You're a dumbass. Love you.\"\n\nThen she's gone, heels clicking behind her down the hallway, and Zahra settles into her vacated chair with a look on her face like she'd prefer arranging his death for real. She's not technically the most powerful or important player in his mother's White House, but she's been working by Ellen's side since Alex was five and Zahra was fresh out of Howard. She's the only one trusted to wrangle the First Family.\n\n\"All right, here's the deal,\" she says. \"I was up all night conferencing with a bunch of uptight royal handlers and PR pricks and the prince's fucking _equerry_ to make this happen, so you are going to follow this plan to the letter and not fuck it up, got it?\"\n\nAlex still privately thinks this whole thing is completely ridiculous, but he nods. Zahra looks deeply unconvinced but presses on.\n\n\"First, the White House and the monarchy are going to release a joint statement saying what happened at the royal wedding was a complete accident and a misunderstanding\u2014\"\n\n\"Which it was.\"\n\n\"\u2014and that, despite rarely having time to see each other, you and Prince Henry have been close personal friends for the past several years.\"\n\n\"We're _what_?\"\n\n\"Look,\" Zahra says, taking a drag from her massive stainless steel thermos of coffee. \"Both sides need to come out of this looking good, and the only way to do that is to make it look like your little slap-fight at the wedding was some homoerotic frat bro mishap, okay? So, you can hate the heir to the throne all you want, write mean poems about him in your diary, but the minute you see a camera, you act like the sun shines out of his dick, and you make it convincing.\"\n\n\"Have you met Henry?\" Alex says. \"How am I supposed to do that? He has the personality of a cabbage.\"\n\n\"Are you really not understanding how much I don't care at all how you feel about this?\" Zahra says. \"This is what's happening so your stupid ass doesn't distract the entire country from your mother's reelection campaign. Do you want her to have to get up on the debate stage next year and explain to the world why her son is trying to destabilize America's European relationships?\"\n\nWell, no, he doesn't. And he knows, in the back of his mind, that he's a better strategist than he's been about this, and that without this stupid grudge, he probably could have come up with this plan on his own.\n\n\"So Henry's your new best friend,\" Zahra continues. \"You will smile and nod and not piss off anyone while you and Henry spend the weekend doing charity appearances and talking to the press about how much you love each other's company. If somebody asks about him, I want to hear you gush like he's your fucking prom date.\"\n\nShe slides him a page of bulleted lists and tables of data so elaborately organized he could have made it himself. It's labeled: HRH PRINCE HENRY FACT SHEET.\n\n\"You're going to memorize this so if anybody tries to catch you in a lie, you know what to say,\" she says. Under HOBBIES, it lists polo and competitive yachting. Alex is going to set himself on fire.\n\n\"Does he get one of these for me?\" Alex asks helplessly.\n\n\"Yep. And for the record, making it was one of the most depressing moments of my career.\" She slides another page over to him, this one detailing requirements for the weekend.\n\n> Minimum two (2) social media posts per day highlighting England\/visit thereof.\n> \n> One (1) on-air interview with _ITV This Morning,_ lasting five (5) minutes, in accordance with determined narrative.\n> \n> Two (2) joint appearances with photographers present: one (1) private meeting, one (1) public charity appearance.\n\n\"Why do I have to go over there? He's the one who pushed me into the stupid cake\u2014shouldn't he have to come here and go on _SNL_ with me or something?\"\n\n\"Because it was the _royal wedding_ you ruined, and _they're_ the ones out seventy-five grand,\" Zahra says. \"Besides, we're arranging his presence at a state dinner in a few months. He's not any more excited about this than you are.\"\n\nAlex pinches the bridge of his nose where a stress headache is already percolating. \"I have class.\"\n\n\"You'll be back by Sunday night, DC time,\" Zahra tells him. \"You won't miss anything.\"\n\n\"So there's really no way I'm getting out of this?\"\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\nAlex presses his lips together. He needs a list.\n\nWhen he was a kid, he used to hide pages and pages of loose leaf paper covered in messy, loopy handwriting under the worn denim cushion of the window seat in the house in Austin. Rambling treatises on the role of government in America with all the _G_ s written backward, paragraphs translated from English to Spanish, tables of his elementary school classmates' strengths and weaknesses. And lists. Lots of lists. The lists help.\n\nSo: Reasons this is a good idea.\n\nOne. His mother needs good press.\n\nTwo. Having a shitty record on foreign relations definitely won't help his career.\n\nThree. Free trip to Europe.\n\n\"Okay,\" he says, taking the file. \"I'll do it. But I won't have any fun.\"\n\n\"God, I hope not.\"\n\n* * *\n\nThe White House Trio is, officially, the nickname for Alex, June, and Nora coined by _People_ shortly before the inauguration. In actuality, it was carefully tested with focus groups by the White House press team and fed directly to _People._ Politics\u2014calculating, even in hashtags.\n\nBefore the Claremonts, the Kennedys and Clintons shielded the First Offspring from the press, giving them the privacy to go through awkward phases and organic childhood experiences and everything else. Sasha and Malia were hounded and picked apart by the press before they were out of high school. The White House Trio got ahead of the narrative before anyone could do the same.\n\nIt was a bold new plan: three attractive, bright, charismatic, marketable millennials\u2014Alex and Nora are, technically, just past the Gen Z threshold, but the press doesn't find that nearly as catchy. Catchiness sells, coolness sells. Obama was cool. The whole First Family could be cool too; celebrities in their own right. _It's not ideal,_ his mother always says, _but it works._\n\nThey're the White House Trio, but here, in the music room on the third floor of the Residence, they're just Alex and June and Nora, naturally glued together since they were teenagers stunting their growth with espresso in the primaries. Alex pushes them. June steadies them. Nora keeps them honest.\n\nThey settle into their usual places: June, perched on her heels at the record collection, foraging for some Patsy Cline; Nora, cross-legged on the floor, uncorking a bottle of red wine; Alex, sitting upside down with his feet on the back of the couch, trying to figure out what he's going to do next.\n\nHe flips the HRH PRINCE HENRY FACT SHEET over and squints at it. He can feel the blood rushing to his head.\n\nJune and Nora are ignoring him, caught in a bubble of intimacy he can never quite penetrate. Their relationship is something enormous and incomprehensible to most people, including Alex on occasion. He knows them both down to their split ends and nasty habits, but there's a strange girl bond between them he can't, and knows he isn't supposed to, translate.\n\n\"I thought you were liking the _Post_ gig?\" Nora says. With a dull pop, she pulls the cork out of the wine and takes a swig directly from the bottle.\n\n\"I was,\" June says. \"I mean, I _am._ But, it's not much of a gig. It's, like, one op-ed a month, and half my pitches get shot down for being too close to Mom's platform, and even then, the press team has to read anything political before I turn it in. So it's like, email in these fluff pieces, and know that on the other side of the screen people are doing the most important journalism of their careers, and be okay with that.\"\n\n\"So... you don't like it, then.\"\n\nJune sighs. She finds the record she's looking for, slides it out of the sleeve. \"I don't know what else to _do,_ is the thing.\"\n\n\"They wouldn't put you on a beat?\" Nora asks her.\n\n\"You kidding? They wouldn't even let me in the building,\" June says. She puts the record on and sets the needle. \"What would Reilly and Rebecca say?\"\n\nNora tips her head and laughs. \"My parents would say to do what they did: ditch journalism, get really into essential oils, buy a cabin in the Vermont wilderness, and own six hundred LL Bean vests that all smell like patchouli.\"\n\n\"You left out the investing in Apple in the nineties and getting stupid-rich part,\" June reminds her.\n\n\"Details.\"\n\nJune walks over and places her palm on the top of Nora's head, deep in her nest of curls, and leans down to kiss the back of her own fingers. \"I'll figure something out.\"\n\nNora hands over the bottle, and June takes a pull. Alex heaves a dramatic sigh.\n\n\"I can't believe I have to learn this garbage,\" Alex says. \"I _just_ finished midterms.\"\n\n\"Look, you're the one who has to fight everything that moves,\" June says, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, a move she'd only do in front of the two of them. \"Including the British monarchy. So, I don't really feel bad for you. Anyway, he was totally fine when I danced with him. I don't get why you hate him so much.\"\n\n\"I think it's amazing,\" Nora says. \"Sworn enemies forced to make peace to settle tensions between their countries? There's something totally Shakespearean about it.\"\n\n\"Shakespearean in that hopefully I'll get stabbed to death,\" Alex says. \"This sheet says his favorite food is mutton pie. I literally cannot think of a more boring food. He's like a cardboard cutout of a person.\"\n\nThe sheet is filled with things Alex already knew, either from the royal siblings dominating the news cycle or hate-reading Henry's Wikipedia page. He knows about Henry's parentage, about his older siblings Philip and Beatrice, that he studied English literature at Oxford and plays classical piano. The rest is so trivial he can't imagine it'll come up in an interview, but there's no way he'll risk Henry being more prepared.\n\n\"Idea,\" Nora says. \"Let's make it a drinking game.\"\n\n\"Ooh, yes,\" June agrees. \"Drink every time Alex gets one right?\"\n\n\"Drink every time the answer makes you want to puke?\" Alex suggests.\n\n\"One drink for a correct answer, two drinks for a Prince Henry fact that is legitimately, objectively awful,\" Nora says. June has already dug two glasses out of the cabinet, and she hands them to Nora, who fills both and keeps the bottle for herself. Alex slides down from the couch to sit on the floor with her.\n\n\"Okay,\" she goes on, taking the sheet out of Alex's hands. \"Let's start easy. Parents. Go.\"\n\nAlex picks up his own glass, already pulling up a mental image of Henry's parents, Catherine's shrewd blue eyes and Arthur's movie-star jaw.\n\n\"Mother: Princess Catherine, oldest daughter of Queen Mary, first princess to obtain a doctorate\u2014English literature,\" he rattles off. \"Father: Arthur Fox, beloved English film and stage actor best known for his turn as James Bond in the eighties, deceased 2015. Y'all drink.\"\n\nThey do, and Nora passes the list to June.\n\n\"Okay,\" June says, scanning the list, apparently looking for something more challenging. \"Let's see. Dog's name?\"\n\n_\"David,\"_ Alex says. \"He's a beagle. I remember because, like, _who does that_? Who names a dog _David_? He sounds like a tax attorney. Like a dog tax attorney. Drink.\"\n\n\"Best friend's name, age, and occupation?\" Nora asks. \"Best friend other than _you,_ of course.\"\n\nAlex casually gives her the finger. \"Percy Okonjo. Goes by Pez or Pezza. Heir to Okonjo Industries, Nigerian company leading Africa in biomedical advancements. Twenty-two, lives in London, met Henry at Eton. Manages the Okonjo Foundation, a humanitarian nonprofit. Drink.\"\n\n\"Favorite book?\"\n\n\"Uh,\" Alex says. \"Um. Fuck. Uh. What's the one\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Mr. Claremont-Diaz, that is incorrect,\" June says. \"Thank you for playing, but you lose.\"\n\n\"Come on, what's the answer?\"\n\nJune peers down at the list. \"This says... _Great Expectations_?\"\n\nBoth Nora and Alex groan.\n\n\"Do you see what I mean now?\" Alex says. \"This dude is reading Charles Dickens... _for pleasure._ \"\n\n\"I'll give you this one,\" Nora says. \"Two drinks!\"\n\n\"Well, I think\u2014\" June says as Nora glugs away. \"Guys, it's kinda nice! I mean, it's pretentious, but the themes of _Great Expectations_ are all like, love is more important than status, and doing what's right beats money and power. Maybe he relates\u2014\" Alex makes a long, loud fart noise. \"Y'all are such assholes! He seems really nice!\"\n\n\"That's because you are a nerd,\" Alex says. \"You want to protect those of your own species. It's a natural instinct.\"\n\n\"I am helping you with this out of the goodness of my heart,\" June says. \"I'm on _deadline_ right now.\"\n\n\"Hey, what do you think Zahra put on my fact sheet?\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" Nora says, sucking her teeth. \"Favorite summer Olympic sport: rhythmic gymnastics\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not ashamed of that.\"\n\n\"Favorite brand of khakis: Gap.\"\n\n\"Listen, they look best on my ass. The J. Crew ones wrinkle all weird. And they're not _khakis,_ they're _chinos._ Khakis are for _white people_.\"\n\n\"Allergies: dust, Tide laundry detergent, and shutting the fuck up.\"\n\n\"Age of first filibuster: nine, at SeaWorld San Antonio, trying to force an orca wrangler into early retirement for, quote, 'inhumane whale practices.'\"\n\n\"I stood by it then, and I stand by it now.\"\n\nJune throws her head back and laughs, loud and unguarded, and Nora rolls her eyes, and Alex is glad, at least, that he'll have this to come back to when the nightmare is over.\n\n* * *\n\nAlex expects Henry's handler to be some stout storybook Englishman with tails and a top hat, probably a walrus mustache, definitely scurrying to place a velvet footstool at Henry's carriage door.\n\nThe person who awaits him and his security team on the tarmac is very much not that. He's a tall thirty-something Indian man in an impeccably tailored suit, roguishly handsome with a neatly trimmed beard, a steaming cup of tea, and a shiny Union Jack on his lapel. Well, okay then.\n\n\"Agent Chen,\" the man says, extending his free hand to Amy. \"Hope the flight was smooth.\"\n\nAmy nods. \"As smooth as the third transatlantic flight in a week can be.\"\n\nThe man half-smiles, commiserative. \"The Land Rover is for you and your team for the duration.\"\n\nAmy nods again, releasing his hand, and the man turns his attention to Alex.\n\n\"Mr. Claremont-Diaz,\" he says. \"Welcome back to England. Shaan Srivastava, Prince Henry's equerry.\"\n\nAlex takes his hand and shakes it, feeling a bit like he's in one of Henry's dad's Bond movies. Behind him, an attendant unloads his luggage and carries it off in the direction of a sleek Aston Martin.\n\n\"Nice to meet you, Shaan. Not exactly how we thought we'd be spending our weekend, is it?\"\n\n\"I'm not as surprised at this turn of events as I'd like to be, sir,\" Shaan says coolly, with an inscrutable smile.\n\nHe pulls a small tablet from his jacket and pivots on his heel toward the waiting car. Alex stares at his back, speechless, before hastily refusing to be impressed by a grown man whose job is handling the prince's schedule, no matter how cool he is or how long and smooth his strides are. He shakes his head a little and jogs to catch up, sliding into the back seat as Shaan checks the mirrors.\n\n\"Right,\" Shaan says. \"You'll be staying in the guest quarters at Kensington Palace. Tomorrow you'll do the _This Morning_ interview at nine\u2014we've arranged for a photo call at the studio. Then it's children with cancer all afternoon and off you go back to the land of the free.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Alex says. He very politely does not add, _could be worse._\n\n\"For now,\" Shaan says, \"you're to come with me to chauffeur the prince from the stables. One of our photographers will be there to photograph the prince welcoming you to the country, so do try to look pleased to be here.\"\n\nOf course, there are _stables_ the prince needs to be _chauffeured_ from. He was briefly worried he'd been wrong about what the weekend would look like, but this feels a lot more like it.\n\n\"If you'll check the seat pocket in front of you,\" Shaan says as he reverses, \"there are a few papers for you to sign. Your lawyers have already approved them.\" He passes back an expensive-looking black fountain pen.\n\nNONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT, the top of the first page reads. Alex flips through to the last page\u2014there are at least fifteen pages of text\u2014and a low whistle escapes his lips.\n\n\"This is...\" Alex says, \"a thing you do often?\"\n\n\"Standard protocol,\" Shaan says. \"The reputation of the royal family is too valuable to risk.\"\n\n> The words \"Confidential Information,\" as used in this Agreement, shall include the following:\n> \n> 1. Such information as HRH Prince Henry or any member of the Royal Family may designate to the Guest as \"Confidential Information\";\n> \n> 2. All proprietary and financial information regarding HRH Prince Henry's personal wealth and estate;\n> \n> 3. Any interior architectural details of Royal Residences including Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, etc., and personal effects found therein;\n> \n> 4. Any information regarding or involving HRH Prince Henry's personal or private life not previously released by official Royal documents, speeches, or approved biographers, including any personal or private relationship the Guest may have with HRH Prince Henry;\n> \n> 5. Any information found on HRH Prince Henry's personal electronic devices...\n\nThis seems... excessive, like the kind of paperwork you get from some perverted millionaire who wants to hunt you for sport. He wonders what the most mind-numbingly wholesome public figure on earth could possibly have to hide. He hopes it's not people-hunting.\n\nAlex is no stranger to NDAs, though, so he signs and initials. It's not like he would have divulged all the boring details of this trip to anyone anyway, except maybe June and Nora.\n\nThey pull up to the stables after another fifteen minutes, his security close behind them. The royal stables are, of course, elaborate and well-kept and about a million miles from the old ranches he's seen out in the Texas panhandle. Shaan leads him out to the edge of the paddock, and Amy and her team regroup ten paces behind.\n\nAlex rests his elbows on the lacquered white fence boards, fighting back the sudden, absurd feeling he's underdressed for this. On any other day, his chinos and button-down would be fine for a casual photo op, but for the first time in a long time, he's feeling distinctly out of his element. Does his hair look awful from the plane?\n\nIt's not like Henry is going to look much better after polo practice. He'll probably be sweaty and disgusting.\n\nAs if on cue, Henry comes galloping around the bend on the back of a pristine white horse.\n\nHe is definitely not sweaty or disgusting. He is, instead, bathed dramatically in a sweeping and resplendent sunset, wearing a crisp black jacket and riding pants tucked into tall leather boots, looking every inch an actual fairy-tale prince. He unhooks his helmet and takes it off with one gloved hand, and his hair underneath is just attractively tousled enough to look like it's supposed to be that way.\n\n\"I'm going to throw up on you,\" Alex says as soon as Henry is close enough to hear him.\n\n\"Hello, Alex,\" Henry says. Alex really resents the extra few inches of height Henry has on him right now. \"You look... sober.\"\n\n\"Only for you, Your Royal Highness,\" he says with an elaborate mock-bow. He's pleased to hear a little bit of ice in Henry's voice, finally done pretending.\n\n\"You're too kind,\" Henry says. He swings one long leg over and dismounts from his horse gracefully, removing his glove and extending a hand to Alex. A well-dressed stable hand basically springs up out of the ground to whisk the horse away by the reins. Alex has probably never hated anything more.\n\n\"This is idiotic,\" Alex says, grasping Henry's hand. The skin is soft, probably exfoliated and moisturized daily by some royal manicurist. There's a royal photographer right on the other side of the fence, so he smiles winningly and says through his teeth, \"Let's get it over with.\"\n\n\"I'd rather be waterboarded,\" Henry says, smiling back. The camera snaps nearby. His eyes are big and soft and blue, and he desperately needs to be punched in one of them. \"Your country could probably arrange that.\"\n\nAlex throws his head back and laughs handsomely, loud and false. \"Go fuck yourself.\"\n\n\"Hardly enough time,\" Henry says. He releases Alex's hand as Shaan returns.\n\n\"Your Highness,\" Shaan greets Henry with a nod. Alex makes a concentrated effort not to roll his eyes. \"The photographer should have what he needs, so if you're ready, the car is waiting.\"\n\nHenry turns to him and smiles again, eyes unreadable. \"Shall we?\"\n\n* * *\n\nThere's something vaguely familiar about the Kensington Palace guest quarters, even though he's never been here before.\n\nShaan had an attendant show him to his room, where his luggage awaited him on an ornately carved bed with spun gold bedding. Many of the rooms in the White House have a similar hauntedness, a sense of history that hangs like cobwebs no matter how pristine the rooms are kept. He's used to sleeping alongside ghosts, but that's not it.\n\nIt strikes further back in his memory, around the time his parents split up. They were the kind of married lawyer couple who could barely order Chinese takeout without legally binding documents, so Alex spent the summer before seventh grade shuttled back and forth from home to their dad's new place outside of Los Angeles until they could strike a long-term arrangement.\n\nIt was a nice house in the valley, a clear blue swimming pool and a back wall of solid glass. He never slept well there. He'd sneak out of his thrown-together bedroom in the middle of the night, stealing Helados from his dad's freezer and standing barefoot in the kitchen eating straight from the quart, washed blue in the pool light.\n\nThat's how it feels here, somehow\u2014wide awake at midnight in a strange place, duty-bound to make it work.\n\nHe wanders into the kitchen attached to his guest wing, where the ceilings are high and the countertops are shiny marble. He was allowed to submit a list to stock the kitchen, but apparently it was too hard to get Helados on short notice\u2014all that's in the freezer is UK-brand packaged ice cream cones.\n\n\"What's it like?\" Nora's voice says, tinny over his phone's speaker. On the screen, her hair is up, and she's poking at one of her dozens of window plants.\n\n\"Weird,\" Alex says, pushing his glasses up his nose. \"Everything looks like a museum. I don't think I'm allowed to show you, though.\"\n\n\"Ooh,\" Nora says, wiggling her eyebrows. \"So secretive. So fancy.\"\n\n\"Please,\" Alex says. \"If anything, it's creepy. I had to sign such a massive NDA that I'm convinced I'm gonna drop through a trapdoor into a torture dungeon any minute.\"\n\n\"I bet he has a secret lovechild,\" Nora says. \"Or he's gay. Or he has a secret gay lovechild.\"\n\n\"It's probably in case I see his equerry putting his batteries back in,\" Alex says. \"Anyway, this is boring. What's going on with you? Your life is so much better than mine right now.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Nora says, \"Nate Silver won't stop blowing up my phone for another column. Bought some new curtains. Narrowed down the list of grad school concentrations to statistics or data science.\"\n\n\"Tell me those are both at GW,\" Alex says, hopping up to sit on one of the immaculate countertops, feet dangling. \"You can't leave me in DC to go back to MIT.\"\n\n\"Haven't decided yet, but astonishingly, it will not be based on you,\" Nora tells him. \"Remember how we sometimes talk about things that are not about you?\"\n\n\"Yeah, weirdly. So is the plan to dethrone Nate Silver as reigning data czar of DC?\"\n\nNora laughs. \"No, what I'm gonna do is silently compile and process enough data to know exactly what's gonna happen for the next twenty-five years. Then I'm gonna buy a house on the top of a very tall hill at the edge of the city and become an eccentric recluse and sit on my veranda. Watch it all unfold through a pair of binoculars.\"\n\nAlex starts to laugh, but cuts off when he hears rustling down the hall. Quiet footsteps approaching. Princess Beatrice lives in a different section of the palace, and so does Henry. The PPOs and his own security sleep on this floor, though, so maybe\u2014\n\n\"Hold on,\" Alex says, covering the speaker.\n\nA light flicks on in the hallway, and the person who comes padding into the kitchen is none other than Prince Henry.\n\nHe's rumpled and half awake, shoulders slumping as he yawns. He's standing in front of Alex wearing not a suit, but a heather-gray T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. He has earbuds in, and his hair is a mess. His feet are bare.\n\nHe looks, alarmingly, human.\n\nHe freezes when his eyes fall on Alex perched on the countertop. Alex stares back at him. In his hand, Nora begins a muffled, \"Is that\u2014\" before Alex disconnects the call.\n\nHenry pulls out his earbuds, and his posture has ratcheted back up straight, but his face is still bleary and confused.\n\n\"Hello,\" he says, hoarse. \"Sorry. Er. I was just. Cornettos.\"\n\nHe gestures vaguely toward the refrigerator, as if he's said something of any meaning.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nHe crosses to the freezer and extracts the box of ice cream cones, showing Alex the name _Cornetto_ across the front. \"I was out. Knew they'd stocked you up.\"\n\n\"Do you raid the kitchens of all your guests?\" Alex asks.\n\n\"Only when I can't sleep,\" Henry says. \"Which is always. Didn't think you'd be awake.\" He looks at Alex, deferring, and Alex realizes he's waiting for permission to open the box and take one. Alex thinks about telling him no, just for the thrill of denying a prince something, but he's kind of intrigued. He usually can't sleep either. He nods.\n\nHe waits for Henry to take a Cornetto and leave, but instead he looks back up at Alex.\n\n\"Have you practiced what you'll say tomorrow?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Alex says, bristling immediately. This is why nothing about Henry has ever intrigued him before. \"You're not the only professional here.\"\n\n\"I didn't mean\u2014\" Henry falters. \"I only meant, do you think we should, er, rehearse?\"\n\n\"Do you need to?\"\n\n\"I thought it might help.\" Of course, he thinks that. Everything Henry's ever done publicly has probably been privately rehearsed in stuffy royal quarters like this one.\n\nAlex hops down off the counter, swiping his phone unlocked. \"Watch this.\"\n\nHe lines up a shot: the box of Cornettos on the counter, Henry's hand braced on the marble next to it, his heavy signet ring visible along with a swath of pajamas. He opens up Instagram, slaps a filter on it.\n\n\"'Nothing cures jet lag,'\" Alex narrates in a monotone as he taps out a caption, \"'like midnight ice cream with @PrinceHenry.' Geotag Kensington Palace, and posted.\" He holds the phone for Henry to see as likes and comments immediately pour in. \"There are a lot of things worth overthinking, believe me. But this isn't one of them.\"\n\nHenry frowns at him over his ice cream.\n\n\"I suppose,\" he says, looking doubtful.\n\n\"Are you done?\" Alex asks. \"I was on a call.\"\n\nHenry blinks, then folds his arms over his chest, back on the defensive. \"Of course. I won't keep you.\"\n\nAs he leaves the kitchen, he pauses in the doorframe, considering.\n\n\"I didn't know you wore glasses,\" he says finally.\n\nHe leaves Alex standing there alone in the kitchen, the box of Cornettos sweating on the counter.\n\n* * *\n\nThe ride to the studio for the interview is bumpy but mercifully quick. Alex should probably blame some of his queasiness on nerves but chooses to blame it all on this morning's appalling breakfast spread\u2014what kind of garbage country eats bland beans on white toast for breakfast? He can't decide if his Mexican blood or his Texan blood is more offended.\n\nHenry sits beside him, surrounded by a cloud of attendants and stylists. One adjusts his hair with a fine-toothed comb. One holds up a notepad of talking points. One tugs his collar straight. From the passenger seat, Shaan shakes a yellow pill out of a bottle and passes it back to Henry, who readily pops it into his mouth and swallows it dry. Alex decides he doesn't want or need to know.\n\nThe motorcade pulls up in front of the studio, and when the door slides open, there's the promised photo line and barricaded royal worshippers. Henry turns and looks at him, a little grimace around his mouth and eyes.\n\n\"Prince goes first, then you,\" Shaan says to Alex, leaning in and touching his earpiece. Alex takes one breath, two, and turns it on\u2014the megawatt smile, the All-American charm.\n\n\"Go ahead, Your Royal Highness,\" Alex says, winking as he puts on his sunglasses. \"Your subjects await.\"\n\nHenry clears his throat and unfolds himself, stepping out into the morning and waving genially at the crowd. Cameras flash, photographers shout. A blue-haired girl in the crowd lifts up a homemade poster that reads in big, glittery letters, GET IN ME, PRINCE HENRY! for about five seconds until a member of the security team shoves it into a nearby trash can.\n\nAlex steps out next, swaggering up beside Henry and throwing an arm over his shoulders.\n\n\"Act like you like me!\" Alex says cheerfully. Henry looks at him like he's trying to choose between a million choice words, before tipping his head to the side and offering up a well-rehearsed laugh, putting his arm around Alex too. \"There we go.\"\n\nThe hosts of _This Morning_ are agonizingly British\u2014a middle-aged woman named Dottie in a tea dress and a man called Stu who looks as if he spends weekends yelling at mice in his garden. Alex watches the introductions backstage as a makeup artist conceals a stress pimple on his forehead. _So, this is happening_. He tries to ignore Henry a few feet to his left, currently getting a final preening from a royal stylist. It's the last chance he'll get to ignore Henry for the rest of the day.\n\nSoon Henry is leading the way out with Alex close behind. Alex shakes Dottie's hand first, smiling his Politics Smile at her, the one that makes a lot of congresswomen and more than a few congressmen want to tell him things they shouldn't. She giggles and kisses him on the cheek. The audience claps and claps and claps.\n\nHenry sits on the prop couch next to him, perfect posture, and Alex smiles at him, making a show of looking comfortable in Henry's company. Which is harder than it should be, because the stage lights suddenly make him uncomfortably aware of how fresh and handsome Henry looks for the cameras. He's wearing a blue sweater over a button-down, and his hair looks soft.\n\nWhatever, fine. Henry is annoyingly attractive. That's always been a thing, objectively. It's fine.\n\nHe realizes, almost a second too late, that Dottie is asking him a question.\n\n\"What do you think of _jolly old England,_ then, Alex?\" Dottie says, clearly ribbing him. Alex forces a smile.\n\n\"You know, Dottie, it's gorgeous,\" Alex says. \"I've been here a few times since my mom got elected, and it's always incredible to see the history here, and the beer selection.\" The audience laughs right on cue, and Alex shakes out his shoulders a little. \"And of course, it's always great to see this guy.\"\n\nHe turns to Henry, extending his fist. Henry hesitates before stiffly bumping his own knuckles against Alex's with the heavy air of an act of treason.\n\n* * *\n\nAlex's whole reason for wanting to go into politics, when he knows so many past presidential sons and daughters have run away screaming the minute they turned eighteen, is he genuinely cares about people.\n\nThe power is great, the attention fun, but the people\u2014the people are everything. He has a bit of a caring-too-much problem about most things, including whether people can pay their medical bills, or marry whomever they love, or not get shot at school. Or, in this case, if kids with cancer have enough books to read at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.\n\nHe and Henry and their collective hoard of security have taken over the floor, flustering nurses and shaking hands. He's trying\u2014really trying\u2014not to let his hands clench into fists at his sides, but Henry's smiling robotically with a little bald boy plugged full of tubes for some bullshit photograph, and he wants to scream at this whole stupid country.\n\nBut he's legally required to be here, so he focuses on the kids, instead. Most of them have no idea who he is, but Henry gamely introduces him as the president's son, and soon they're asking him about the White House and does he know Ariana Grande, and he laughs and indulges them. He unpacks books from the heavy boxes they've brought, climbs up onto beds and reads out loud, a photographer trailing after him.\n\nHe doesn't realize he's lost track of Henry until the patient he's visiting dozes off, and he recognizes the low rumble of Henry's voice on the other side of the curtain.\n\nA quick count of feet on the floor\u2014no photographers. Just Henry. Hmm.\n\nHe steps quietly over to the chair against the wall, right at the edge of the curtain. If he sits at the right angle and cranes his head back, he can barely see.\n\nHenry is talking to a little girl with leukemia named Claudette, according to the board on her wall. She's got dark skin that's turned sort of a pale gray and a bright orange scarf tied around her head, emblazoned with the Alliance Starbird.\n\nInstead of hovering awkwardly like Alex expected, Henry is squatting at her side, smiling and holding her hand.\n\n\"... Star Wars fan, are you?\" Henry says in a low, warm voice Alex has never heard from him before, pointing at the insignia on her headscarf.\n\n\"Oh, it's my absolute favorite,\" Claudette gushes. \"I'd like to be just like Princess Leia when I'm older because she's so tough and smart and strong, and she gets to kiss Han Solo.\"\n\nShe blushes a little at having mentioned kissing in front of the prince but fiercely maintains eye contact. Alex finds himself craning his neck farther, watching for Henry's reaction. He definitely does not recall Star Wars on the fact sheet.\n\n\"You know what,\" Henry says, leaning in conspiratorially, \"I think you've got the right idea.\"\n\nClaudette giggles. \"Who's your favorite?\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" Henry says, making a show of thinking hard. \"I always liked Luke. He's brave and good, and he's the strongest Jedi of them all. I think Luke is proof that it doesn't matter where you come from or who your family is\u2014you can always be great if you're true to yourself.\"\n\n\"All right, Miss Claudette,\" a nurse says brightly as she comes around the curtain. Henry jumps, and Alex almost tips his chair over, caught in the act. He clears his throat as he stands, pointedly not looking at Henry. \"You two can go, it's time for her meds.\"\n\n\"Miss Beth, Henry said we were mates now!\" Claudette practically wails. \"He can stay!\"\n\n\"Excuse you!\" Beth the nurse tuts. \"That's no way to address the prince. Terribly sorry, Your Highness.\"\n\n\"No need to apologize,\" Henry tells her. \"Rebel commanders outrank royalty.\" He shoots Claudette a wink and a salute, and she positively melts.\n\n\"I'm impressed,\" Alex says as they walk out into the hallway together. Henry cocks an eyebrow, and Alex adds, \"Not impressed, just surprised.\"\n\n\"At what?\"\n\n\"That you actually have, you know, feelings.\"\n\nHenry is beginning to smile when three things happen in rapid succession.\n\nThe first: A shout echoes from the opposite end of the hall.\n\nThe second: There's a loud pop that sounds alarmingly like gunfire.\n\nThe third: Cash grabs both Henry and Alex by the arms and shoves them through the nearest door.\n\n_\"Stay down,\"_ Cash grunts as he slams the door behind them.\n\nIn the abrupt darkness, Alex stumbles over a mop and one of Henry's legs, and they go crashing down together into a clattering pile of tin bedpans. Henry hits the floor first, facedown, and Alex lands in a heap on top of him.\n\n\"Oh God,\" Henry says, muffled and echoing slightly. Alex thinks hopefully that his face might be in a bedpan.\n\n\"You know,\" he says into Henry's hair, \"we have got to stop ending up like this.\"\n\n\"Do you _mind_?\"\n\n\"This is _your_ fault!\"\n\n\"How is this _possibly_ my fault?\" Henry hisses.\n\n\"Nobody ever tries to shoot me when I'm doing presidential appearances, but the minute I go out with a fucking royal\u2014\"\n\n\"Will you shut up before you get us both killed?\"\n\n\"Nobody's going to kill us. Cash is blocking the door. Besides, it's probably nothing.\"\n\n\"Then at least _get off me._ \"\n\n\"Stop telling me what to do! You're not the prince of me!\"\n\n\"Bloody hell,\" Henry mutters, and he pushes hard off the ground and rolls, knocking Alex onto the floor. Alex finds himself wedged between Henry's side and a shelf of what smells like industrial-strength floor cleaner.\n\n\"Can you move over, Your Highness?\" Alex whispers, shoving his shoulder against Henry's. \"I'd rather not be the little spoon.\"\n\n\"Believe me, I'm trying,\" Henry replies. \"There's no room.\"\n\nOutside, there are voices, hurried footsteps\u2014no signs of an all-clear.\n\n\"Well,\" Alex says. \"Guess we better make ourselves comfortable.\"\n\nHenry exhales tightly. \"Fantastic.\"\n\nAlex feels him shifting against his side, arms crossed over his chest in an attempt at his typical closed-off stance while lying on the floor with his feet in a mop bucket.\n\n\"For the record,\" Henry says, \"nobody's ever made an attempt on my life either.\"\n\n\"Well, congratulations,\" Alex says. \"You've officially made it.\"\n\n\"Yes, this is exactly how I always dreamed it would be. Locked in a cupboard with your elbow inside my rib cage,\" Henry snipes. He sounds like he wants to punch Alex, which is probably the most Alex has ever liked him, so he follows an impulse and drives his elbow into Henry's side, hard.\n\nHenry lets out a muffled yelp, and the next thing Alex knows, he's been yanked sideways by his shirt and Henry is halfway on top of him, pinning him down with one thigh. His head throbs where he's clocked it against the linoleum floor, but he can feel his lips split into a smile.\n\n\"So you _do_ have some fight in you,\" Alex says. He bucks his hips, trying to shake Henry off, but he's taller and stronger and has a fistful of Alex's collar.\n\n\"Are you _quite_ finished?\" Henry says, sounding strangled. \"Can you perhaps stop putting your sodding life in danger now?\"\n\n\"Aw, you do care,\" Alex says. \"I'm learning all your hidden depths today, sweetheart.\"\n\nHenry exhales and slumps off him. \"I cannot believe even mortal peril will not prevent you from being the way you are.\"\n\nThe weirdest part, Alex thinks, is that what he said was true.\n\nHe keeps getting these little glimpses into things he never thought Henry was. A bit of a fighter, for one. Intelligent, interested in other people. It's honestly disconcerting. He knows exactly what to say to each Democratic senator to make them dish about bills, exactly when Zahra's running low on nicotine gum, exactly which look to give Nora for the rumor mill. Reading people is what he does.\n\nHe really doesn't appreciate some inbred royal baby upending his system. But he did rather enjoy that fight.\n\nHe lies there, waits. Listens to the shuffling of feet outside the door. Lets minutes go by.\n\n\"So, uh,\" he tries. \"Star Wars?\"\n\nHe means it in a nonthreatening, offhanded way, but habit wins and it comes out accusatory.\n\n\"Yes, Alex,\" Henry says archly, \"believe it or not, the children of the crown don't only spend their childhood going to tea parties.\"\n\n\"I assumed it was mostly posture coaching and junior polo league.\"\n\nHenry takes a deeply unhappy pause. \"That... may have been part of it.\"\n\n\"So you're into pop culture, but you act like you're not,\" Alex says. \"Either you're not allowed to talk about it because it's unseemly for the crown, or you choose not to talk about it because you want people to think you're _cultured._ Which one?\"\n\n\"Are you psychoanalyzing me?\" Henry asks. \"I don't think royal guests are allowed to do that.\"\n\n\"I'm trying to understand why you're so committed to acting like someone you're not, considering you just told that little girl in there that greatness means being true to yourself.\"\n\n\"I don't know what you're talking about, and if I did, I'm not sure that's any of your concern,\" Henry says, his voice strained at the edges.\n\n\"Really? Because I'm pretty sure I'm legally bound to pretend to be your best friend, and I don't know if you've thought this through yet, but that's not going to stop with this weekend,\" Alex tells him. Henry's fingers go tense against his forearm. \"If we do this and we're never seen together again, people are gonna know we're full of shit. We're stuck with each other, like it or not, so I have a right to be clued in about what your deal is before it sneaks up on me and bites me in the ass.\"\n\n\"Why don't we start...\" Henry says, turning his head to squint at him. This close Alex can just make out the silhouette of Henry's strong royal nose. \"... with you telling me why exactly you hate me so much?\"\n\n\"Do you really want to have that conversation?\"\n\n\"Maybe I do.\"\n\nAlex crosses his arms, recognizes it as a mirror to Henry's tic, and uncrosses them.\n\n\"Do you really not remember being a prick to me at the Olympics?\"\n\nAlex remembers it in vivid detail: himself at eighteen, dispatched to Rio with June and Nora, the campaign's delegation to the summer games, one weekend of photo ops and selling the \"next generation of global cooperation\" image. Alex spent most of it drinking caipirinhas and subsequently throwing caipirinhas up behind Olympic venues. And he remembers, down to the Union Jack on Henry's anorak, the first time they met.\n\nHenry sighs. \"Is that the time you threatened to push me into the Thames?\"\n\n_\"No,\"_ Alex says. \"It was the time you were a _condescending prick_ at the diving finals. You really don't remember?\"\n\n\"Remind me?\"\n\nAlex glares. \"I walked up to you to introduce myself, and you stared at me like I was the most offensive thing you had ever seen. Right after you shook my hand, you turned to Shaan and said, 'Can you get rid of him?'\"\n\nA pause.\n\n\"Ah,\" Henry says. He clears his throat. \"I didn't realize you'd heard that.\"\n\n\"I feel like you're missing the point,\" Alex says, \"which is that it's a douchey thing to say either way.\"\n\n\"That's... fair.\"\n\n\"Yeah, so.\"\n\n\"That's all?\" Henry asks. \"Only the Olympics?\"\n\n\"I mean, that was the start.\"\n\nHenry pauses again. \"I'm sensing an ellipsis.\"\n\n\"It's just...\" Alex says, and as he's on the floor of a supply closet, waiting out a security threat with a Prince of England at the end of a weekend that has felt like some very specific ongoing nightmare, censoring himself takes too much effort. \"I don't know. Doing what we do is fucking hard. But it's harder for me. I'm the son of the first female president. And I'm not white like she is, can't even pass for it. People will _always_ come down harder on me. And you're, you know, _you,_ and you were born into all of this, and everyone thinks you're Prince fucking Charming. You're basically a living reminder I'll always be compared to someone else, no matter what I do, even if I work twice as hard.\"\n\nHenry is quiet for a long while.\n\n\"Well,\" Henry says when he speaks at last. \"I can't very well do much about the rest. But I can tell you I was, in fact, a prick that day. Not that it's any excuse, but my father had died fourteen months before, and I was still kind of a prick every day of my life at the time. And I am sorry.\"\n\nHenry twitches one hand at his side, and Alex falls momentarily silent.\n\nThe cancer ward. Of course, Henry chose a cancer ward\u2014it was right there on the fact sheet. _Father: Famed film star Arthur Fox, deceased 2015, pancreatic cancer._ The funeral was televised. He goes back over the last twenty-four hours in his head: the sleeplessness, the pills, the tense little grimace Henry does in public that Alex has always read as aloofness.\n\nHe knows a few things about this stuff. It's not like his parents' divorce was a pleasant time for him, or like he runs himself ragged about grades for fun. He's been aware for too long that most people don't navigate thoughts of whether they'll ever be good enough or if they're disappointing the entire world. He's never considered Henry might feel any of the same things.\n\nHenry clears his throat again, and something like panic catches Alex. He opens his mouth and says, \"Well, good to know you're not perfect.\"\n\nHe can almost hear Henry roll his eyes, and he's thankful for it, the familiar comfort of antagonism.\n\nThey're silent again, the dust of the conversation settling. Alex can't hear anything outside the door or any sirens on the street, but nobody has come to get them yet.\n\nThen, unprompted, Henry says into the stretching stillness, \" _Return of the Jedi._ \"\n\nA beat. \"What?\"\n\n\"To answer your question,\" Henry says. \"Yes, I do like Star Wars, and my favorite is _Return of the Jedi._ \"\n\n\"Oh,\" Alex says. \"Wow, you're wrong.\"\n\nHenry huffs out the tiniest, most poshly indignant puff of air. It smells minty. Alex resists the urge to throw another elbow. \"How can I be wrong about my own favorite? It's a personal truth.\"\n\n\"It's a personal truth that is wrong and bad.\"\n\n\"Which do you prefer, then? Please show me the error of my ways.\"\n\n\"Okay, _Empire._ \"\n\nHenry sniffs. \"So _dark,_ though.\"\n\n\"Yeah, which is what makes it _good,_ \" Alex says. \"It's the most thematically complex. It's got the Han and Leia kiss in it, you meet Yoda, Han is at the top of his game, fucking _Lando Calrissian,_ and _the_ best twist in cinematic history. What does _Jedi_ have? Fuckin' Ewoks.\"\n\n\"Ewoks are _iconic._ \"\n\n\"Ewoks are _stupid._ \"\n\n\"But _Endor._ \"\n\n\"But _Hoth._ There's a reason people always call the best, grittiest installment of a trilogy the _Empire_ of the series.\"\n\n\"And I can appreciate that. But isn't there something to be valued in a happy ending as well?\"\n\n\"Spoken like a true Prince Charming.\"\n\n\"I'm only saying, I like the resolution of _Jedi._ It ties everything up nicely. And the overall theme you're intended to take away from the films is hope and love and... er, you know, all that. Which is what _Jedi_ leaves you with a sense of most of all.\"\n\nHenry coughs, and Alex is turning to look at him again when the door opens and Cash's giant silhouette reappears.\n\n\"False alarm,\" he says, breathing heavily. \"Some dumbass kids brought fireworks for their friend.\" He looks down at them, flat on their backs and blinking up in the sudden, harsh light of the hallway. \"This looks cozy.\"\n\n\"Yep, we're really bonding,\" Alex says. He reaches a hand out and lets Cash haul him to his feet.\n\n* * *\n\nOutside Kensington Palace, Alex takes Henry's phone out of his hand and swiftly opens a blank contact page before he can protest or sic a PPO on him for violating royal property. The car is waiting to take him back to the royals' private airstrip.\n\n\"Here,\" Alex says. \"That's my number. If we're gonna keep this up, it's going to get annoying to keep going through handlers. Just text me. We'll figure it out.\"\n\nHenry stares at him, expression blankly bewildered, and Alex wonders how this guy has any friends.\n\n\"Right,\" Henry says finally. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"No booty calls,\" Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh.\n\n# THREE\n\n> FROM AMERICA, WITH LOVE: Henry and Alex Flaunt Friendship\n> \n> NEW BROMANCE ALERT? Pics of FSOTUS and Prince Henry\n> \n> PHOTOS: Alex's Weekend in London\n\nFor the first time in a week, Alex isn't pissed off scrolling through his Google alerts. It helps they've given _People_ an exclusive\u2014a few generic quotes about how much Alex \"cherishes\" his friendship with Henry and their \"shared life experience\" as sons of world leaders. Alex thinks their main shared life experience is probably wishing they could set that quote adrift on the ocean between them and watch it drown.\n\nHis mother doesn't want him fake-dead anymore, though, and he's stopped getting a thousand vitriolic tweets an hour, so he counts it as a win.\n\nHe dodges a starstruck freshman gawking at him and exits the hall onto the east side of campus, draining the last cold sip of his coffee. First class today was an elective he's taking out of a combination of morbid fascination and academic curiosity: The Press and the Presidency. He's currently jet-lagged to all hell from trying to keep the press from _ruining_ the presidency, and the irony isn't lost on him.\n\nToday's lecture was on presidential sex scandals through history, and he texts Nora: numbers on one of us getting involved in a sex scandal before the end of second term?\n\nHer response comes within seconds: 94% probability of your dick becoming a recurring personality on face the nation. btw, have you seen this?\n\nThere's a link attached: a blog post full of images, animated GIFs of himself and Henry on _This Morning._ The fist bump. Shared smiles that pass for genuine. Conspiratorial glances. Underneath are hundreds of comments about how handsome they are, how nice they look together.\n\nomfg, one commenter writes, make out already.\n\nAlex laughs so hard he almost falls in a fountain.\n\n* * *\n\nAs usual, the day guard at the Dirksen Building glares at him as he slides through security. She's certain he was the one who vandalized the sign outside one particular senator's office to read BITCH MCCONNELL, but she'll never prove it.\n\nCash tags along for some of Alex's Senate recon missions so nobody panics when he disappears for a few hours. Today, Cash hangs back on a bench, catching up on his podcasts. He's always been the most indulgent of Alex's antics.\n\nAlex has had the layout of the building memorized since his dad first got elected to the Senate. It's where he's picked up his encyclopedic knowledge of policy and procedure, and where he spends more afternoons than he's supposed to, charming aides and trawling for gossip. His mom pretends to be annoyed but slyly asks for intel later.\n\nSince Senator Oscar Diaz is in California speaking at a rally for gun control today, Alex punches the button for the fifth floor instead.\n\nHis favorite senator is Rafael Luna, an Independent from Colorado and the newest kid on the block at only thirty-nine. Alex's dad took him under his wing back when he was merely a promising attorney, and now he's the darling of national politics for (A) winning a special election and a general in consecutive upsets for his Senate seat, and (B) dominating _The Hill_ 's 50 Most Beautiful.\n\nAlex spent summer 2018 in Denver on Luna's campaign, so they have their own dysfunctional relationship built on tropical-flavored Skittles from gas stations and all-nighters drafting press releases. He sometimes feels the ghost of carpal tunnel creeping back, a fond ache.\n\nHe finds Luna in his office, horn-rimmed reading glasses doing nothing to detract from his usual appearance of a movie star who tripped and fell sideways into politics. Alex has always suspected the soulful brown eyes and perfectly groomed stubble and dramatic cheekbones won back any votes Luna lost by being both Latino and openly gay.\n\nThe album playing low in the room is an old favorite Alex remembers from Denver: Muddy Waters. When Luna looks up and sees Alex in his doorway, he drops his pen on a haphazard pile of papers and leans back in his chair.\n\n\"Fuck you doing here, kid?\" he says, watching him like a cat.\n\nAlex reaches into his pocket and pulls out a packet of Skittles, and Luna's face immediately softens into a smile.\n\n\"Atta boy,\" he says, scooping the bag up as soon as Alex drops it on his blotter. He kicks the chair in front of the desk out for him.\n\nAlex sits, watching Luna rip open the packet with his teeth. \"Whatcha working on today?\"\n\n\"You already know more than you're supposed to about everything on this desk.\" Alex does know\u2014the same health care reform as last year, the one stalled out since they lost the Senate in midterms. \"Why are you really here?\"\n\n\"Hmm.\" Alex hooks a leg over one armrest of the chair. \"I resent the idea I can't come visit a dear family friend without ulterior motives.\"\n\n\"Bullshit.\"\n\nHe clutches his chest. \"You _wound_ me.\"\n\n\"You exhaust me.\"\n\n\"I enchant you.\"\n\n\"I'll call security.\"\n\n\"Fair enough.\"\n\n\"Instead, let's talk about your little European vacation,\" Luna says. He fixes Alex with shrewd eyes. \"Can I expect a joint Christmas present from you and the prince this year?\"\n\n\"Actually,\" Alex swerves, \"since I'm here, I do have a question for you.\"\n\nLuna laughs, leaning back and lacing his hands together behind his head. Alex feels his face flash hot for half a second, a zip of good-banter adrenaline that means he's getting somewhere. \"Of course you do.\"\n\n\"I wondered if you had heard anything about Connor,\" Alex asks. \"We could really use an endorsement from another Independent senator. Do you think he's close to making one?\"\n\nHe kicks his foot innocently where it's dangling over the armrest, like he's asking something as innocuous as the weather. Stanley Connor, Delaware's kooky and beloved old Independent with a social media team stacked with millennials, would be a big get down the line in a race projected to be this close, and they both know it.\n\nLuna sucks on a Skittle. \"Are you asking if he's close to endorsing, or if I know what strings need to be pulled to get him to endorse?\"\n\n\"Raf. Pal. Buddy. You know I'd never ask you anything so unseemly.\"\n\nLuna sighs, swivels in his chair. \"He's a free agent. Social issues would push him your way usually, but you know how he feels about your mom's economic platform. You probably know his voting record better than I do, kid. He doesn't fall on one side of the aisle. He might go for something radically different on taxes.\"\n\n\"And as for something you know that I don't?\"\n\nHe smirks. \"I know Richards is promising Independents a centrist platform with big shake-ups on non-social issues. And I know part of that platform might not line up with Connor's position on healthcare. Somewhere to start, perhaps. Hypothetically, if I were going to engage with your scheming.\"\n\n\"And you don't think there's any point in chasing down leads on Republican candidates who aren't Richards?\"\n\n\"Shit,\" Luna says, the set of his mouth turning grim. \"Chances of your mother facing off against a candidate who's not the fucking anointed messiah of right-wing populism and heir to the Richards family legacy? Highly fucking unlikely.\"\n\nAlex smiles. \"You complete me, Raf.\"\n\nLuna rolls his eyes again. \"Let's circle back to you,\" he says. \"Don't think I didn't notice you changing the subject. For the record, I won the office pool on how long it'd take you to cause an international incident.\"\n\n\" _Wow,_ I thought I could _trust_ you.\" Alex gasps, mock-betrayed.\n\n\"What's the deal there?\"\n\n\"There's no _deal,_ \" Alex says. \"Henry is... a person I know. And we did something stupid. I had to fix it. It's fine.\"\n\n\"Okay, okay,\" Luna says, holding up both hands. \"He's a looker, huh?\"\n\nAlex pulls a face. \"Yeah, I mean, if you're into, like, fairy-tale princes.\"\n\n\"Is anyone not?\"\n\n\" _I'm_ not,\" Alex says.\n\nLuna arches an eyebrow. \"Right.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Just thinking about last summer,\" he says. \"I have this really vivid memory of you basically making a Prince Henry voodoo doll on your desk.\"\n\n\"I did not.\"\n\n\"Or was it a dartboard with a photo of his face on it?\"\n\nAlex swings his foot back over the armrest so he can plant both feet on the floor and fold his arms indignantly. \"I had a magazine with his face on it at my desk, once, because I was in it and he happened to be on the cover.\"\n\n\"You stared at it for an hour.\"\n\n\"Lies,\" Alex says. \"Slander.\"\n\n\"It was like you were trying to set him on fire with your mind.\"\n\n\"What is your point?\"\n\n\"I think it's interesting,\" he says. \"How fast the times they are a-changin'.\"\n\n\"Come on,\" Alex says. \"It's... politics.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\nAlex shakes his head, doglike, as if it's going to disperse the topic from the room. \"Besides, I came here to talk about endorsements, not my embarrassing public relations nightmares.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Luna says slyly, \"but I thought you were here to pay a family friend a visit?\"\n\n\"Of course. That's what I meant.\"\n\n\"Alex, don't you have something else to do on a Friday afternoon? You're twenty-one. You should be playing beer pong or getting ready for a party or something.\"\n\n\"I do all of those things,\" he lies. \"I just also do this.\"\n\n\"Come on. I'm trying to give you some advice, from one old man to a much younger version of himself.\"\n\n\"You're thirty-nine.\"\n\n\"My liver is ninety-three.\"\n\n\"That's not my fault.\"\n\n\"Some late nights in Denver would beg to differ.\"\n\nAlex laughs. \"See, this is why we're friends.\"\n\n\"Alex, you need other friends,\" Luna tells him. \"Friends who _aren't in Congress._ \"\n\n\"I have friends! I have June and Nora.\"\n\n\"Yes, your sister and a girl who is also a supercomputer,\" Luna deadpans. \"You need to take some time for yourself before you burn out, kid. You need a bigger support system.\"\n\n\"Stop calling me 'kid,'\" Alex says.\n\n\"Ay.\" Luna sighs. \"Are you done? I do have some actual work to do.\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah,\" Alex says, gathering himself up from his chair. \"Hey, is Maxine in town?\"\n\n\"Waters?\" Luna asks, crooking his head. \"Shit, you really have a death wish, huh?\"\n\n* * *\n\nAs political legacies go, the Richards family is one of the most complex bits of history Alex has tried to unravel.\n\nOn one of the Post-it notes stuck to his laptop he's written: KENNEDYS + BUSHES + BIZARRO MAFIA OLD MONEY SITH POWERS = RICHARDSES? It's pretty much the thesis of what he's dug up so far. Jeffrey Richards, the current and supposedly only frontrunner to be his mother's opponent in the general, has been a senator for Utah nearly twenty years, which means plenty of voting history and legislation that his mother's team has already gone over. Alex is more interested in the things harder to sniff out. There are so many generations of Attorney General Richards and Federal Judge Richards, they'd be able to bury anything.\n\nHis phone buzzes under a stack of files on his desk. A text from June: Dinner? I miss your face. He loves June\u2014truly, more than anything in the world\u2014but he's kind of in the zone. He'll respond when he hits a stopping point in like thirty minutes.\n\nHe glances at the video of a Richards interview pulled up in a tab, checking the man's face for nonverbal cues. Gray hair\u2014natural, not a piece. Shiny white teeth, like a shark's. Heavy Uncle Sam jaw. Great salesman, considering he's blatantly lying about a bill in the clip. Alex takes a note.\n\nIt's an hour and a half later before another buzz pulls him out of a deep dive into Richards's uncle's suspicious 1986 taxes. A text from his mother in the family group chat, a pizza emoji. He bookmarks his page and heads upstairs.\n\nFamily dinners are rare but less over-the-top than everything else that happens in the White House. His mother sends someone to pick up pizzas, and they take over the game room on the third floor with paper plates and bottles of Shiner shipped in from Texas. It's always amusing to catch one of the burly suits speaking in code over their earpieces: \"Black Bear has requested extra banana peppers.\"\n\nJune's already on the chaise and sipping a beer. A stab of guilt immediately hits when he remembers her text.\n\n\"Shit, I'm an asshole,\" he says.\n\n\"Mm-hmm, you are.\"\n\n\"But, technically... I am having dinner with you?\"\n\n\"Just bring me my pizza,\" she says with a sigh. After Secret Service misread an olive-based shouting match in 2017 and almost put the Residence on lockdown, they now each get their own pizzas.\n\n\"Sure thing, Bug.\" He finds June's\u2014margherita\u2014and his\u2014pepperoni and mushroom.\n\n\"Hi, Alex,\" says a voice from somewhere behind the television as he settles in with his pizza.\n\n\"Hey, Leo,\" he answers. His stepdad is fiddling with the wiring, probably rewiring it to do something that'd make more sense in an _Iron Man_ comic, like he does with most electronics\u2014eccentric millionaire inventor habits die hard. He's about to ask for a dumbed-down explanation when his mother comes blazing in.\n\n\"Why did y'all let me run for president?\" she says, tapping too forcefully at her phone's keyboard in little staccato stabs. She kicks off her heels into the corner, throwing her phone after them.\n\n\"Because we all knew better than to try to stop you,\" Leo's voice says. He peeks his bearded, bespectacled head out and adds, \"And because the world would fall apart without you, my radiant orchid.\"\n\nHis mother rolls her eyes but smiles. It's always been like that with them, ever since they first met at a charity event when Alex was fourteen. She was the Speaker of the House, and he was a genius with a dozen patents and money to burn on women's health initiatives. Now, she's the president, and he's sold his companies to spend his time fulfilling First Gentleman duties.\n\nEllen releases two inches of zipper on the back of her skirt, the sign she's officially done for the day, and scoops up a slice.\n\n\"All right,\" she says. She does a scrubbing gesture in the air in front of her face\u2014president face off, mom face on. \"Hi, babies.\"\n\n\"'Lo,\" Alex and June mumble in unison through mouthfuls of food.\n\nEllen sighs and looks over at Leo. \"I did that, didn't I? No goddamn manners. Like a couple of little opossums. This is why they say women can't have it all.\"\n\n\"They are masterpieces,\" Leo says.\n\n\"One good thing, one bad thing,\" she says. \"Let's do this.\"\n\nIt's her lifelong system for catching up on their days when she's at her busiest. Alex grew up with a mother who was a sometimes baffling combination of intensely organized and committed to lines of emotional communication, like an overly invested life coach. When he got his first girlfriend, she made a PowerPoint presentation.\n\n\"Mmm.\" June swallows a bite. \"Good thing. Oh! Oh my God. Ronan Farrow tweeted about my essay for _New York_ magazine _,_ and we totally engaged in witty Twitter repartee. Part one of my long game to force him to be my friend is underway.\"\n\n\"Don't act like this isn't all part of your extra-long game of abusing your position to murder Woody Allen and make it look like an accident,\" Alex says.\n\n\"He's just so frail; it'd only take one good push\u2014\"\n\n\" _How many times_ do I have to tell y'all not to discuss your murder plots in front of a sitting president?\" their mother interrupts. \" _Plausible deniability._ Come on.\"\n\n\" _Anyway,_ \" June says. \"One bad thing would be, uh... well, Woody Allen's still alive. Your turn, Alex.\"\n\n\"Good thing,\" Alex says, \"I filibustered one of my professors into agreeing a question on our last exam was misleading so I would get full credit for my answer, which was correct.\" He takes a swig of beer. \"Bad thing\u2014Mom, I saw the new art in the hall on the second floor, and I need to know why you allowed a George W. Bush terrier painting in our home.\"\n\n\"It's a bipartisan gesture,\" Ellen says. \"People find them endearing.\"\n\n\"I have to walk past it whenever I go to my room,\" Alex says. \"Its beady little eyes follow me everywhere.\"\n\n\"It's staying.\"\n\nAlex sighs. \"Fine.\"\n\nLeo goes next\u2014as usual, his bad thing is somehow also a good thing\u2014and then Ellen's up.\n\n\"Well, my UN ambassador fucked up his _one job_ and said something idiotic about Israel, and now I have to call Netanyahu and personally apologize. But the good thing is it's two in the morning in Tel Aviv, so I can put it off until tomorrow and have dinner with you two instead.\"\n\nAlex smiles at her. He's still in awe, sometimes, of hearing her talk about presidential pains in the ass, even three years in. They lapse into idle conversation, little barbs and inside jokes, and these nights may be rare, but they're still nice.\n\n\"So,\" Ellen says, starting on another slice crust-first. \"I ever tell you I used to hustle pool at my mom's bar?\"\n\nJune stops short, her beer halfway to her mouth. \"You did what now?\"\n\n\"Yep,\" she tells them. Alex exchanges an incredulous look with June. \"Momma managed this shitty bar when I was sixteen. The Tipsy Grackle. She'd let me come in after school and do my homework at the bar, had a bouncer friend make sure none of the old drunks hit on me. I got pretty good at pool after a few months and started betting the regulars I could beat them, except I'd play dumb. Hold the stick the wrong way, pretend to forget if I was stripes or solid. I'd lose one game, then take them double or nothing and get twice the payout.\"\n\n\"You've got to be kidding me,\" Alex says, except he can totally picture it. She has always been scary-good at pool and even better at strategy.\n\n\"All true,\" Leo says. \"How do you think she learned to get what she wants from strung-out old white men? The most important skill of an effective politician.\"\n\nAlex's mother accepts a kiss to the side of her square jaw from Leo as she passes by, like a queen gliding through a crowd of admirers. She sets her half-eaten slice down on a paper towel and selects a cue stick from the rack.\n\n\"Anyway,\" she says. \"The point is, you're never too young to figure out your skills and use them to get shit accomplished.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Alex says. He meets her eyes, and they swap appraising looks.\n\n\"Including...\" she says thoughtfully, \"a job on a presidential reelection campaign, maybe.\"\n\nJune puts down her slice. \"Mom, he's not even out of college yet.\"\n\n\"Uh, yeah, that's the point,\" Alex says impatiently. He's been _waiting_ for this offer. \"No gaps in the resume.\"\n\n\"It's not only for Alex,\" their mother says. \"It's for both of you.\"\n\nJune's expression changes from pinched apprehension to pinched dread. Alex makes a shooing motion in June's direction. A mushroom flies off his pizza and hits the side of her nose. \"Tell me, tell me, tell me.\"\n\n\"I've been thinking,\" Ellen says, \"this time around, y'all\u2014the 'White House Trio.'\" She puts it in air quotes, as if she didn't sign off on the name herself. \"Y'all shouldn't only be faces. Y'all are more than that. You have skills. You're smart. You're talented. We could use y'all not only as surrogates, but as staffers.\"\n\n\"Mom...\" June starts.\n\n\"What positions?\" Alex interjects.\n\nShe pauses, drifts back over to her slice of pizza. \"Alex, you're the family wonk,\" she says, taking a bite. \"We could have you running point on policy. This means a lot of research and a lot of writing.\"\n\n\"Fuck yes,\" Alex says. \"Lemme romance the hell out of some focus groups. I'm in.\"\n\n\"Alex\u2014\" June starts again, but their mom cuts her off.\n\n\"June, I'm thinking communications,\" she goes on. \"Since your degree is mass comm, I was thinking you can come handle some of the day-to-day liaising with media outlets, working on messaging, analyzing the audience\u2014\"\n\n\"Mom, I have a job,\" she says.\n\n\"Oh, yeah. I mean, of course, sugar. But this could be full-time. Connections, upward mobility, real experience in the field doing some amazing work.\"\n\n\"I, um...\" June rips a piece of crust off her pizza. \"Don't remember ever saying I wanted to do anything like that. That's, uh, kind of a big assumption to make, Mom. And you realize if I go into campaign communications now, I'm basically shutting down my chances of ever being a journalist, because, like, journalistic neutrality and everything. I can barely get anyone to let me write a column as it is.\"\n\n\"Baby girl,\" their mom says. She's got that look on her face she gets when she's saying something with a fifty-fifty chance of pissing you off. \"You're so talented, and I know you work hard, but at some point, you have to be realistic.\"\n\n\"What's _that_ supposed to mean?\"\n\n\"I just mean... I don't know if you're happy,\" she says, \"and maybe it's time to try something different. That's all.\"\n\n\"I'm not y'all,\" June tells her. \"This isn't _my_ thing.\"\n\n\"Juuuuune,\" Alex says, tilting his head back to look at her upside down over the arm of his chair. \"Just think about it? I'm doing it.\" He looks back at their mom. \"Are you offering a job to Nora too?\"\n\nShe nods. \"Mike is talking to her tomorrow about a position in analytics. If she takes it, she'll start ASAP. You, mister, are not starting until after graduation.\"\n\n\"Oh man, the White House Trio, riding into battle. This is awesome.\" He looks over at Leo, who has abandoned his project with the TV and is now happily eating a slice of cheesy bread. \"They offer you a job too, Leo?\"\n\n\"No,\" he says. \"As usual, my duties as First Gentleman are to work on my tablescapes and look pretty.\"\n\n\"Your tablescapes are really coming along, baby,\" Ellen says, giving him a sarcastic little kiss. \"I really liked the burlap placemats.\"\n\n\"Can you believe the decorator thought velvet looked better?\"\n\n\"Bless her heart.\"\n\n\"I don't like this,\" June says to Alex while their mother is distracted talking about decorative pears. \"Are you sure you want this job?\"\n\n\"It's gonna be fine, June,\" he tells her. \"Hey, if you wanna keep an eye on me, you can always take the offer too.\"\n\nShe shakes him off, returning to her pizza with an unreadable expression. The next day there are three matching sticky notes on the whiteboard in Zahra's office. CAMPAIGN JOBS: ALEX-NORA-JUNE, the board reads. The sticky notes under his and Nora's names read YES. Under June's, in what is unmistakably her own handwriting, NO.\n\n* * *\n\nAlex is taking notes in a policy lecture when he gets the first text.\n\nThis bloke looks like you.\n\nThere's a picture attached, an image of a laptop screen paused on Chief Chirpa from _Return of the Jedi_ : tiny, commanding, adorable, pissed off.\n\nThis is Henry, by the way.\n\nHe rolls his eyes, but adds the new contact to his phone: HRH Prince Dickhead. Poop emoji.\n\nHe's honestly not planning to respond, but a week later he sees a headline on the cover of _People_ \u2014PRINCE HENRY FLIES SOUTH FOR WINTER\u2014complete with a photo of Henry artistically posed on an Australian beach in a pair of sensible yet miniscule navy swim trunks, and he can't stop himself.\n\nyou have a lot of moles, he texts, along with a snap of the spread. is that a result of the inbreeding?\n\nHenry's retort comes two days later by way of a screenshot of a _Daily Mail_ tweet that reads, _Is Alex Claremont-Diaz going to be a father?_ The attached message says, But we were ever so careful, dear, which surprises a big enough laugh out of Alex that Zahra ejects him from her weekly debriefing with him and June.\n\nSo, it turns out Henry can be funny. Alex adds that to his mental file.\n\nIt also turns out Henry is fond of texting when he's trapped in moments of royal monotony, like being shuttled to and from appearances, or sitting through meandering briefings on his family's land holdings, or, once, begrudgingly and hilariously receiving a spray tan.\n\nAlex wouldn't say he _likes_ Henry, but he does enjoy the quick rhythm of arguments they fall into. He knows he talks too much, hopeless at moderating his feelings, which he usually hides under ten layers of charm, but he ultimately doesn't care what Henry thinks of him, so he doesn't bother. Instead, he's as weird and manic as he wants to be, and Henry jabs back in sharp flashes of startling wit.\n\nSo, when he's bored or stressed or between coffee refills, he'll check for a text bubble popping up. Henry with a dig at some weird quote from his latest interview, Henry with a random thought about English beer versus American beer, a picture of Henry's dog wearing a Slytherin scarf. (i don't know WHO you think you're kidding, you hufflepuff-ass bitch, Alex texts back, before Henry clarifies his dog, not him, is a Slytherin.)\n\nHe learns about Henry's life through a weird osmosis of text messages and social media. It's meticulously scheduled by Shaan, with whom Alex is slightly obsessed, especially when Henry texts him things like, Did I tell you Shaan has a motorbike? or Shaan is on the phone with Portugal.\n\nIt's quickly becoming apparent the HRH Prince Henry Fact Sheet either omitted the most interesting stuff or was outright fabricated. Henry's favorite food isn't mutton pie but a cheap falafel stand ten minutes from the palace, and he's spent most of his gap year thus far working on charities around the world, half of them owned by his best friend, Pez.\n\nAlex learns Henry's super into classical mythology and can rattle off the configurations of a few dozen constellations if you let him get going. Alex hears more about the tedious details of operating a sailboat than he would ever care to know and sends back nothing but: cool. Eight hours later. Henry hardly ever swears, but at least he doesn't seem to mind Alex's filthy fucking mouth.\n\nHenry's sister, Beatrice\u2014she goes by Bea, Alex finds out\u2014pops up often, since she lives in Kensington Palace as well. From what he gathers, the two of them are closer than either are to their brother. They compare notes on the trials and tribulations of having older sisters.\n\ndid bea force you into dresses as a child too?\n\nHas June also got a fondness for sneaking your leftover curry out of the refrigerator in the dead of night like a Dickensian street urchin?\n\nMore common are cameos by Pez, a man who cuts such an intriguing and bizarre figure that Alex wonders how someone like him ever became best friends with someone like Henry, who can drone on about Lord Byron until you threaten to block his number. He's always either doing something insane\u2014BASE jumping in Malaysia, eating plantains with someone who might be Jay-Z, showing up to lunch wearing a studded, hot-pink Gucci jacket\u2014or launching a new nonprofit. It's kind of incredible.\n\nHe realizes that he's shared June and Nora too, when Henry remembers June's Secret Service codename is Bluebonnet or jokes about how eerie Nora's photographic memory is. It's weird, considering how fiercely protective Alex is of them, that he never even noticed until Henry's Twitter exchange with June about their mutual love of the 2005 _Pride & Prejudice_ movie goes viral.\n\n\"That's not your emails-from-Zahra face,\" Nora says, nosing her way over his shoulder. He elbows her away. \"You keep doing that stupid smile every time you look at your phone. Who are you texting?\"\n\n\"I don't know what you're talking about, and literally no one,\" Alex tells her. From the screen in his hand, Henry's message reads, In world's most boring meeting with Philip. Don't let the papers print lies about me after I've garroted myself with my tie.\n\n\"Wait,\" she says, reaching for his phone again, \"are you watching videos of Justin Trudeau speaking French again?\"\n\n\"That's not a thing I do!\"\n\n\"That is a thing I have caught you doing at least twice since you met him at the state dinner last year, so yeah, it is,\" she says. Alex flips her off. \"Wait, oh my God, is it fan fiction about yourself? And you didn't _invite me_? Who do they have you boning now? Did you read the one I sent you with Macron? I _died._ \"\n\n\"If you don't stop, I'm gonna call Taylor Swift and tell her you changed your mind and want to go to her Fourth of July party after all.\"\n\n\"That is _not_ a proportional response.\"\n\nLater that night, once he's alone at his desk, he replies: was it a meeting about which of your cousins have to marry each other to take back casterly rock?\n\nHa. It was about royal finances. I'll be hearing Philip's voice saying the words \"return on investment\" in my nightmares for the rest of time.\n\nAlex rolls his eyes and sends back, the harrowing struggle of managing the empire's blood money.\n\nHenry's response comes a minute later.\n\nThat was actually the crux of the meeting\u2014I've tried to refuse my share of the crown's money. Dad left us each more than enough, and I'd rather cover my expenses with that than the spoils of, you know, centuries of genocide. Philip thinks I'm being ridiculous.\n\nAlex scans the message twice to make sure he's read it correctly.\n\ni am low-key impressed.\n\nHe stares at the screen, at his own message, for a few seconds too long, suddenly afraid it was a stupid thing to say. He shakes his head, puts the phone down. Locks it. Changes his mind, picks it up again. Unlocks it. Sees the little typing bubble on Henry's side of the conversation. Puts the phone down. Looks away. Looks back.\n\nOne does not foster a lifelong love of Star Wars without knowing an \"empire\" isn't a good thing.\n\nHe would really appreciate it if Henry would stop proving him wrong.\n\n* * *\n\n> HRH Prince Dickhead\n\nOct 30, 2019, 1:07 PM\n\n> i hate that tie\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> What tie?\n> \n> the one in that instagram you just posted\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> What's wrong with it? It's only grey.\n> \n> exactly. try patterns sometime, and stop frowning at your phone like i know you're doing rn\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> Patterns are considered a \"statement.\" Royals aren't supposed to make statements with what we wear.\n> \n> do it for the gram\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> You are the thistle in the tender and sensitive arse crack of my life.\n> \n> thanks!\n\nNov 17, 2019, 11:04 AM\n\n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> I've just received a 5-kilo parcel of Ellen Claremont campaign buttons with your face on them. Is this your idea of a prank?\n> \n> just trying to brighten up that wardrobe, sunshine\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> I hope this gross miscarriage of campaign funds is worth it to you. My security thought it was a bomb. Shaan almost called in the sniffer dogs.\n> \n> oh, definitely worth it. even more worth it now. tell shaan i say hi and i miss that sweet sweet ass xoxoxo\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> I will not.\n\n# FOUR\n\n\"It's public knowledge. It's not my problem you just found out,\" his mother is saying, pacing double-time down a West Wing corridor.\n\n\"You mean to tell me,\" Alex half shouts, jogging to keep up, \"every Thanksgiving, those stupid turkeys have been staying in a luxury suite at the Willard on the taxpayers' dime?\"\n\n\"Yes, Alex, they do\u2014\"\n\n_\"Gross government waste!\"_\n\n\"\u2014and there are two forty-pound turkeys named Cornbread and Stuffing in a motorcade on Pennsylvania Avenue right now. There is no time to reallocate the turkeys.\"\n\nWithout missing a beat, he blurts out, \"Bring them to the house.\"\n\n\"Where? Are you hiding a turkey habitat up your ass, son? Where, in our historically protected house, am I going to put a couple of turkeys until I pardon them tomorrow?\"\n\n\"Put them in my room. I don't care.\"\n\nShe outright laughs. \"No.\"\n\n\"How is it different from a hotel room? Put the turkeys in my room, Mom.\"\n\n\"I'm not putting the turkeys in your room.\"\n\n\"Put the turkeys in my room.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room\u2014\"\n\nThat night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets.\n\nTHEY KNOW, he texts Henry. THEY KNOW I HAVE ROBBED THEM OF FIVE-STAR ACCOMMODATIONS TO SIT IN A CAGE IN MY ROOM, AND THE MINUTE I TURN MY BACK THEY ARE GOING TO FEAST ON MY FLESH.\n\nCornbread stares emptily back at him from inside a huge crate next to Alex's couch. A farm vet comes by once every few hours to check on them. Alex keeps asking if she can detect a lust for blood.\n\nFrom the en suite, Stuffing releases another ominous gobble.\n\nAlex was going to get things accomplished tonight. He really was. Before he learned of exorbitant turkey expenditures from CNN, he was watching the highlights of last night's Republican primary debate. He was going to finish an outline for an exam, then study the demographic engagement binder he convinced his mother to give him for the campaign job.\n\nInstead, he is in a prison of his own creation, sworn to babysit these turkeys until the pardoning ceremony, and is just now realizing his deep-seated fear of large birds. He considers finding a couch to sleep on, but what if these demons from hell break out of their cages and murder each other during the night when he's supposed to be watching them? BREAKING: BOTH TURKEYS FOUND DEAD IN BEDROOM OF FSOTUS, TURKEY PARDON CANCELED IN DISGRACE, FSOTUS A SATANIC TURKEY RITUAL KILLER.\n\nPlease send photos, is Henry's idea of a comforting response.\n\nHe drops onto the edge of his bed. He's grown accustomed to texting with Henry almost every day; the time difference doesn't matter, since they're both awake at all ungodly hours of the day and night. Henry will send a snap from a seven a.m. polo practice and promptly receive one of Alex at two a.m., glasses on and coffee in hand, in bed with a pile of notes. Alex doesn't know why Henry never responds to his selfies from bed. His selfies from bed are always hilarious.\n\nHe snaps a shot of Cornbread and presses send, flinching when the bird flaps at him threateningly.\n\nI think he's cute, Henry responds.\n\nthat's because you can't hear all the menacing gobbling\n\nYes, famously the most sinister of all animal sounds, the gobble.\n\n\"You know what, you little shit,\" Alex says the second the call connects, \"you can hear it for yourself and then tell me how you would handle this\u2014\"\n\n\"Alex?\" Henry's voice sounds scratchy and bewildered across the line. \"Have you really rung me at three o'clock in the morning to make me listen to a turkey?\"\n\n\"Yes, obviously,\" Alex says. He glances at Cornbread and cringes. \"Jesus Christ, it's like they can see into your _soul._ Cornbread knows my sins, Henry. Cornbread knows what I have done, and he is here to make me atone.\"\n\nHe hears a rustling over the phone, and he pictures Henry in his heather-gray pajama shirt, rolling over in bed and maybe switching on a lamp. \"Let's hear the cursed gobble, then.\"\n\n\"Okay, brace yourself,\" he says, and he switches to speaker and gravely holds out the phone.\n\nNothing. Ten long seconds of nothing.\n\n\"Truly harrowing,\" Henry's voice says tinnily over the speaker.\n\n\"It\u2014okay, this is not representative,\" Alex says hotly. \"They've been gobbling all fucking night, I swear.\"\n\n\"Sure they were,\" Henry says, mock-gently.\n\n\"No, hang on,\" Alex says. \"I'm gonna... I'm gonna get one to gobble.\"\n\nHe hops off the bed and edges up to Cornbread's cage, feeling very much like he is taking his life into his own hands and also very much like he has a point to prove, which is an intersection at which he finds himself often.\n\n\"Um,\" he says. \"How do you get a turkey to gobble?\"\n\n\"Try gobbling,\" Henry says, \"and see if he gobbles back.\"\n\nAlex blinks. \"Are you serious?\"\n\n\"We hunt loads of wild turkeys in the spring,\" Henry says sagely. \"The trick is to get into the mind of the turkey.\"\n\n\"How the hell do I do that?\"\n\n\"So,\" Henry instructs. \"Do as I say. You have to get quite close to the turkey, like, physically.\"\n\nCarefully, still cradling the phone close, Alex leans toward the wire bars. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"Make eye contact with the turkey. Do you have it?\"\n\nAlex follows Henry's instructions in his ear, planting his feet and bending his knees so he's at Cornbread's eye level, a chill running down his spine when his own eyes lock on the beady, black little murder eyes. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Right, now hold it,\" Henry says. \"Connect with the turkey, earn the turkey's trust... befriend the turkey...\"\n\n\"Okay...\"\n\n\"Buy a summer home in Majorca with the turkey...\"\n\n\"Oh, I _fucking_ hate you!\" Alex shouts as Henry laughs at his own idiotic prank, and his indignant flailing startles a loud gobble out of Cornbread, which in turn startles a very unmanly scream out of Alex. \" _Goddammit!_ Did you hear that?\"\n\n\"Sorry, what?\" Henry says. \"I've been stricken deaf.\"\n\n\"You're such a _dick,_ \" Alex says. \"Have you ever even _been_ turkey hunting?\"\n\n\"Alex, you can't even hunt them in Britain.\"\n\nAlex returns to his bed and face-plants into a pillow. \"I hope Cornbread does kill me.\"\n\n\"No, all right, I did hear it, and it was... proper frightening,\" Henry says. \"So, I understand. Where's June for all this?\"\n\n\"She's having some kind of girls' night with Nora, and when I texted them for backup, they sent back,\" he reads out in a monotone, \"'hahahahahahahaha good luck with that,' and then a turkey emoji and a poop emoji.\"\n\n\"That's fair,\" Henry says. Alex can picture him nodding solemnly. \"So what are you going to do now? Are you going to stay up all night with them?\"\n\n\"I don't know! I guess! I don't know what else to do!\"\n\n\"You couldn't just go sleep somewhere else? Aren't there a thousand rooms in that house?\"\n\n\"Okay, but, uh, what if they escape? I've seen _Jurassic Park._ Did you know birds are directly descended from raptors? That's a scientific fact. Raptors in my bedroom, Henry. And you want me to go to sleep like they're not gonna bust out of their enclosures and take over the island the minute I close my eyes? Okay. Maybe your white ass.\"\n\n\"I'm really going to have you offed,\" Henry tells him. \"You'll never see it coming. Our assassins are trained in discretion. They will come in the night, and it will look like a humiliating accident.\"\n\n\"Autoerotic asphyxiation?\"\n\n\"Toilet heart attack.\"\n\n\"Jesus.\"\n\n\"You've been warned.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd kill me in a more personal way. Silk pillow over my face, slow and gentle suffocation. Just you and me. Sensual.\"\n\n\"Ha. Well.\" Henry coughs.\n\n\"Anyway,\" Alex says, climbing fully up onto the bed now. \"It doesn't matter because one of these goddamn turkeys is gonna kill me first.\"\n\n\"I really don't think\u2014 _Oh, hello there._ \" There's rustling over the phone, the crinkling of a wrapper, and some heavy snuffling that sounds distinctly doglike. \" _Who'za good lad, then?_ David says hello.\"\n\n\"Hi, David.\"\n\n\"He\u2014 Oi! _Not_ for you, Mr. Wobbles! Those are _mine_!\" More rustling, a distant, offended meow. \" _No,_ Mr. Wobbles, you bastard!\"\n\n\"What in the fuck is a Mr. Wobbles?\"\n\n\"My sister's idiot cat,\" Henry tells him. \"The thing weighs a ton and is still trying to steal my Jaffa Cakes. He and David are mates.\"\n\n\"What are you even doing right now?\"\n\n\"What am _I_ doing? I was trying to _sleep._ \"\n\n\"Okay, but you're eating Jabba Cakes, so.\"\n\n\" _Jaffa_ Cakes, my _God,_ \" Henry says. \"I'm having my entire life haunted by a deranged American Neanderthal and a pair of turkeys, apparently.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\nHenry heaves another almighty sigh. He's always sighing when Alex is involved. It's amazing he has any air left. \"And... don't laugh.\"\n\n\"Oh, yay,\" Alex says readily.\n\n\"I was watching _Great British Bake Off._ \"\n\n\"Cute. Not embarrassing, though. What else?\"\n\n\"I, er, might be... wearing one of those peely face masks,\" he says in a rush.\n\n\"Oh my God, I knew it!\"\n\n\" _Instant_ regret.\"\n\n\"I knew you had one of those crazy expensive Scandinavian skin care regimens. Do you have that, like, eye cream with diamonds in it?\"\n\n\"No!\" Henry pouts, and Alex has to press the back of his hand against his lips to stifle his laugh. \"Look, I have an appearance tomorrow, all right? I didn't know I'd be _scrutinized._ \"\n\n\"I'm not scrutinizing. We all gotta keep those pores in check,\" Alex says. \"So you like _Bake Off,_ huh?\"\n\n\"It's just so soothing,\" Henry says. \"Everything's all pastel-colored and the music is so relaxing and everyone's so lovely to one another. And you learn so much about different types of biscuits, Alex. So much. When the world seems awful, such as when you're trapped in a Great Turkey Calamity, you can put it on and vanish into biscuit land.\"\n\n\"American cooking competition shows are nothing like that. They're all sweaty and, like, dramatic death music and intense camera cuts,\" Alex says. \" _Bake Off_ makes _Chopped_ look like the fucking Manson tapes.\"\n\n\"I feel like this explains loads about our differences,\" Henry says, and Alex gives a small laugh.\n\n\"You know,\" Alex says. \"You're kind of surprising.\"\n\nHenry pauses. \"In what way?\"\n\n\"In that you're not a totally boring asshole.\"\n\n\"Wow,\" Henry says with a laugh. \"I'm honored.\"\n\n\"I guess you have your depths.\"\n\n\"You thought I was a dumb blond, didn't you?\"\n\n\"Not exactly, just, _boring,_ \" Alex says. \"I mean, your dog is named David, which is pretty boring.\"\n\n\"After Bowie.\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" Alex's head spins, recalibrating. \"Are you serious? What the hell? Why not call him Bowie, then?\"\n\n\"Bit on the nose, isn't it?\" Henry says. \"A man should have some element of mystery.\"\n\n\"I guess,\" Alex says. Then, because he can't stop it in time, lets out a tremendous yawn. He's been up since seven for a run before class. If these turkeys don't end him, exhaustion will.\n\n\"Alex,\" Henry says firmly.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"The turkeys are not going to _Jurassic Park_ you,\" he says. \"You're not the bloke from _Seinfeld._ You're Jeff Goldblum. Go to sleep.\"\n\nAlex bites down a smile that feels bigger than the sentence has truly earned. \"You go to sleep.\"\n\n\"I will,\" Henry says, and Alex thinks he hears the weird smile returned in Henry's voice, and honestly, this whole night is really, really weird, \"as soon as you get off the phone, won't I?\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Alex says, \"but, like, what if they gobble again?\"\n\n\"Go sleep in June's room, you numpty.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Alex says.\n\n\"Okay,\" Henry agrees.\n\n\"Okay,\" Alex says again. He's suddenly very aware they've never spoken on the phone before, and so he's never had to figure out how to hang up the phone with Henry before. He's at a loss. But he's still smiling. Cornbread is staring at him like he doesn't get it. _Me fuckin' too, buddy._\n\n\"Okay,\" Henry repeats. \"So. Good night.\"\n\n\"Cool,\" Alex says lamely. \"Good night.\"\n\nHe hangs up and stares at the phone in his hand, as if it should explain the static electricity in the air around him.\n\nHe shakes it off, gathers up his pillow and a bundle of clothes, and crosses the hall to June's room, climbing up into her tall bed. But he can't stop thinking there's some end left loose.\n\nHe takes his phone back out. i sent pics of turkeys so i deserve pics of your animals too.\n\nA minute and a half later: Henry, in a massive, palatial, hideous bed of white and gold linens, his face looking slightly pink and recently scrubbed, with a beagle's head on one side of his pillow and an obese Siamese cat curled up on the other around a Jaffa Cake wrapper. He's got faint circles under his eyes, but his face is soft and amused, one hand resting above his head on the pillow while the other holds up the phone for the selfie.\n\nThis is what I must endure, he says, followed by, Good night, honestly.\n\n> HRH Prince Dickhead\n\nDec 8, 2019, 8:53 PM\n\n> yo there's a bond marathon on and did you know your dad was a total babe\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> I BEG YOU TO NOT\n\n* * *\n\nEven before Alex's parents split, they both had a habit of calling him by the other's last name when he exhibited particular traits. They still do. When he runs his mouth off to the press, his mom calls him into her office and says, \"Get your shit together, Diaz.\" When his hard-headedness gets him stuck, his dad texts him, \"Let it go, Claremont.\"\n\nAlex's mother sighs as she sets her copy of the _Post_ down on her desk, open to an inside page article: SENATOR OSCAR DIAZ RETURNS TO DC FOR HOLIDAYS WITH EX-WIFE PRESIDENT CLAREMONT. It's almost weird how much it isn't weird anymore. His dad is flying in from California for Christmas, and it's fine, but it's also in the _Post._\n\nShe's doing the thing she always does when she's about to spend time with his father: pursing her lips and twitching two fingers of her right hand.\n\n\"You know,\" Alex says from where he's kicked back on an Oval Office couch with a book, \"somebody can go get you a cigarette.\"\n\n\"Hush, Diaz.\"\n\nShe's had the Lincoln Bedroom prepared for his dad, and she keeps changing her mind, having housekeeping undecorate and redecorate. Leo, for his part, is unfazed and mollifies her with compliments between fits of tinsel. Alex doesn't think anyone but Leo could ever stay married to his mother. His father certainly couldn't.\n\nJune is in a state, the perpetual mediator. His family is pretty much the only situation where Alex prefers to sit back and let it all unfold, occasionally poking when it's necessary or interesting, but June takes personal responsibility for making sure nobody breaks any more priceless White House antiques like last year.\n\nHis dad finally arrives in a flurry of Secret Service agents, his beard impeccably groomed and his suit impeccably tailored. For all June's anxious preparations, she almost breaks an antique vase herself catapulting into his arms. They disappear immediately to the chocolate shop on the ground floor, the sound of Oscar raving about June's latest blog post for _The Atlantic_ fading around the corner. Alex and his mother share a look. Their family is so predictable sometimes.\n\nThe next day, Oscar gives Alex the follow-me-and-don't-tell-your-mother look and pulls him out to the Truman Balcony.\n\n\"Merry fuckin' Christmas, mijo,\" his dad says, grinning, and Alex laughs and lets himself be hauled into a one-armed hug. He smells the same as ever, salty and smoky and like well-treated leather. His mom used to complain that she felt like she lived in a cigar bar.\n\n\"Merry Christmas, Pa,\" Alex says back.\n\nHe drags a chair close to the railing, putting his shiny boots up. Oscar Diaz loves a view.\n\nAlex considers the sprawling, snowy lawn in front of them, the sure line of the Washington Monument stretching up, the jagged French mansard roofs of the Eisenhower Building to the west, the same one Truman hated. His dad pulls a cigar from his pocket, clipping it and lighting up in the careful ritual he's done for years. He takes a puff and passes it over.\n\n\"It ever make you laugh to think how much this pisses assholes off?\" he says, gesturing to encompass the whole scene: two Mexican men putting their feet up on the railing where heads of state eat croissants.\n\n\"Constantly.\"\n\nOscar does laugh, then, enjoying his brazenness. He is an adrenaline junkie\u2014mountain climbing, cave diving, pissing off Alex's mother. Flirting with death, basically. It's the flip side of the way he approaches work, which is methodical and precise, or the way he approaches parenting, which is laid-back and indulgent.\n\nIt's nice, now, to see him more than he ever did in high school, since Oscar spends most of his year in DC. During the busiest congressional sessions, they'll convene Los Bastardos\u2014weekly beers in Oscar's office after hours, just him, Alex, and Rafael Luna, talking shit. And it's nice that proximity has forced his parents through the era of mutually assured destruction to now, where they have one Christmas instead of two.\n\nAs the days go by, Alex catches himself remembering sometimes, just for a second, how much he misses having everyone under one roof.\n\nHis dad was always the cook of the family. Alex's childhood was perfumed with simmering peppers and onions and stew meat in a cast iron pot for caldillo, fresh masa waiting on the butcher block. He remembers his mom swearing and laughing when she opened the oven for her guilty-pleasure pizza bagels only to find all the pots and pans stored there, or when she'd go for the tub of butter in the fridge and find it filled with homemade salsa verde. There used to be a lot of laughter in that kitchen, a lot of good food and loud music and parades of cousins and homework done at the table.\n\nExcept eventually there was a lot of yelling, followed by a lot of quiet, and soon Alex and June were teenagers and both their parents were in Congress, and Alex was student body president and lacrosse cocaptain and prom king and valedictorian, and, very intentionally, it stopped being a thing he had time to think about.\n\nStill, his dad's been in the Residence for three days without incident, and one day Alex catches him in the kitchens with two of the cooks, laughing and dumping peppers into a pot. It's just, you know, sometimes he thinks it might be nice if it could be like this more often.\n\nZahra's heading to New Orleans to see her family for Christmas, only at the president's insistence, and only because her sister had a baby and Amy threatened to stab her if she didn't deliver the onesie she knitted. Which means Christmas dinner is happening on Christmas Eve so Zahra won't miss it. For all her late nights cursing their names, Zahra is family.\n\n\"Merry Christmas, Z!\" Alex tells her cheerfully in the hall outside the family dining room. For holiday flare, she's wearing a sensible red turtleneck; Alex is wearing a sweater covered in bright green tinsel. He smiles and presses a button on the inside of the sleeve, and \"O Christmas Tree\" plays from a speaker near his armpit.\n\n\"I can't wait to not see you for two days,\" she says, but there's real affection in her voice.\n\nThis year's dinner is small, since his dad's parents are on vacation, so the table is set for six in glittering white and gold. The conversation is pleasant enough that Alex almost forgets it's not always like this.\n\nUntil it shifts to the election.\n\n\"I was thinking,\" Oscar says, carefully cutting his filet, \"this time, I can campaign with you.\"\n\nAt the other end of the table, Ellen puts her fork down. \"You can what?\"\n\n\"You know.\" He shrugs, chewing. \"Hit the trail, do some speeches. Be a surrogate.\"\n\n\"You can't be serious.\"\n\nOscar puts down his own fork and knife now on the cloth-covered table, a soft thump of _oh, shit._ Alex glances across the table at June.\n\n\"You really think it's such a bad idea?\" Oscar says.\n\n\"Oscar, we went through all of this last time,\" Ellen tells him. Her tone is instantly clipped. \"People don't like women, but they like mothers and wives. They like _families._ The last thing we need to do is remind them that I'm divorced by parading my ex-husband around.\"\n\nHe laughs a little grimly. \"So, you'll pretend he's their dad then, eh?\"\n\n\"Oscar,\" Leo speaks up, \"you know I'd never\u2014\"\n\n\"You're missing the _point,_ \" Ellen interrupts.\n\n\"It could help your approval ratings,\" he says. \"Mine are quite high, El. Higher than yours ever were in the House.\"\n\n\"Here we go,\" Alex says to Leo next to him, whose face remains pleasantly neutral.\n\n\"We've done _studies,_ Oscar! Okay?\" Ellen's voice has risen in volume and pitch, her palms planted flat on the table. \"The data shows, I track worse with undecided voters when they're reminded of the divorce!\"\n\n\"People know you're divorced!\"\n\n\"Alex's numbers are high!\" she shouts, and Alex and June both wince. \"June's numbers are high!\"\n\n\"They're not _numbers_!\"\n\n\"Fuck off, I know that,\" she spits, \"I never said they were!\"\n\n\"You think sometimes you use them like they are?\"\n\n\"How _dare_ you, when you don't seem to have any problem trotting them out every time you're up for reelection!\" she says, slicing one hand through the air beside her. \"Maybe if they were just Claremonts, you wouldn't have so much luck. It'd sure as hell be less confusing\u2014it's the name everybody knows them by anyway!\"\n\n\"Nobody's taking any of our names!\" June jumps in, her voice high.\n\n_\"June,\"_ Ellen says.\n\nTheir dad pushes on. \"I'm trying to help you, Ellen!\"\n\n\"I don't need your help to win an election, Oscar!\" she says, hitting the table so hard with her open palm that the dishes rattle. \"I didn't need it when I was in Congress, and I didn't need it to become president the first time, and I don't need it now!\"\n\n\"You need to get serious about what you're up against! You think the other side is going to play fair this time? Eight years of Obama, and now you? They're angry, Ellen, and Richards is out for blood! You need to be ready!\"\n\n\"I will be! You think I don't have a team on all this shit already? I'm the President of the United fucking States! I don't need you to come here and\u2014and\u2014\"\n\n\"Mansplain?\" Zahra offers.\n\n\"Mansplain!\" Ellen shouts, jabbing a finger across the table at Oscar, eyes wide. \"This presidential race to me!\"\n\nOscar throws his napkin down. \"You're still so _fucking_ stubborn!\"\n\n\"Fuck you!\"\n\n\"Mom!\" June says sharply.\n\n\"Jesus Christ, are you kidding me?\" Alex hears himself shout before he even consciously decides to say it. \"Can we not be civil for one fucking meal? It's _Christmas,_ for fuck's sake. Aren't y'all supposed to be running the country? Get your shit together.\"\n\nHe pushes his chair back and stalks out of the dining room, knowing he's being a dramatic asshole and not really caring. He slams his bedroom door behind him, and his stupid sweater plays a few depressingly off-key notes when he yanks it off and throws it at the wall.\n\nIt's not that he doesn't lose his temper often, it's just... he doesn't usually lose it with his family. Mostly because he doesn't usually _deal_ with his family.\n\nHe digs an old lacrosse T-shirt out of his dresser, and when he turns and catches his reflection in the mirror by the closet, he's right back in his teens, caring too much about his parents and helpless to change his situation. Except now he doesn't have any AP classes to enroll in as a distraction.\n\nHis hand twitches for his phone. His brain is a two-passenger minimum ride as far as he's concerned\u2014alone and busy or thinking with company.\n\nBut Nora's doing Hanukkah in Vermont, and he doesn't want to annoy her, and his best friend from high school, Liam, has barely spoken to him since he moved to DC.\n\nWhich leaves...\n\n\"What could I possibly have done to have brought this upon myself now?\" says Henry's voice, low and sleepy. It sounds like \"Good King Wenceslas\" is playing in the background\n\n\"Hey, um, sorry. I know it's late, and it's Christmas Eve and everything. You probably have, like, family stuff, I'm just realizing. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Wow, this is why I don't have friends. I'm a dick. Sorry, man. I'll, uh, I'll just\u2014\"\n\n\"Alex, Christ,\" Henry interrupts. \"It's fine. It's half two here, everyone's gone to bed. Except Bea. Say hi, Bea.\"\n\n\"Hi, Alex!\" says a clear, giggly voice on the other end of the line. \"Henry's got his candy-cane jim-jams on\u2014\"\n\n\"That's quite enough,\" Henry's voice comes back through, and there's a muffled sound like maybe a pillow has been shoved in Bea's direction. \"What's happening, then?\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" Alex blurts out, \"I know this is weird, and you're with your sister and everything, and, like, argh. I kind of didn't have anyone else to call who would be awake? And I know we're, uh, not really friends, and we don't really talk about this stuff, but my dad came in for Christmas, and he and my mom are like fucking tiger sharks fighting over a baby seal when you put them in the same room together for more than an hour, and they got in this huge fight, and it shouldn't _matter,_ because they're already divorced and everything, and I don't know why I lost my shit, but I wish they could give it a rest for _once_ so we could have one single normal holiday, you know?\"\n\nThere's a long pause before Henry says, \"Hang on. _Bea, can I have a minute? Hush. Yes, you can take the biscuits._ All right, I'm listening.\"\n\nAlex exhales, wondering faintly what the hell he's doing, but plows onward.\n\nTelling Henry about the divorce\u2014those weird, tumultuous years, the day he came home from a Boy Scout camp-out to discover his dad's things moved out, the nights of Helados ice cream\u2014doesn't feel as uncomfortable as it probably should. He's never bothered to filter himself with Henry, at first because he honestly didn't care what Henry thought, and now because it's how they are. Maybe it should be different, bitching about his course load versus spilling his guts about this. It isn't.\n\nHe doesn't realize he's been talking for an hour until he finishes retelling what happened at dinner and Henry says, \"It sounds like you did your best.\"\n\nAlex forgets what he was going to say next.\n\nHe just... Well, he gets told he's great a lot. He just doesn't often get told he's good enough.\n\nBefore he can think of a response, there's a soft triple knock on the door\u2014June.\n\n\"Ah\u2014okay, thanks, man, I gotta go,\" Alex says, his voice low as June eases the door open.\n\n\"Alex\u2014\"\n\n\"Seriously, um. Thank you,\" Alex says. He really does not want to explain this to June. \"Merry Christmas. Night.\"\n\nHe hangs up and tosses the phone aside as June settles down on the bed. She's wearing her pink bathrobe, and her hair is wet from the shower.\n\n\"Hey,\" she says. \"You okay?\"\n\n\"Yeah, I'm fine,\" he says. \"Sorry, I don't know what's up with me. I didn't mean to lose it. I've been... I don't know. I've been kind of... off... lately.\"\n\n\"It's okay,\" she says. She tosses her hair over her shoulder, flicking droplets of water onto him. \"I was a total basket case for the last six months of college. I would lose it at anybody. You know, you don't have to do everything all the time.\"\n\n\"It's fine. I'm fine,\" he tells her automatically. June tilts an unconvinced look at him, and he kicks at one of her knees with his bare foot. \"So, how did things go after I left? Did they finish cleaning up the blood yet?\"\n\nJune sighs, kicking him back. \"Somehow it shifted to the topic of how they were a political power couple before the divorce and how good those times were, Mom apologized, and it was whiskey and nostalgia hour until everybody went to bed.\" She sniffs. \"Anyway, you were right.\"\n\n\"You don't think I was out of line?\"\n\n\"Nah. Though... I kind of agree with what Dad was saying. Mom can be... you know... Mom.\"\n\n\"Well, that's what got her where she is now.\"\n\n\"You don't think it's ever a problem?\"\n\nAlex shrugs. \"I think she's a good mom.\"\n\n\"Yeah, to you,\" June says. There's no accusation behind it, just observation. \"The effectiveness of her nurturing kind of depends on what you need from her. Or what you can do for her.\"\n\n\"I mean, I get what she's saying, though,\" Alex hedges. \"Sometimes it still sucks that Dad decided to pack up and move just to run for the seat in California.\"\n\n\"Yeah, but, I mean, how is that different from the stuff Mom's done? It's all politics. I'm just saying, he has a point about how Mom pushes us without always giving us the other Mom stuff.\"\n\nAlex is opening his mouth to answer when June's phone buzzes from her robe pocket. \"Oh. Hmm,\" she says when she slides it out to eye the screen.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Nothing, uh.\" She thumbs open the message. \"Merry Christmas text. From Evan.\"\n\n\"Evan... as in ex-boyfriend Evan, in California? Y'all still text?\"\n\nJune's biting her lip now, her expression a little distant as she types out a response. \"Yeah, sometimes.\"\n\n\"Cool,\" Alex says. \"I always liked him.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Me too,\" June says softly. She locks her phone and drops it on the bed, blinking a couple times as if to reset. \"Anyway, what'd Nora say when you told her?\"\n\n\"Hmm?\"\n\n\"On the phone?\" she asks him. \"I figured it was her, you never talk to anyone else about this crap.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Alex says. He feels inexplicable, traitorous warmth flash up the back of his neck. \"Oh, um, no. Actually, this is gonna sound weird, but I was talking to Henry?\"\n\nJune's eyebrows shoot up, and Alex instinctively scans the room for cover. \"Really.\"\n\n\"Listen, I know, but we kind of weirdly have stuff in common and, I guess, similar weird emotional baggage and neuroses, and for some reason I felt like he would get it.\"\n\n\"Oh my God, Alex,\" she says, lunging at him to yank him into a rough hug, \"you made a friend!\"\n\n\"I have friends! Get off me!\"\n\n\"You made a friend!\" She is literally giving him a noogie. \"I'm so proud of you!\"\n\n\"I'm gonna murder you, _stop it,_ \" he says, alligator-rolling out of her clutches. He lands on the floor. \"He's not my friend. He's someone I like to antagonize all the time, and _one_ time I talked to him about something real.\"\n\n\"That's a friend, Alex.\"\n\nAlex's mouth starts and stops several silent sentences before he points to the door. \"You can leave, June! Go to bed!\"\n\n\"Nope. Tell me everything about your new best friend, who is a _royal._ That is so bougie of you. Who would have guessed it?\" she says, peering over the edge of the bed at him. \"Oh my God, this is like all those romantic comedies where the girl hires a male escort to pretend to be her wedding date and then falls in love with him for real.\"\n\n\"That is _not at all_ what this is like.\"\n\n* * *\n\nThe staff has barely finished packing up the Christmas trees when it starts.\n\nThere's the dance floor to set up, menu to finalize, Snapchat filter to approve. Alex spends the entire 26th holed up in the Social Secretary's office with June, going over the waivers they've gotten for everyone to sign after a daughter of a Real Housewife fell down the rotunda stairs last year; Alex remains impressed that she didn't spill her margarita.\n\nIt's time once more for the Legendary Balls-Out Bananas White House Trio New Year's Eve Party.\n\nTechnically, the title is the Young America New Year's Eve Gala, or as at least one late-night host calls it, the Millennial Correspondents' Dinner. Every year, Alex, June, and Nora fill up the East Room on the first floor with three hundred or so of their friends, vague celebrity acquaintances, former hookups, potential political connections, and otherwise notable twenty-somethings. The party is, officially, a fund-raiser, and it generates so much money for charity and so much good PR for the First Family that even his mom approves of it.\n\n\"Um, excuse me,\" Alex is saying from a first-floor conference table, one hand full of confetti samples\u2014do they want a metallic color palette or a more subdued navy and gold?\u2014while staring at a copy of the finalized guest list. June and Nora are stuffing their faces with cake samples. \"Who put Henry on here?\"\n\nNora says through a mouthful of chocolate cake, \"Wasn't me.\"\n\n\"June?\"\n\n\"Look, you should have invited him yourself!\" June says, by way of admission. \"It's really nice you're making friends who aren't us. Sometimes when you get too isolated, you start to go a little crazy. Remember last year when Nora and I were both out of the country for a week, and you almost got a tattoo?\"\n\n\"I still think we should have let him get a tramp stamp.\"\n\n\"It wasn't going to be a _tramp stamp,_ \" Alex says hotly. \"You were in on this, weren't you?\"\n\n\"You know I love chaos,\" Nora tells him serenely.\n\n\"I have friends who aren't y'all,\" Alex says.\n\n\"Who, Alex?\" June says. \"Literally who?\"\n\n\"People!\" he says defensively. \"People from class! Liam!\"\n\n\"Please. We all know you haven't talked to Liam in a year,\" June says. \"You need friends. And I know you like Henry.\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" Alex says. He brushes a finger under his collar and finds his skin damp. Do they always have to crank the heat up this high when it's snowing outside?\n\n\"This is interesting,\" Nora observes.\n\n\"No, it's not,\" Alex snaps. \"Fine, he can come. But if he doesn't know anybody else, I'm not babysitting him all night.\"\n\n\"I gave him a plus-one,\" June says.\n\n\"Who is he bringing?\" Alex asks immediately, reflexively. Involuntarily. \"Just wondering.\"\n\n\"Pez,\" she says. She's giving him a weird look he can't parse, and he decides to chalk it up to June being confusing and strange. She often works in mysterious ways, organizes and orchestrates things he never sees coming until all the threads come together.\n\nSo, Henry is coming, he guesses, confirmed when he checks Instagram the day of the party and sees a post from Pez of him and Henry on a private jet. Pez's hair has been dyed pastel pink for the occasion, and beside him, Henry is smiling in a soft-looking gray sweatshirt, his socked feet up on the windowsill. He actually looks well-rested for once.\n\nUSA bound! #YoungAmericaGala2019 Pez's caption reads.\n\nAlex smiles despite himself and texts Henry.\n\nATTN: will be wearing a burgundy velvet suit tonight. please do not attempt to steal my shine. you will fail and i will be embarrassed for you.\n\nHenry texts back seconds later.\n\nWouldn't dream of it.\n\nFrom there everything speeds up, and a hairstylist is wrangling him into the Cosmetology Room, and he gets to watch the girls transform into their camera-ready selves. Nora's short curls are swept to one side with a silver pin shaped to match the sharp geometric lines on the bodice of her black dress; June's gown is a plunging Zac Posen number in a shade of midnight blue that perfectly complements the navy-and-gold color palette they chose.\n\nThe guests start arriving around eight, and the liquor starts flowing, and Alex orders a middle-shelf whiskey to get things going. There's live music, a pop act that owed June a personal favor, and they're covering \"American Girl\" right now, so Alex grabs June's hand and spins her onto the dance floor.\n\nFirst arrivals are always the first-time political types: a small gaggle of White House interns, an event planner for Center for American Progress, the daughter of a first-term senator with a punk rock\u2013looking girlfriend who Alex makes a mental note to introduce himself to later. Then, the wave of politically strategic invites chosen by the press team, and lastly, the fashionably late\u2014minor to mid-range pop stars, teen soap actors, children of major celebrities.\n\nHe's just wondering when Henry's going to make his appearance, when June appears at his side and yells, \"Incoming!\"\n\nAlex's gaze is met by a bright burst of color that turns out to be Pez's bomber jacket, which is a shiny silk thing in such an elaborate, colorful floral print that Alex almost has to squint. The colors fade slightly, though, when his eyes slide to the right.\n\nIt's the first time Alex has seen Henry in person since the weekend in London and the hundreds of texts and weird in-jokes and late-night phone calls that came after, and it almost feels like meeting a new person. He knows more about Henry, understands him better, and he can appreciate the rarity of a genuine smile on the same famously beautiful face.\n\nIt's a weird cognitive dissonance, Henry present and Henry past. That must be why something feels so restless and hot somewhere beneath his sternum. That and the whiskey.\n\nHenry's wearing a simple dark blue suit, but he's opted for a bright coppery-mustard tie in a narrow cut. He spots Alex, and his smile broadens, giving Pez's arm a tug.\n\n\"Nice tie,\" Alex says as soon as Henry is close enough to hear over the crowd.\n\n\"Thought I might be escorted off the premises for anything less exciting,\" Henry says, and his voice is somehow different than Alex remembers. Like very expensive velvet, something moneyed and lush and fluid all at once.\n\n\"And _who_ is this?\" June asks from Alex's side, interrupting his train of thought.\n\n\"Ah yes, you've not officially met, have you?\" Henry says. \"June, Alex, this is my best mate, Percy Okonjo.\"\n\n\"Pez, like the sweets,\" Pez says cheerfully, extending his hand to Alex. Several of his fingernails are painted blue. When he redirects his attention to June, his eyes grow brighter, his grin spreading. \"Please do smack me if this is out of line, but you are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen in my life, and I would like to procure for you the most lavish drink in this establishment if you will let me.\"\n\n\"Uh,\" Alex says.\n\n\"You're a charmer,\" June says, smiling indulgently.\n\n\"And you are a goddess.\"\n\nHe watches them disappear into the crowd, Pez a blazing streak of color, already spinning June in a pirouette as they go. Henry's smile has gone sheepish and reserved, and Alex understands their friendship at last. Henry doesn't want the spotlight, and Pez naturally absorbs what Henry deflects.\n\n\"That man has been begging me to introduce him to your sister since the wedding,\" Henry says.\n\n_\"Seriously?\"_\n\n\"We've probably just saved him a tremendous amount of money. He was going to start pricing skywriters soon.\"\n\nAlex tosses his head back and laughs, and Henry watches, still grinning. June and Nora had a point. He does, against all odds, really like this person.\n\n\"Well, come on,\" Alex says. \"I'm already two whiskeys in. You've got some catching up to do.\"\n\nMore than one conversation drops out as Alex and Henry pass, mouths hanging open over entremets. Alex tries to imagine what they must look like: the prince and the First Son, the two leading heartthrobs of their respective countries, shoulder to shoulder on their way to the bar. It's intimidating and thrilling, living up to that kind of rich, untouchable fantasy. That's what people _see,_ but none of them know about the Great Turkey Calamity. Only Alex and Henry do.\n\nHe scores the first round and the crowd swallows them up. Alex is surprised how pleased he is by the physical presence of Henry next to him. He doesn't even mind having to look up at him anymore. He introduces Henry to some White House interns and laughs as they blush and stutter, and Henry's face goes pleasantly neutral, an expression Alex used to mistake as unimpressed but can now read for what it is: carefully concealed bemusement.\n\nThere's dancing, and mingling, and a speech by June about the immigration fund they're supporting with their donations tonight, and Alex ducks out of an aggressive come-on by a girl from the new Spider-Man movies and into a haphazard conga line, and Henry actually seems to have fun. June finds them at some point and steals Henry away to gab at the bar. Alex watches them from afar, wondering what they could possibly be talking about that has June nearly falling off her barstool laughing, until the crowd overtakes him again.\n\nAfter a while, the band breaks and a DJ takes over with a mix of early 2000s hip-hop, all the greatest hits that came out when Alex was a child and were somehow still in rotation at dances in his teens. That's when Henry finds him, like a man lost at sea.\n\n\"You don't dance?\" he says, watching Henry, who is very visibly trying to figure out what to do with to do with his hands. It's endearing. Wow, Alex is drunk.\n\n\"No, I do,\" Henry says. \"It's just, the family-mandated ballroom dancing lessons didn't exactly cover this?\"\n\n\"C'mon, it's, like, in the hips. You have to loosen up.\" He reaches down and puts both hands on Henry's hips, and Henry instantly tenses under the touch. \"That's the opposite of what I said.\"\n\n\"Alex, I don't\u2014\"\n\n\"Here,\" Alex says, moving his own hips, \"watch me.\"\n\nWith a grave gulp of champagne, Henry says, \"I am.\"\n\nThe song crossfades into another _buh-duh dum-dum-dum, dum-duh-dum duh-duh-dum\u2014_\n\n_\"Shut up,\"_ Alex yells, cutting off whatever else Henry was saying, \"shut your dumb face, this is my _shit_!\" He throws his hands up in the air as Henry stares at him blankly, and around them, people start cheering too, hundreds of shoulders shimmying to the shouty, Lil Jon\u2013flavored nostalgia of \"Get Low.\"\n\n\"Did you seriously never go to an awkward middle school dance and watch a bunch of teenagers dry hump to this song?\"\n\nHenry is holding on to his champagne for dear life. \"You absolutely must know I did not.\"\n\nAlex flails one arm out and snatches Nora from a nearby huddle, where she's been flirting with Spider-Man girl. \"Nora! _Nora!_ Henry has never watched a bunch of teenagers dry hump to this song!\"\n\n_\"What?\"_\n\n\"Please tell me nobody is going to _dry hump_ me,\" Henry says.\n\n\"Oh my God, Henry,\" Alex yells, seizing Henry by one lapel as the music pounds on, \"you have to dance. You _have to_ dance. You need to understand this formative American coming-of-age experience.\"\n\nNora grabs Alex, pulling him away from Henry and spinning him around, her hands on his waist, and starts grinding with abandon. Alex whoops and Nora cackles and the crowd jumps around and Henry just gawks at them.\n\n\"Did that man just say ' _sweat drop down my balls_ '?\"\n\nIt's _fun_ \u2014Nora against his back, sweat on his brow, bodies pushing in around him. To one side, a podcast producer and that guy from _Stranger Things_ are hitting the Kid 'n Play, and to the other, Pez is literally bending over to the front and touching his toes as instructed. Henry's face is shocked and confused, and it's hilarious. Alex accepts a shot off a passing tray and drinks to the strange spark in his gut at the way Henry watches them. Alex pouts his lips and shakes his ass, and with extreme trepidation, Henry starts bopping his head a little.\n\n\"Fuck it up, vato!\" Alex yells, and Henry laughs despite himself. He even gives his hips a little shake.\n\n\"I thought you weren't going to babysit him all night,\" June stage-whispers in his ear as she twirls by.\n\n\"I thought _you_ were too busy for guys,\" Alex replies, nodding significantly at Pez in the periphery. She winks at him and disappears.\n\nFrom there, it's a series of crowd-pleasers until midnight, the lights and music blasting at full capacity. Confetti, somehow blasting into the air. Did they arrange for confetti cannons? More drinks\u2014Henry starts drinking directly from a bottle of Mo\u00ebt & Chandon. Alex likes the look on Henry's face, the sure curl of his hand around the neck of the bottle, the way his lips wrap around the mouth of it. Henry's willingness to dance is directly proportionate to his proximity to Alex's hands, and the amount of giddy warmth bubbling under Alex's skin is directly proportionate to the cut of Henry's mouth when he watches him with Nora. It's an equation he is not nearly sober enough to parse.\n\nThey all huddle up at 11:59 for the countdown, eyes blurry and arms around one another. Nora screams \"three, two, one\" right in his ear and slings her arm around his neck as he yells his approval and kisses her sloppily, laughing through it. They've done this every year, both of them perpetually single and affectionately drunk and happy to make everyone else intrigued and jealous. Nora's mouth is warm and tastes horrifying, like peach schnapps, and she bites his lip and messes up his hair for good measure.\n\nWhen he opens his eyes, Henry's looking back at him, expression unreadable.\n\nHe feels his own smile grow wider, and Henry turns away and toward the bottle of champagne clutched in his fist, from which he takes a hearty swig before disappearing into the crowd.\n\nAlex loses track of things after that, because he's very, very drunk and the music is very, very loud and there are very, very many hands on him, carrying him through the tangle of dancing bodies and passing him more drinks. Nora bobs by on the back of some hot rookie NFL running back.\n\nIt's loud and messy and wonderful. Alex has always loved these parties, the sparkling joy of it all, the way champagne bubbles on his tongue and confetti sticks to his shoes. It's a reminder that even though he stresses and stews in private rooms, there will always be a sea of people he can disappear into, that the world can be warm and welcoming and fill up the walls of this big old house he lives in with something bright and infectiously alive.\n\nBut somewhere, beneath the liquor and the music, he can't stop noticing that Henry has disappeared.\n\nHe checks the bathrooms, the buffet, the quiet corners of the ballroom, but he's nowhere. He tries asking Pez, shouting Henry's name at him over the noise, but Pez just smiles and shrugs and steals a snapback off a passing yacht kid.\n\nHe's... worried isn't exactly the word. Bothered. Curious. He was having fun watching everything he did play out on Henry's face. He keeps looking, until he trips over his own feet by one of the big windows in the hallway. He's pulling himself up when he glances outside, down into the garden.\n\nThere, under a tree in the snow, exhaling little puffs of steam, is a tall, lean, broad-shouldered figure that can only be Henry.\n\nHe slips out onto the portico without really thinking about it, and the instant the door closes behind him, the music snuffs out into silence, and it's just him and Henry and the garden. He's got the hazy tunnel vision of a drunk person when they lock eyes on a goal. He follows it down the stairs and onto the snowy lawn.\n\nHenry stands quietly, hands in his pockets, contemplating the sky, and he'd almost look sober if not for the wobbly lean to the left he's doing. Stupid English dignity, even in the face of champagne. Alex wants to push his royal face into a shrub.\n\nAlex trips over a bench, and the sound catches Henry's attention. When he turns, the moonlight catches on him, and his face looks softened in half shadows, inviting in a way Alex can't quite work out.\n\n\"What're you doing out here?\" Alex says, trudging up to stand next to him under the tree.\n\nHenry squints. Up close, his eyes go a little crossed, focused somewhere between himself and Alex's nose. Not so dignified after all.\n\n\"Looking for Orion,\" Henry says.\n\nAlex huffs a laugh, looking up to the sky. Nothing but fat winter clouds. \"You must be really bored with the commoners to come out here and stare at the clouds.\"\n\n\"'m not bored,\" Henry mumbles. \"What are _you_ doing out here? Doesn't America's golden boy have some swooning crowds to beguile?\"\n\n\"Says Prince fucking Charming,\" Alex answers, smirking.\n\nHenry pulls a very unprincely face up at the clouds. \"Hardly.\"\n\nHis knuckle brushes the back of Alex's hand at their sides, a little zip of warmth in the cold night. Alex considers his face in profile, blinking through the booze, following the smooth line of his nose and the gentle dip at the center of his lower lip, each touched by moonlight. It's freezing and Alex is only wearing his suit jacket, but his chest feels warmed from the inside with liquor and something heady his brain keeps stumbling over, trying to name. The garden is quiet except for the blood rushing in his ears.\n\n\"You didn't really answer my question, though,\" Alex notes.\n\nHenry groans, rubbing a hand across his face. \"You can't ever leave well enough alone, can you?\" He leans his head back. It thumps gently against the trunk of the tree. \"Sometimes it gets a bit... much.\"\n\nAlex keeps looking at him. Usually, there's something about the set of Henry's mouth that betrays a bit of friendliness, but sometimes, like right now, his mouth pinches in the corner instead, pins his guard resolutely in place.\n\nAlex shifts, almost involuntarily, leaning back against the tree too. He nudges their shoulders together and catches that corner of Henry's mouth twitching, sees something move featherlight across his face. These things\u2014big events, letting other people feed on his own energy\u2014are rarely too much for Alex. He's not sure how Henry feels, but some part of his brain that is likely soaked in tequila thinks maybe it would be helpful if Henry could take what he can handle, and Alex could handle the rest. Maybe he can absorb some of the \"much\" from the place where their shoulders are pressed together.\n\nA muscle in Henry's jaw moves, and something soft, almost like a smile, tugs at his lips. \"D'you ever wonder,\" he says slowly, \"what it's like to be some anonymous person out in the world?\"\n\nAlex frowns. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Just, you know,\" Henry says. \"If your mum weren't the president and you were just a normal bloke living a normal life, what things might be like? What you'd be doing instead?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Alex says, considering. He stretches one arm out in front of him, makes a dismissive gesture with a flick of his wrist. \"Well, I mean, obviously I'd be a model. I've been on the cover of _Teen Vogue_ twice. These genetics transcend all circumstance.\" Henry rolls his eyes again. \"What about you?\"\n\nHenry shakes his head ruefully. \"I'd be a writer.\"\n\nAlex gives a little laugh. He thinks he already knew this about Henry, somehow, but it's still kind of disarming. \"Can't you do that?\"\n\n\"Not exactly seen as a worthwhile pursuit for a man in line for the throne, scribbling verses about quarter-life angst,\" Henry says dryly. \"Besides, the traditional family career track is military, so that's about it, isn't it?\"\n\nHenry bites his lip, waits a beat, and opens his mouth again. \"I'd date more, probably, as well.\"\n\nAlex can't help laughing again. \"Right, because it's so hard to get a date when you're a prince.\"\n\nHenry cuts his eyes back down to Alex. \"You'd be surprised.\"\n\n\"How? You're not exactly lacking for options.\"\n\nHenry keeps looking at him, holding his gaze for two seconds too long. \"The options I'd like...\" he says, dragging the words out. \"They don't quite seem to be _options_ at all.\"\n\nAlex blinks. \"What?\"\n\n\"I'm saying that I have... people... who interest me,\" Henry says, turning his body toward Alex now, speaking with a fumbling pointedness, as if it means something. \"But I shouldn't pursue them. At least not in my position.\"\n\nAre they too drunk to communicate in English? He wonders distantly if Henry knows any Spanish.\n\n\"I don't know what the hell you're talking about,\" Alex says.\n\n\"You don't?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You really don't?\"\n\n\"I really, really don't.\"\n\nHenry's whole face grimaces in frustration, his eyes casting skyward like they're searching for help from an uncaring universe. \"Christ, you are as thick as it gets,\" he says, and he grabs Alex's face in both hands and kisses him.\n\nAlex is frozen, registering the press of Henry's lips and the wool cuffs of his coat grazing his jaw. The world fuzzes out into static, and his brain is swimming hard to keep up, adding up the equation of teenage grudges and wedding cakes and two a.m. texts and not understanding the variable that got him here, except it's... well, surprisingly, he really doesn't mind. Like, at all.\n\nIn his head, he tries to cobble a list together in a panic, gets as far as, _One, Henry's lips are soft,_ and short-circuits.\n\nHe tests leaning into the kiss and is rewarded by Henry's mouth sliding and opening against his, Henry's tongue brushing against his, which is, _wow._ It's nothing like kissing Nora earlier\u2014nothing like kissing anyone he's ever kissed in his life. It feels as steady and huge as the ground under their feet, as encompassing of every part of him, as likely to knock the wind out of his lungs. One of Henry's hands pushes into his hair and grabs it at the roots at the back of his head, and he hears himself make a sound that breaks the breathless silence, and\u2014\n\nJust as suddenly, Henry releases him roughly enough that he staggers backward, and Henry's mumbling a curse and an apology, eyes wide, and he's spinning on his heel, crunching off through the snow at double time. Before Alex can say or do anything, he's disappeared around the corner.\n\n\"Oh,\" Alex says finally, faintly, touching one hand to his lips. Then: \"Shit.\"\n\n# FIVE\n\nSo, the thing about the kiss is, Alex absolutely cannot stop thinking about it.\n\nHe's tried. Henry and Pez and their bodyguards were long gone by the time Alex made it back inside. Not even a drunken stupor or the next morning's pounding hangover can scrub the image from his brain.\n\nHe tries listening in on his mom's meetings, but they can't hold his attention, and Zahra bans him from the West Wing. He studies every bill trickling through Congress and considers making rounds to sweet-talk senators, but can't muster the enthusiasm. Not even starting a rumor with Nora sounds enticing.\n\nHe starts his last semester, goes to class, sits with the social secretary to plan his graduation dinner, buries himself in highlighted annotations and supplemental readings.\n\nBut beneath it all, there's the Prince of England kissing him under a linden tree in the garden, moonlight in his hair, and Alex's insides feel positively _molten,_ and he wants to throw himself down the presidential stairs.\n\nHe hasn't told anyone, not even Nora or June. He has no idea what he'd even say if he _did._ Is he even technically allowed to tell anyone, since he signed an NDA? Was this _why_ he had to sign it? Is this something Henry always had in mind? Does that mean Henry has _feelings_ for him? Why would Henry have acted like a tedious prick for so long if he liked him?\n\nHenry's not offering any insights, or anything at all. He hasn't answered a single one of Alex's texts or calls.\n\n\"Okay, that's it,\" June says on a Wednesday afternoon, stomping out of her room and into the sitting room by their shared hallway. She's in her workout clothes with her hair tied up. Alex hastily shoves his phone back into his pocket. \"I don't know what your problem is, but I have been trying to write for two hours and I can't do it when I can hear you pacing.\" She throws a baseball cap at him. \"I'm going for a run, and you're coming with me.\"\n\nCash accompanies them to the Reflecting Pool, where June kicks the back of Alex's knee to get him going, and Alex grunts and swears and picks up the pace. He feels like a dog that has to be taken on walks to get his energy out. Especially when June says, \"You're like a dog that has to be taken on walks to get his energy out.\"\n\n\"I hate you sometimes,\" he tells her, and he shoves his earbuds in and cranks up Kid Cudi.\n\nHe thinks, as he runs and runs and runs, the stupidest thing of all is that he's straight.\n\nLike, he's pretty sure he's straight.\n\nHe can pinpoint moments throughout his life when he thought to himself, _See, this means I can't possibly be into guys._ Like when he was in middle school and he kissed a girl for the first time, and he didn't think about a guy when it was happening, just that her hair was soft and it felt nice. Or when he was a sophomore in high school and one of his friends came out as gay, and he couldn't imagine ever doing anything like that.\n\nOr his senior year, when he got drunk and made out with Liam in his twin bed for an hour, and he didn't have a sexual crisis about it\u2014that had to mean he was straight, right? Because if he were into guys, it would have felt scary to be with one, but it wasn't. That was just how horny teenage best friends were sometimes, like when they would get off at the same time watching porn in Liam's bedroom... or that one time Liam reached over, and Alex didn't stop him.\n\nHe glances over at June, at the suspicious quirk of her lips. Can she hear what he's thinking? Does she know, somehow? June always knows things. He doubles his pace, if only to get the expression on her mouth out of his periphery.\n\nOn their fifth lap, he thinks back over his hormonal teens and remembers thinking about girls in the shower, but he also remembers fantasizing about a boy's hands on him, about hard jawlines and broad shoulders. He remembers pulling his eyes off a teammate in the locker room a couple times, but that was, like, an objective thing. How was he supposed to know back then if he wanted to look like other guys, or if he _wanted_ other guys? Or if his horny teenage urges actually even meant anything?\n\nHe's a son of Democrats. It's something he's always been around. So, he always assumed if he weren't straight, he would just _know,_ like how he knows that he loves cajeta on his ice cream or that he needs a tediously organized calendar to get anything done. He thought he was smart enough about his own identity that there weren't any questions left.\n\nThey're rounding the corner for their eighth lap now, and he's starting to see some flaws in his logic. Straight people, he thinks, probably don't spend this much time convincing themselves they're straight.\n\nThere's another reason he never cared to examine things beyond the basic benchmark of being attracted to women. He's been in the public eye since his mom became the favored 2016 nominee, the White House Trio the administration's door to the teen and twenty-something demographic almost as long. All three of them\u2014himself, June, and Nora\u2014have their roles.\n\nNora is the cool brainy one, the one who makes inappropriate jokes on Twitter about whatever sci-fi show everyone's watching, a bar trivia team ringer. She's not straight\u2014she's never been straight\u2014but to her, it's an incidental part of who she is. She doesn't worry about going public with it; feelings don't consume her the way his do.\n\nHe looks at June\u2014ahead of him now, caramel highlights in her swinging ponytail catching the midday sun\u2014and he knows her place too. The intrepid _Washington Post_ columnist, the fashion trendsetter everyone wants to have at their wine-and-cheese night.\n\nBut Alex is the golden boy. The heartthrob, the handsome rogue with a heart of gold. The guy who moves through life effortlessly, who makes everyone laugh. Highest approval ratings of the entire First Family. The whole point of him is that his appeal is as universal as possible.\n\nBeing... whatever he's starting to suspect he might be, is definitely not universally appealing to voters. He has a hard enough time being half-Mexican.\n\nHe wants his mom to keep her approval ratings up without having to manage a complication from her own family. He wants to be the youngest congressman in US history. He's absolutely sure that guys who kissed a Prince of England and liked it don't get elected to represent Texas.\n\nBut he thinks about Henry, and, _oh._\n\nHe thinks about Henry, and something twists in his chest, like a stretch he's been avoiding for too long.\n\nHe thinks about Henry's voice low in his ear over the phone at three in the morning, and suddenly he has a name for what ignites in the pit of his stomach. Henry's hands on him, his thumbs braced against his temples back in the garden, Henry's hands other places, Henry's mouth, what he might do with it if Alex let him. Henry's broad shoulders and long legs and narrow waist, the place his jaw meets his neck and the place his neck meets his shoulder and the tendon that stretches the length between them, and the way it looks when Henry turns his head to shoot him a challenging glare, and his impossibly blue eyes\u2014\n\nHe trips on a crack in the pavement and goes tumbling down, skinning his knee and ripping his earbuds out.\n\n\"Dude, what the hell?\" June's voice cuts through the ringing in his ears. She's standing over him, hands on her knees, brow furrowed, panting. \"Your brain could not be more clearly in another solar system. Are you gonna tell me or what?\"\n\nHe takes her hand and lets her pull him and his bloody knee up. \"It's fine. I'm fine.\"\n\nJune sighs, shooting him another look before finally dropping it. Once he's limped back home behind her, she disappears to shower and he stems the bleeding with a Captain America Band-Aid from his bathroom cabinet.\n\nHe needs a list. So: Things he knows right now.\n\nOne. He's attracted to Henry.\n\nTwo. He wants to kiss Henry again.\n\nThree. He has maybe wanted to kiss Henry for a while. As in, probably this whole time.\n\nHe ticks off another list in his head. Henry. Shaan. Liam. Han Solo. Rafael Luna and his loose collars.\n\nSidling up to his desk, he pulls out the binder his mother gave him: DEMOGRAPHIC ENGAGEMENT: WHO THEY ARE AND HOW TO REACH THEM. He drags his finger down to the LGBTQ+ tab and turns to the page he's looking for, titled with mother's typical flair: THE B ISN'T SILENT: A CRASH COURSE ON BISEXUAL AMERICANS.\n\n* * *\n\n\"I wanna start now,\" Alex says as he slams into the Treaty Room.\n\nHis mother lowers her glasses to the tip of her nose, eyeing him over a pile of papers. \"Start what? Getting your ass beat for barging in here while I'm working?\"\n\n\"The job,\" he says. \"The campaign job. I don't wanna wait until I graduate. I already read all the materials you gave me. Twice. I have time. I can start now.\"\n\nShe narrows her eyes at him. \"You got a bug up your butt?\"\n\n\"No, I just...\" One of his knees is bouncing impatiently. He forces it to stop. \"I'm ready. I've got less than one semester left. How much more could I possibly need to know to do this? Put me in, Coach.\"\n\nWhich is how he finds himself out of breath on a Monday afternoon after class, following a staffer who's managed to surpass even him in the caffeination department, on a breakneck tour of the campaign offices. He gets a badge with his name and photo on it, a desk in a shared cubicle, and a WASPy cubicle mate from Boston named Hunter with an extremely punchable face.\n\nAlex is handed a folder of data from the latest focus groups and told to start drafting policy ideas for the end of the following week, and WASPy Hunter asks him five hundred questions about his mom. Alex very professionally does not punch him. He just gets to work.\n\nHe's definitely not thinking about Henry.\n\nHe's not thinking about Henry when he puts in twenty-three hours in his first week of work, or when he's filling the rest of his hours with class and papers and going for long runs and drinking triple-shot coffees and poking around the Senate offices. He's not thinking about Henry in the shower or at night, alone and wide awake in his bed.\n\nExcept for when he is. Which is always.\n\nThis usually works. He doesn't understand why it's not working.\n\nWhen he's in the campaign offices, he keeps gravitating over to the big, busy whiteboards of the polling section, where Nora sits every day enshrined in graphs and spreadsheets. She's made easy friends with her coworkers, since competence translates directly to popularity in the campaign social culture, and nobody's better at numbers than her.\n\nHe's not jealous, exactly. He's popular in his own department, constantly cornered at the Keurig for second opinions on people's drafts and invited to after-work drinks he never has time for. At least four staffers of various genders have hit on him, and WASPy Hunter won't stop trying to convince him to come to his improv shows. He smiles handsomely over his coffee and makes sarcastic jokes and the Alex Claremont-Diaz Charm Initiative is as effective as ever.\n\nBut Nora makes _friends,_ and Alex ends up with acquaintances who think they know him because they've read his profile in _New York_ magazine _,_ and perfectly fine people with perfectly fine bodies who want to take him home from the bar. None of it is satisfying\u2014it never has been, not really, but it never mattered as much as it does now that there's the sharp counterpoint of Henry, who _knows_ him. Henry who's seen him in glasses and tolerates him at his most annoying and still kissed him like he wanted him, singularly, not the idea of him.\n\nSo it goes, and Henry is there, in his head and his lecture notes and his cubicle, every single stupid day, no matter how many shots of espresso he puts in his coffee.\n\n* * *\n\nNora would be the obvious choice for help, if not for the fact that she's neck deep in polling numbers. When she gets into her work like this, it's like trying to have a meaningful conversation with a high-speed computer that loves Chipotle and makes fun of what you're wearing.\n\nBut she's his best friend, and she's sort of vaguely bisexual. She never dates\u2014no time or desire\u2014but if she did, she says it'd be an even distribution of the intern pool. She's as knowledgeable about the topic as she is about everything else.\n\n\"Hello,\" she says from the floor as he drops a bag of burritos and a second bag of chips with guacamole on the coffee table. \"You might have to put guacamole directly into my mouth with a spoon because I need both hands for the next forty-eight hours.\"\n\nNora's grandparents, the Veep and Second Lady, live at the Naval Observatory, and her parents live just outside of Montpelier, but she's had the same airy one-bedroom in Columbia Heights since she transferred from MIT to GW. It's full of books and plants she tends to with complex spreadsheets of watering schedules. Tonight, she's sitting on her living room floor in a glowing circle of screens like some kind of Capitol Hill s\u00e9ance.\n\nTo her left, her campaign laptop is open to an indecipherable page of data and bar graphs. To her right, her personal computer is running three news aggregators at the same time. In front of her, the TV is broadcasting CNN's Republican primary coverage, while the tablet in her lap is playing an old episode of _Drag Race._ She's holding her iPhone in her hand, and Alex hears the little whoosh of an email sending before she looks up at him.\n\n\"Barbacoa?\" she says hopefully as Alex drops onto the couch.\n\n\"I've met you before today, so, obviously.\"\n\n\"There's my future husband.\" She leans over to pull a burrito out of the bag, rips off the foil, and shoves it into her mouth.\n\n\"I'm not going to have a marriage of convenience with you if you're always embarrassing me with the way you eat burritos,\" Alex says, watching her chew. A black bean falls out of her mouth and lands on one of her keyboards.\n\n\"Aren't you from Texas?\" she says through her mouthful. \"I've seen you shotgun a bottle of barbecue sauce. Watch yourself or I'm gonna marry June instead.\"\n\nThis might be his opening into \"the conversation.\" _Hey, you_ _know how you're always joking about dating June? Well, like, what if I dated a guy?_ Not that he wants to date Henry. At all. Ever. But just, like, hypothetically.\n\nNora goes off on a data nerd tangent for the next twenty minutes about her updated take on whatever the fuck the Boyer\u2013Moore majority vote algorithm is and variables and how it can be used in whatever work she's doing for the campaign, or something. Honestly, Alex's concentration is drifting in and out. He's just working on summoning up courage until she talks herself into submission.\n\n\"Hey, so, uh,\" Alex attempts as she takes a burrito break. \"Remember when we dated?\"\n\nNora swallows a massive bite and grins. \"Why yes, I do, Alejandro.\"\n\nAlex forces a laugh. \"So, knowing me as well as you do\u2014\"\n\n\"In the biblical sense.\"\n\n\"Numbers on me being into dudes?\"\n\nThat pulls Nora up short, before she cocks her head to the side and says, \"Seventy-eight percent probability of latent bisexual tendencies. One hundred percent probability this is not a hypothetical question.\"\n\n\"Yeah. So.\" He coughs. \"Weird thing happened. You know how Henry came to New Year's? He kinda... kissed me?\"\n\n\"Oh, no shit?\" Nora says, nodding appreciatively. \"Nice.\"\n\nAlex stares at her. \"You're not surprised?\"\n\n\"I mean.\" She shrugs. \"He's gay, and you're hot, so.\"\n\nHe sits up so quickly he almost drops his burrito on the floor. \"Wait, wait\u2014what makes you think he's gay? Did he tell you he was?\"\n\n\"No, I just... like, you know.\" She gesticulates as if to describe her usual thought process. It's as incomprehensible as her brain. \"I observe patterns and data, and they form logical conclusions, and he's just gay. He's always been gay.\"\n\n\"I... what?\"\n\n\"Dude. Have you met him? Isn't he supposed to be your best friend or whatever? He's gay. Like, Fire-Island-on-the-Fourth-of-July gay. Did you really not know?\"\n\nAlex lifts his hands helplessly. \"No?\"\n\n\"Alex, I thought you were supposed to be smart.\"\n\n\"Me too! How can he\u2014how can he spring a kiss on me without even telling me he's gay first?\"\n\n\"I mean, like,\" she attempts, \"is it possible he assumed you knew?\"\n\n\"But he goes on dates with girls all the time.\"\n\n\"Yeah, because princes aren't allowed to be gay,\" Nora says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. \"Why do you think they're always photographed?\"\n\nAlex lets that sink in for half a second and remembers this is supposed to be about _his_ gay panic, not Henry's. \"Okay, so. Wait. Jesus. Can we go back to the part where he kissed me?\"\n\n\"Ooh, yes,\" Nora says. She licks a glob of guacamole off the screen of her phone. \"Happily. Was he a good kisser? Was there tongue? Did you like it?\"\n\n\"Never mind,\" Alex says instantly. \"Forget I asked.\"\n\n\"Since when are you a prude?\" Nora demands. \"Last year you made me listen to every nasty detail about going down on Amber Forrester from June's internship.\"\n\n\"Do _not,_ \" he says, hiding his face behind the crook of his elbow.\n\n\"Then spill.\"\n\n\"I seriously hope you die,\" he says. \"Yes, he was a good kisser, and there was tongue.\"\n\n\"I fucking knew it,\" she says. \"Still waters, deep dicking.\"\n\n_\"Stop,\"_ he groans.\n\n\"Prince Henry is a biscuit,\" Nora says, \"let him sop you up.\"\n\n\"I'm _leaving._ \"\n\nShe throws her head back and cackles, and seriously, Alex has _got_ to get more friends. \"Did you like it, though?\"\n\nA pause.\n\n\"What, um,\" he starts. \"What do you think it would mean... if I did?\"\n\n\"Well. Babe. You've been wanting him to dick you down forever, right?\"\n\nAlex almost chokes on his tongue. _\"What?\"_\n\nNora looks at him. \"Oh, shit. Did you not know that either? Shit. I didn't mean to, like, tell you. Is it time for this conversation?\"\n\n\"I... maybe?\" he says. \"Um. What?\"\n\nShe puts her burrito down on the coffee table and shakes her fingers out like she does when she's about to write a complicated code. Alex suddenly feels intimidated at having her undivided attention.\n\n\"Let me lay out some observations for you,\" she says. \"You extrapolate. First, you've been, like, Draco Malfoy\u2013level obsessed with Henry for years\u2014 _do not interrupt me_ \u2014and since the royal wedding, you've gotten his phone number and used it not to set up any appearances but instead to long-distance flirt with him all day every day. You're constantly making big cow eyes at your phone, and if somebody asks you who you're texting, you act like you got caught watching porn. You know his sleep schedule, he knows your sleep schedule, and you're in a noticeably worse mood if you go a day without talking to him. You spent the entire New Year's party straight-up ignoring the who's who of hot people who want to fuck America's most eligible bachelor to literally watch Henry stand next to the croquembouche. And he kissed you\u2014with tongue!\u2014and you liked it. So, objectively. What do you think it means?\"\n\nAlex stares. \"I mean,\" he says slowly. \"I don't... know.\"\n\nNora frowns, visibly giving up, resumes eating her burrito, and returns her attention to the newsfeed on her laptop. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"No, okay, look,\" Alex says. \"I know, like, objectively, on a fucking graphing calculator, it sounds like a huge embarrassing crush. But, ugh. I don't know! He was my sworn enemy until a couple months ago, and then we were friends, I guess, and now he's kissed me, and I don't know what we... _are._ \"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" Nora says, very much not listening. \"Yep.\"\n\n\"And, still,\" he barrels on. \"In terms of, like, sexuality, what does that make me?\"\n\nNora's eyes snap back up to him. \"Oh, like, I thought we were already there with you being bi and everything,\" she says. \"Sorry, are we not? Did I skip ahead again? My bad. Hello, would you like to come out to me? I'm listening. Hi.\"\n\n\"I don't know!\" he half yells, miserably. \"Am I? Do you think I'm bi?\"\n\n\"I can't tell you that, Alex!\" she says. \"That's the whole point!\"\n\n\"Shit,\" he says, dropping his head back on the cushions. \"I need someone to just tell me. How did you know you were?\"\n\n\"I don't know, man. I was in my junior year of high school, and I touched a boob. It wasn't very profound. Nobody's gonna write an Off-Broadway play about it.\"\n\n\"Really helpful.\"\n\n\"Yup,\" she says, chewing thoughtfully on a chip. \"So, what are you gonna do?\"\n\n\"I have no idea,\" Alex says. \"He's totally ghosted me, so I guess it was awful or a stupid drunk mistake he regrets or\u2014\"\n\n\"Alex,\" she says. \"He _likes_ you. He's freaking out. You're gonna have to decide how you feel about him and do something about it. He's not in a position to do anything else.\"\n\nAlex has no idea what else to say about any of it. Nora's eyes drift back to one of her screens, where Anderson Cooper is unpacking the latest coverage of the Republican presidential hopefuls.\n\n\"Any chance someone other than Richards gets the nomination?\"\n\nAlex sighs. \"Nope. Not according to anybody I've talked to.\"\n\n\"It's almost cute how hard the others are still trying,\" she says, and they lapse into silence.\n\n* * *\n\nAlex is late, again.\n\nHis class is reviewing for the first exam today, and he's late because he lost track of time going over his speech for the campaign event he's doing in fucking _Nebraska_ this weekend, of all godforsaken places. It's Thursday, and he's hauling ass straight from work to the lecture hall, and his exam is next Tuesday, and he's going to _fail_ because he's missing the _review._\n\nThe class is Ethical Issues in International Relations. He really has got to stop taking classes so painfully relevant to his life.\n\nHe gets through the review in a haze of half-distracted shorthand and books it back toward the Residence. He's pissed, honestly. Pissed at everything; a crawling, directionless bad mood that's carrying him up the stairs toward the East and West Bedrooms.\n\nHe throws his bag down at the door of his room and kicks his shoes into the hallway, watching them bounce crookedly across the ugly antique rug.\n\n\"Well, good afternoon to you too, honey biscuit,\" June's voice says. When Alex glances up, she's in her room across the hall, perched on a pastel-pink wingback chair. \"You look like shit.\"\n\n\"Thanks, asshole.\"\n\nHe recognizes the stack of magazines in her lap as her weekly tabloid roundup, and he's just decided he doesn't want to know when she chucks one at him.\n\n\"New _People_ for you,\" she says. \"You're on page fifteen. Oh, and your BFF's on page thirty-one.\"\n\nHe casually extends her the finger over his shoulder and retreats into his room, slumping down onto the couch by the door with the magazine. Since he has it, he might as well.\n\nPage fifteen is a picture of him the press team took two weeks ago, a nice, neat little package on him helping the Smithsonian with an exhibit about his mom's historic presidential campaign. He's explaining the story behind a CLAREMONT FOR CONGRESS '04 yard sign, and there's a brief write-up alongside it about how dedicated he is to the family legacy, blah blah blah.\n\nHe turns to page thirty-one and almost swears out loud.\n\nThe headline: WHO IS PRINCE HENRY'S MYSTERY BLONDE?\n\nThree photos: the first, Henry out at a cafe in London, smiling over coffees at some anonymously pretty blond woman; the second, Henry, slightly out of focus, holding her hand as they duck behind the cafe; the third, Henry, halfway obscured by a shrub, kissing the corner of her mouth.\n\n\"What the _fuck_?\"\n\nThere's a short article accompanying the photos that gives the girl's name, Emily something, an actress, and Alex was generally pissed before, but now he's very singularly pissed, his entire shitty mood funneled down to the point on the page where Henry's lips touch somebody's skin that's not _his._\n\nWho the fuck does Henry think he is? How fucking\u2014how entitled, how aloof, how _selfish_ do you have to be, to spend months becoming someone's friend, let them show you all their weird gross weak parts, kiss them, make them question _everything,_ ignore them for _weeks,_ and go out with someone else and _put it in the press_? Everyone who's ever had a publicist knows the only way anything gets into _People_ is if you want the world to know.\n\nHe throws the magazine down and lunges to his feet, pacing. _Fuck_ Henry. He should never have trusted the silver-spoon little shit. He should have listened to his gut.\n\nHe inhales, exhales.\n\nThe thing is. The thing. Is. He doesn't know if, beyond the initial rush of anger, he actually believes Henry would do this. If he takes the Henry he saw in a teen magazine when he was twelve, the Henry who was so cold to him at the Olympics, the Henry who slowly came unraveled to him over months, and the Henry who kissed him in the shadow of the White House, and he adds them up, he doesn't get this.\n\nAlex has a tactical brain. A politician's brain. It works fast, and it works in many, many directions at once. And right now, he's thinking through a puzzle. He's not always good at thinking: _What if you were him? How would your life be? What would you have to do?_ Instead, he's thinking: _How do these pieces slot together?_\n\nHe thinks about what Nora said: \"Why do you think they're always photographed?\"\n\nAnd he thinks about Henry's guardedness, the way he carries himself with a careful separation from the world around him, the tension at the corner of his mouth. Then he thinks: _If there was a prince, and he was gay, and he kissed someone, and maybe it mattered, that prince might have to run a little bit of interference._\n\nAnd in one great mercurial swing, Alex is not just angry anymore. He's sad too.\n\nHe paces back over to the door and slides his phone out of his messenger bag, thumbs open his messages. He doesn't know which impulse to follow and wrestle into words that he can say to someone and make something, _anything,_ happen.\n\nFaintly, under it all, it occurs to him: This is all a very not-straight way to react to seeing your male frenemy kissing someone else in a magazine.\n\nA little laugh startles out of him, and he walks over to his bed and sits on the edge of it, considering. He considers texting Nora, asking her if he can come over to finally have some big epiphany. He considers calling Rafael Luna and meeting him for beers and asking to hear all about his first gay sexual exploits as an REI-wearing teenage antifascist. And he considers going downstairs and asking Amy about her transition and her wife and how she knew she was different.\n\nBut in the moment, it feels right to go back to the source, to ask someone who's seen whatever is in his eyes when a boy touches him.\n\nHenry's out of the question. Which leaves one person.\n\n\"Hello?\" says the voice over the phone. It's been at least a year since they last talked, but Liam's Texas drawl is unmistakable and warm in Alex's eardrum.\n\nHe clears his throat. \"Uh, hey, Liam. It's Alex.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Liam says, desert-dry.\n\n\"How, um, how have you been?\"\n\nA pause. The sound of quiet talking in the background, dishes. \"You wanna tell me why you're really calling, Alex?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he starts and stops, tries again. \"This might sound weird. But, um. Back in high school, did we have, like, a thing? Did I miss that?\"\n\nThere's a clattering sound on the other side of the phone, like a fork being dropped on a plate. \"Are you seriously calling me right now to talk about this? I'm at lunch with my boyfriend.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" He didn't know Liam had a boyfriend. \"Sorry.\"\n\nThe sound goes muffled, and when Liam speaks again, it's to someone else. \"It's Alex. Yeah, him. I don't know, babe.\" His voice comes back clear again. \"What exactly are you asking me?\"\n\n\"I mean, like, we messed around, but did it, like, mean something?\"\n\n\"I don't think I can answer that question for you,\" Liam tells him. If he's still anything like Alex remembers, he's rubbing one hand on the underside of his jaw, raking through the stubble. He wonders faintly if, perhaps, his clear-as-day memory of Liam's stubble has just answered his own question for him.\n\n\"Right,\" he says. \"You're right.\"\n\n\"Look, man,\" Liam says. \"I don't know what kind of sexual crisis you're having right now, like, four years after it would have been useful, but, well. I'm not saying what we did in high school makes you gay or bi or whatever, but I can tell you _I'm_ gay, and that even though I acted like what we were doing wasn't gay back then, it super was.\" He sighs. \"Does that help, Alex? My Bloody Mary is here and I need to talk to it about this phone call.\"\n\n\"Um, yeah,\" Alex says. \"I think so. Thanks.\"\n\n\"You're welcome.\"\n\nLiam sounds so long-suffering and tired that Alex thinks about all those times back in high school, the way Liam used to look at him, the silence between them since, and feels obligated to add, \"And, um. I'm sorry?\"\n\n\"Jesus _Christ,_ \" Liam groans, and hangs up.\n\n# SIX\n\nHenry can't avoid him forever.\n\nThere's one part of the post-royal wedding arrangement left to fulfill: Henry's presence at a state dinner at the end of January. England has a relatively new prime minister, and Ellen wants to meet him. Henry's coming too, staying in the Residence as a courtesy.\n\nAlex smooths out the lapels on his tux and hovers close to June and Nora as the guests roll in, waiting at the north entrance near the photo line. He's aware that he's rocking anxiously on his heels but can't seem to stop. Nora smirks but says nothing. She's keeping it quiet. He's still not ready to tell June. Telling his sister is irreversible, and he can't do that until he's figured out what exactly this is.\n\nHenry enters stage right.\n\nHis suit is black, smooth, elegant. Perfect. Alex wants to rip it off.\n\nHis face is reserved, then downright ashen when he sees Alex in the entrance hall. His footsteps stutter, as if he's thinking of making a run for it. Alex is not above a flying tackle.\n\nInstead, he keeps walking up the steps, and\u2014\n\n\"All right, photos,\" Zahra hisses over Alex's shoulder.\n\n\"Oh,\" Henry says, like an idiot. Alex hates how much he likes the way that one stupid vowel curls in his accent. He's not even into British accents. He's into _Henry's_ British accent.\n\n\"Hey,\" Alex says under his breath. Fake smile, handshake, cameras flashing. \"Cool to see you're not dead or anything.\"\n\n\"Er,\" Henry says, adding to the list of vowel sounds he has to show for himself. It is, unfortunately, also sexy. After all these weeks, the bar is low.\n\n\"We need to talk,\" Alex says, but Zahra is physically shoving them into a friendly formation, and there are more photos until Alex is being shepherded off with the girls to the State Dining Room while Henry is hauled into photo ops with the prime minister.\n\nThe entertainment for the night is a British indie rocker who looks like a root vegetable and is popular with people in Alex's demographic for reasons he can't even begin to understand. Henry is seated with the prime minister, and Alex sits and chews his food like it's personally wronged him and watches Henry from across the room, seething. Every so often, Henry will look up, catch Alex's eye, go pink around the ears, and return to his rice pilaf as if it's the most fascinating dish on the planet.\n\nHow _dare_ Henry come into Alex's house looking like the goddamn James Bond offspring that he is, drink red wine with the prime minister, and act like he didn't slip Alex the tongue and ghost him for a month.\n\n\"Nora,\" he says, leaning over to her while June is off chatting with an actress from _Doctor Who_. The night is starting to wind down, and Alex is over it. \"Can you get Henry away from his table?\"\n\nShe slants a look at him. \"Is this a diabolical scheme of seduction?\" she asks. \"If so, yes.\"\n\n\"Sure, yes, that,\" he says, and he gets up and heads for the back wall of the room, where the Secret Service is stationed.\n\n\"Amy,\" he hisses, grabbing her by the wrist. She makes a quick, aborted movement, clearly fighting a hardwired takedown reflex. \"I need your help.\"\n\n\"Where's the threat?\" she says immediately.\n\n\"No, no, Jesus.\" Alex swallows. \"Not like that. I need to get Prince Henry alone.\"\n\nShe blinks. \"I don't follow.\"\n\n\"I need to talk to him in private.\"\n\n\"I can accompany you outside if you need to speak with him, but I'll have to get it approved with his security first.\"\n\n\"No,\" Alex says. He scrubs a hand across his face, glancing back over his shoulder to confirm Henry's where he left him, being aggressively talked at by Nora. \"I need him _alone._ \"\n\nThe slightest of expressions crosses over Amy's face. \"The best I can do is the Red Room. You take him any farther and it's a no-go.\"\n\nHe looks over his shoulder again at the tall doors across the State Dining Room. The Red Room is empty on the other side, awaiting the after-dinner cocktails.\n\n\"How long can I have?\" he says.\n\n\"Five min\u2014\"\n\n\"I can make that work.\"\n\nHe turns on his heel and stalks over to the ornamental display of chocolates, where Nora has apparently lured Henry with the promise of profiteroles. He plants himself between them.\n\n\"Hi,\" he says. Nora smiles. Henry's mouth drops open. \"Sorry to interrupt. Important, um. International. Relations. Stuff.\" And he seizes Henry by the elbow and yanks him bodily away.\n\n\"Do you mind?\" Henry has the nerve to say.\n\n\"Shut your face,\" Alex says, briskly leading him away from the tables, where people are too busy mingling and listening to the music to notice Alex frog-marching an heir to the throne out of the dining room.\n\nThey reach the doors, and Amy is there. She hesitates, hand on the knob.\n\n\"You're not going to kill him, are you?\" she says.\n\n\"Probably not,\" Alex tells her.\n\nShe opens the door just enough to let them through, and Alex hauls Henry into the Red Room with him.\n\n\"What on God's earth are you doing?\" Henry demands.\n\n\"Shut _up,_ shut all the way up, oh my God,\" Alex hisses, and if he weren't already hell-bent on destroying Henry's infuriating idiot face with his mouth right now, he would consider doing it with his fist. He's focused on the burst of adrenaline carrying his feet over the antique rug, Henry's tie wrapped around his fist, the flash in Henry's eyes. He reaches the nearest wall, shoves Henry against it, and crushes their mouths together.\n\nHenry's too shocked to respond, mouth falling open slackly in a way that's more surprise than invitation, and for a horrified moment Alex thinks he calculated all wrong, but then Henry's kissing him back, and it's _everything._ It feels as good as\u2014better than\u2014he remembered, and he can't recall why they haven't been doing this the whole time, why they've been running belligerent circles around each other for so long without doing anything about it.\n\n\"Wait,\" Henry says, breaking off. He pulls back to look at Alex, wild-eyed, mouth a vivid red, and Alex could fucking scream if he weren't worried dignitaries in the next room might hear him. \"Should we\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I mean, er, should we, I dunno, slow down?\" Henry says, cringing so hard at himself that one eye closes. \"Go for dinner first, or\u2014\"\n\nAlex is actually going to kill him.\n\n\"We just had dinner.\"\n\n\"Right. I meant\u2014I just thought\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop thinking.\"\n\n\"Yes. Gladly.\"\n\nIn one frantic motion, Alex knocks the candelabra off the table next to them and pushes Henry onto it so he's sitting with his back against\u2014Alex looks up and almost breaks into deranged laughter\u2014a portrait of Alexander Hamilton. Henry's legs fall open readily and Alex crowds up between them, wrenching Henry's head back into another searing kiss.\n\nThey're really moving now, wrecking each other's suits, Henry's lip caught between Alex's teeth, the portrait's frame rattling against the wall when Henry's head drops back and bangs into it. Alex is at his throat, and he's somewhere between angry and giddy, caught up in the space between years of sworn hate and something else he's begun to suspect has always been there. It's white-hot, and he feels crazy with it, lit up from the inside.\n\nHenry gives as good as he gets, hooking one knee around the back of Alex's thigh for leverage, delicate royal sensibilities nowhere in the cut of his teeth. Alex has been learning for a while Henry isn't what he thought, but it's something else to feel it this close up, the quiet burn in him, the pent-up person under the perfect veneer who tries and pushes and wants.\n\nHe drops a hand onto Henry's thigh, feeling the electrical pulse there, the smooth fabric over hard muscle. He pushes up, up, and Henry's hand slams down over his, digging his nails in.\n\n\"Time's up!\" comes Amy's voice through a crack in the doors.\n\nThey freeze, Alex falling back onto his heels. They can both hear it now, the sounds of bodies moving too close for comfort, wrapping up the night. Henry's hips give one tiny push up into him, involuntary, surprised, and Alex swears.\n\n\"I'm going to die,\" Henry says helplessly.\n\n\"I'm going to kill you,\" Alex tells him.\n\n\"Yes, you are,\" Henry agrees.\n\nAlex takes an unsteady step backward.\n\n\"People are gonna be coming in here soon,\" Alex says, reaching down and trying not to fall on his face as he scoops up the candelabra and shoves it back onto the table. Henry is standing now, looking wobbly, his shirt untucked and his hair a mess. Alex reaches up in a panic and starts patting it back into place. \"Fuck, you look\u2014 _fuck._ \"\n\nHenry fumbles with his shirt tail, eyes wide, and starts humming \"God Save the Queen\" under his breath.\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Christ, I'm trying to make it\"\u2014he gestures inelegantly at the front of his pants\u2014\" _go away._ \"\n\nAlex very pointedly does not look down.\n\n\"Okay, so,\" Alex says. \"Yeah. So here's what we're gonna do. You are gonna go be, like, five hundred feet away from me for the rest of the night, or else I am going to do something that I will deeply regret in front of a lot of very important people.\"\n\n\"All right...\"\n\n\"And then,\" Alex says, and he grabs Henry's tie again, close to the knot, and draws his mouth up to a breath away from Henry's. He hears Henry swallow. He wants to follow the sound down his throat. \"And then you are going to come to the East Bedroom on the second floor at eleven o'clock tonight, and I am going to do very bad things to you, and if you fucking ghost me again, I'm going to get you put on a fucking no-fly list. Got it?\"\n\nHenry bites down on a sound that tries to escape his mouth, and rasps, \"Perfectly.\"\n\n* * *\n\nAlex is. Well, Alex is probably losing his mind.\n\nIt's 10:48. He's pacing.\n\nHe threw his jacket and tie over the back of the chair as soon as he returned to his room, and he's got the first two buttons of his dress shirt undone. His hands are twisted up in his hair.\n\nThis is fine. It's fine.\n\nIt's definitely a terrible idea. But it's fine.\n\nHe's not sure if he should take anything else off. He's unsure of the dress code for inviting your sworn-enemy-turned-fake-best-friend to your room to have sex with you, especially when that room is in the White House, and especially when that person is a guy, and especially when that guy is a prince of England.\n\nThe room is dimly lit\u2014a single lamp, in the corner by the couch, washing the deep blues of the walls neutral. He's moved all his campaign files from the bed to the desk and straightened out the bedspread. He looks at the ancient fireplace, the carved details of the mantel almost as old as the country itself, and it may not be Kensington Palace, but it looks all right.\n\nGod, if any ghosts of Founding Fathers are hanging around the White House tonight, they must really be suffering.\n\nHe's trying not to think too hard about what comes next. He may not have experience in practical application, but he's done research. He has diagrams. He can do this.\n\nHe really, really wants to do this. That much he's sure about.\n\nHe closes his eyes, grounds himself with his fingertips on the cool surface of his desk, the feathery little edges of papers there. His mind flashes to Henry, the smooth lines of his suit, the way his breath brushed Alex's cheek when he kissed him. His stomach does some embarrassing acrobatics he plans to never tell anyone about, ever.\n\nHenry, the prince. Henry, the boy in the garden. Henry, the boy in his bed.\n\nHe doesn't, he reminds himself, even have feelings for the guy. Really.\n\nThere's a knock on the door. Alex checks his phone: 10:54.\n\nHe opens the door.\n\nAlex stands there and exhales slowly, eyes on Henry. He's not sure he's ever let himself just _look._\n\nHenry is tall and gorgeous, half royalty, half movie star, red wine lingering on his lips. He's left his jacket and tie behind, and the sleeves of his shirt are pushed up to his elbows. He looks nervous around the corners of his eyes, but he smiles at Alex with one side of his pink mouth and says, \"Sorry I'm early.\"\n\nAlex bites his lip. \"Find your way here okay?\"\n\n\"There was a very helpful Secret Service agent,\" Henry says. \"I think her name was Amy?\"\n\nAlex smiles fully now. \"Get in here.\"\n\nHenry's grin takes over his entire face, not his photograph grin, but one that is crinkly and unguarded and infectious. He hooks his fingertips behind Alex's elbow, and Alex follows his lead, bare feet nudging between Henry's dress shoes. Henry's breath ghosts over Alex's lips, their noses brushing, and when he finally connects, he's smiling into it.\n\nHenry shuts and locks the door behind them, sliding one hand up the nape of Alex's neck, cradling it. There's something different about the way he's kissing now\u2014it's measured, deliberate. _Soft._ Alex isn't sure why, or what to do with it.\n\nHe settles for pulling Henry in by the sway of his waist, pressing their bodies flush. He kisses back, but lets himself be kissed however Henry wants to kiss him, which right now is exactly how he would have expected Prince Charming to kiss in the first place: sweet and deep and like they're standing at sunrise in the fucking moors. He can practically feel the wind in his hair. It's ridiculous.\n\nHenry breaks off and says, \"How do you want to do this?\"\n\nAnd Alex remembers, suddenly, this is not a sunrise-in-the-moors type of situation. He grabs Henry by his loosened collar, pushes a little, and says, \"Get on the couch.\"\n\nHenry's breath hitches and he complies. Alex moves to stand over him, looking down at that soft pink mouth. He feels himself standing at a very tall, very dangerous precipice, with no intention of backing away. Henry looks up at him, expectant, hungry.\n\n\"You've been dodging me for _weeks,_ \" Alex says, widening his stance so his knees bracket Henry's. He leans down and braces one hand against the back of the couch, the other grazing over the vulnerable dip of Henry's throat. \"You went out with a _girl._ \"\n\n\"I'm gay,\" Henry tells him flatly. One of his broad palms flattens over Alex's hip, and Alex inhales sharply, either at the touch or at hearing Henry finally say it out loud. \"Not something wise to pursue as a member of the royal family. And I wasn't sure you weren't going to murder me for kissing you.\"\n\n\"Then why'd you do it?\" Alex asks him. He leans into Henry's neck, dragging his lips over the sensitive skin just behind his ear. He thinks Henry might be holding his breath.\n\n\"Because I\u2014I hoped you wouldn't. Murder me. I had... suspicions you might want me too,\" Henry says. He hisses a little when Alex bites down lightly on the side of his neck. \"Or I thought, until I saw you with Nora, and then I was... jealous... and I was drunk and an idiot who got sick of waiting for the answer to present itself.\"\n\n\"You were _jealous,_ \" Alex says. \"You _want_ me.\"\n\nHenry moves abruptly, heaving Alex off balance with both hands and down into his lap, eyes blazing, and he says in a low and deadly voice Alex has never heard from him before, \"Yes, you preening arse, I've wanted you long enough that I won't have you tease me for another _fucking_ second.\"\n\nTurns out being on the receiving end of Henry's royal authority is an extreme fucking turn-on. He thinks, as he's hauled into a bruising kiss, that he'll never forgive himself for it. So, like, fuck the moors.\n\nHenry gets a grip on Alex's hips and pulls him close, so Alex is properly straddling his lap, and he kisses hard now, more like he had in the Red Room, with teeth. It shouldn't work so perfectly\u2014it makes absolutely no _sense_ \u2014but it does. There's something about the two of them, the way they ignite at different temperatures, Alex's frenetic energy and Henry's aching sureness.\n\nHe grinds down into Henry's lap, grunting as he's met with Henry already half-hard under him, and Henry's curse in response is buried in Alex's mouth. The kisses turn messy, then, urgent and graceless, and Alex gets lost in the drag and slide and press of Henry's lips, the sweet liquor of it. He pushes his hands into Henry's hair, and it's as soft as he always imagined when he would trace the photo of Henry in June's magazine, lush and thick under his fingers. Henry melts at the touch, wraps his arms around Alex's waist and holds him there. Alex isn't going anywhere.\n\nHe kisses Henry until it feels like he can't breathe, until it feels like he's going to forget both of their names and titles, until they're only two people tangled up in a dark room making a brilliant, epic, unstoppable mistake.\n\nHe manages to get the next two buttons on his shirt undone before Henry grabs it by the tails and pulls it off over his head and makes quick work of his own. Alex tries not to be in awe of the simple agility of his hands, tries not to think about classical piano or how swift and smooth years of polo have trained Henry to be.\n\n\"Hang on,\" Henry says, and Alex is already groaning in protest, but Henry pulls back and rests his fingertips on Alex's lips to shush him. \"I want\u2014\" His voice starts and stops, and he's looking like he's resolving not to cringe at himself again. He gathers himself, stroking a finger up to Alex's cheek before jutting his chin out defiantly. \"I want you on the bed.\"\n\nAlex goes fully silent and still, looking into Henry's eyes and the question there: _Are you going to stop this now that it's real?_\n\n\"Well, come on, Your Highness,\" Alex says, shifting his weight to give Henry a last tease before he stands.\n\n\"You're a dick,\" Henry says, but he follows, smiling.\n\nAlex climbs onto the bed, sliding back to prop himself up on his elbows by the pillows, watching as Henry kicks off his shoes and regains his bearings. He looks transformed in the lamplight, like a god of debauchery, painted gold with his hair all mussed up and his eyes heavy-lidded. Alex lets himself stare; the whipcord muscle under his skin, lean and long and lithe. The spot right at the dip of his waist below his ribs looks impossibly soft, and Alex might die if he can't fit his hand into that little curve in the next five seconds.\n\nIn an instant of sudden, vivid clarity, he can't believe he ever thought he was straight.\n\n\"Quit stalling,\" Alex says, pointedly interrupting the moment.\n\n\"Bossy,\" Henry says, and he complies.\n\nHenry's body settles over him with a warm, steady weight, one of his thighs sliding between Alex's legs and his hands bracing on the pillows, and Alex feels the points of contact like a static shock at his shoulders, his hips, the center of his chest.\n\nOne of Henry's hands slides up his stomach and stops, having encountered the old silver key on the chain resting over his sternum.\n\n\"What's this?\"\n\nAlex huffs impatiently. \"The key to my mom's house in Texas,\" he says, winding a hand back into Henry's hair. \"I started wearing it when I moved here. I guess I thought it would remind me of where I came from or something\u2014did I or did I not tell you to quit stalling?\"\n\nHenry looks up into his eyes, speechless, and Alex tugs him down into another all-consuming kiss, and Henry bears down on him fully, pressing him into the bed. Alex's other hand finds that dip of Henry's waist, and he swallows a sound at how devastating it feels under his palm. He's never been kissed like this, as if the feeling could swallow him up whole, Henry's body grinding down and covering every inch of his. He moves his mouth from Henry's to the side of his neck, the spot below his ear, kisses and kisses it, and bares his teeth. Alex knows it'll probably leave a mark, which is against rule number one of clandestine hookups for political offspring\u2014and probably royals too. He doesn't care.\n\nHe feels Henry find the waistband of his pants, the button, the zipper, the elastic of his underwear, and then everything goes very hazy, very quickly.\n\nHe opens his eyes to see Henry bringing his hand demurely up to his elegant royal mouth to _spit_ on it.\n\n\"Oh my fucking God,\" Alex says, and Henry grins crookedly as he gets back to work. \"Fuck.\" His body is moving, his mouth spilling words. \"I can't believe\u2014God, you are the most insufferable goddamn bastard on the face of the planet, do you know that\u2014fuck\u2014you're infuriating, you're the worst\u2014you're\u2014\"\n\n\"Do you _ever_ stop talking?\" Henry says. \"Such a _mouth_ on you.\" And when Alex looks again, he finds Henry watching him raptly, eyes bright and smiling. He keeps eye contact and his rhythm at the same time, and Alex was wrong before, Henry's going to be the one to kill him, not the other way around.\n\n\"Wait,\" Alex says, clenching his fist in the bedspread, and Henry immediately stills. \"I mean, _yes,_ obviously, _oh my God,_ but, like, if you keep doing that I'm gonna\"\u2014Alex's breath catches\u2014\"it's, that's just\u2014that's not _allowed_ before I get to see you naked.\"\n\nHenry tilts his head and smirks. \"All right.\"\n\nAlex flips them over, kicking off his pants until only his underwear is left slung low on his hips, and he climbs up the length of Henry's body, watching his face grow anxious, eager.\n\n\"Hi,\" he says, when he reaches Henry's eye level.\n\n\"Hello,\" Henry says back.\n\n\"I'm gonna take your pants off now,\" Alex tells him.\n\n\"Yes, good, carry on.\"\n\nAlex does, and one of Henry's hands slides down, leveraging one of Alex's thighs up so their bodies meet again right at the hard crux between them, and they both groan. Alex thinks, dizzily, that it's been nearly five years of foreplay, and enough is enough.\n\nHe moves his lips down to Henry's chest, and he feels under his mouth the beat Henry's heart skips at the realization of what Alex intends. His own heartbeat is probably falling out of rhythm too. He's in so far over his head, but that's good\u2014that's pretty much his comfort zone. He kisses Henry's solar plexus, his stomach, the stretch of skin above his waistband.\n\n\"I've, uh,\" Alex begins. \"I've never actually done this before.\"\n\n\"Alex,\" Henry says, reaching down to stroke at Alex's hair, \"you don't have to, I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"No, I want to,\" Alex says, tugging at Henry's waistband. \"I just need you to tell me if it's awful.\"\n\nHenry is speechless again, looking as if he can't believe his fucking luck. \"Okay. Of course.\"\n\nAlex pictures Henry barefoot in a Kensington Palace kitchen and the little sliver of vulnerability he got to see so early on, and he thrills at Henry now, in his bed, spread out and naked and wanting. This can't be really happening after everything, but miraculously, it is.\n\nIf he's going by the way Henry's body responds, by the way Henry's hand sweeps up into his hair and clutches a fistful of curls, he guesses he does okay for a first try. He looks up the length of Henry's body and is met with burning eye contact, a red lip caught between white teeth. Henry drops his head back on the pillow and groans something that sounds like \"fucking _eyelashes._ \" He's maybe a little bit in awe of how Henry arches up off the mattress, at hearing his sweet, posh voice reciting a litany of profanities to the ceiling. Alex is living for it, watching Henry come undone, letting him be whatever he needs to be while alone with Alex behind a locked door.\n\nHe's surprised to find himself hauled up to Henry's mouth and kissed hungrily. He's been with girls who didn't like to be kissed afterward and girls who didn't mind it, but Henry revels in it, based on the deep and comprehensive way he's kissing him. It occurs to him to make a comment about narcissism, but instead\u2014\n\n\"Not awful?\" Alex says between kisses, resting his head on the pillow next to Henry's to catch his breath.\n\n\"Definitely adequate,\" Henry answers, grinning, and he scoops Alex up against his chest greedily as if he's trying to touch all of him at once. Henry's hands are huge on his back, his jaw sharp and rough with a long day's stubble, his shoulders broad enough to eclipse Alex when he rolls them over and pins Alex to the mattress. None of it feels anything like anything he's felt before, but it's just as good, maybe better.\n\nHenry's kissing him aggressively once more, confident in a way that's rare from Henry. Messy earnestness and rough focus, not a dutiful prince but any other twenty-something boy enjoying himself doing something he likes, something he's good at. And he is _good_ at it. Alex makes a mental note to figure out which shadowy gay noble taught Henry all this and send the man a fruit basket.\n\nHenry returns the favor happily, hungrily, and Alex doesn't know or care what sounds or words come out of his mouth. He thinks one of them is \"sweetheart\" and another is \"motherfucker.\" Henry is one talented bastard, a man of many hidden gifts, Alex muses half-hysterically. A true prodigy. God Save the Queen.\n\nWhen he's done, he presses a sticky kiss in the crease of Alex's leg where he'd slung it over his shoulder, managing to come off polite, and Alex wants to drag Henry up by the hair, but his body is boneless and wrecked. He's blissed out, dead. Ascended to the next plane, merely a pair of eyes floating through a dopamine haze.\n\nThe mattress shifts, and Henry moves up to the pillows, nuzzling his face into the hollow of Alex's throat. Alex makes a vague noise of approval, and his arms fumble around Henry's waist, but he's helpless to do much else. He's sure he used to know quite a lot of words, in more than one language, in fact, but he can't seem to recall any of them.\n\n\"Hmm,\" Henry hums, the tip of his nose catching on Alex's. \"If I had known this was all it took to shut you up, I'd have done it ages ago.\"\n\nWith a feat of Herculean strength, he summons up two whole words: \"Fuck you.\"\n\nDistantly, through a slowly clearing fog, through a messy kiss, Alex can't help marveling at the knowledge that he's crossed some kind of Rubicon, here in this room that's almost as old as the country it's in, like Washington crossing the Delaware. He laughs into Henry's mouth, instantly caught up in his own dramatic mental portrait of the two them painted in oils, young icons of their nations, naked and shining wet in the lamplight. He wishes Henry could see it, wonders if he'd find the image as funny.\n\nHenry rolls over onto his back. Alex's body wants to follow and tuck into his side, but he stays where he is, watching from a few safe inches away. He can see a muscle in Henry's jaw flexing.\n\n\"Hey,\" he says. He pokes Henry in the arm. \"Don't freak out.\"\n\n\"I'm not _freaking out,_ \" he says, enunciating the words.\n\nAlex wriggles an inch closer in the sheets. \"It was fun,\" Alex says. \"I had fun. You had fun, right?\"\n\n\"Definitely,\" he says, in a tone that sends a lazy spark up Alex's spine.\n\n\"Okay, cool. So, we can do this again, anytime you want,\" Alex says, dragging the back of his knuckles down Henry's shoulder. \"And you know this doesn't, like, change anything between us, right? We're still... whatever we were before, just, you know. With blowjobs.\"\n\nHenry covers his eyes with one hand. \"Right.\"\n\n\"So,\" Alex says, changing tracks by stretching languidly, \"I guess I should tell you, I'm bisexual.\"\n\n\"Good to know,\" Henry says. His eyes flicker down to Alex's hip, where it's bared above the sheet, and he says as much to himself as to Alex, \"I am very, very gay.\"\n\nAlex watches his small smile, the way it wrinkles the corners of his eyes, and very deliberately does not kiss it.\n\nPart of his brain keeps getting stuck on how strange, and strangely wonderful, it is to see Henry like this, open and bare in every way. Henry leans across the pillow to Alex and presses a soft kiss to his mouth, and Alex feels fingertips brush over his jaw. The touch is so gentle he has to once again remind himself not to care too much.\n\n\"Hey,\" Alex tells him, sliding his mouth closer to Henry's ear, \"you're welcome to stay as long as you want, but I should warn you it's probably in both of our best interests if you go back to your room before morning. Unless you want the PPOs to lock the Residence down and come requisition you from my boudoir.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Henry says. He pulls away from Alex and rolls back over, looking up to the ceiling again like a man seeking penance from a wrathful god. \"You're right.\"\n\n\"You can stay for another round, if you want to,\" Alex offers.\n\nHenry coughs, scrubs a hand through his hair. \"I rather think I'd\u2014I'd better get back to my room.\"\n\nAlex watches him fish his boxers from the foot of the bed and start pulling them back on, sitting up and shaking out his shoulders.\n\nIt's for the best this way, he tells himself; nobody will get any wrong ideas about what exactly this arrangement is. They're not going to spoon all night or wake up in each other's arms or eat breakfast together. Mutually satisfying sexual experiences do not a relationship make.\n\nEven if he did want that, there are a million reasons why this will never, ever be possible.\n\nAlex follows him to the door, watching him turn to hover there awkwardly.\n\n\"Well, er...\" Henry attempts, looking down at his feet.\n\nAlex rolls his eyes. \"For fuck's sake, man, you just had my dick in your mouth, you can kiss me good-night.\"\n\nHenry looks back up at him, his mouth open and incredulous, and he throws his head back and _laughs,_ and it's only him, the nerdy, neurotic, sweet, insomniac rich guy who constantly sends Alex photos of his dog, and something slots into place. He leans down and kisses him fiercely, and then he's grinning and gone.\n\n* * *\n\n\"You're doing _what_?\"\n\nIt's sooner than either of them expected\u2014only two weeks since the state dinner, two weeks of wanting Henry back under him as soon as possible and saying everything short of that in their texts. June keeps looking at him like she's going to throw his phone in the Potomac.\n\n\"An invitation-only charity polo match this weekend,\" Henry says over the phone. \"It's in...\" He pauses, probably referring back to whatever itinerary Shaan has given him. \"Greenwich, Connecticut? It's $10,000 a seat, but I can have you added to the list.\"\n\nAlex almost fumbles his coffee all over the south entryway. Amy glares at him. \"Jesus _fuck._ That is _obscene,_ what are you raising money for, monocles for babies?\" He covers the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand. \"Where's Zahra? I need to clear my schedule for this weekend.\" He uncovers the phone. \"Look, I guess I'll _try_ to make it, but I'm really busy right now.\"\n\n* * *\n\n\"I'm sorry, Zahra said you're bailing on the fund-raiser this weekend because you're going to a _polo match_ in _Connecticut_?\" June asks from his bedroom doorway that night, almost startling another cup of coffee out of his hands.\n\n\"Listen,\" Alex tells her, \"I'm trying to keep up a geopolitical public relations ruse here.\"\n\n\"Dude, people are writing _fan fiction_ about y'all\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, Nora sent me that.\"\n\n\"\u2014I think you can give it a _rest._ \"\n\n\"The crown wants me to be there!\" he lies quickly. She seems unconvinced and leaves him with a parting look he'd probably be concerned about if he cared more about things that aren't Henry's mouth right now.\n\nWhich is how he ends up in his J. Crew best on a Saturday at the Greenwich Polo Club, wondering what the hell he's gotten himself into. The woman in front of him is wearing a hat with an entire taxidermied pigeon on it. High school lacrosse did not prepare him for this kind of sporting event.\n\nHenry on horseback is nothing new. Henry in full polo gear\u2014the helmet, the polo sleeves capped right at the bulge of his biceps, the snug white pants tucked into tall leather boots, the intricately buckled leather knee padding, the leather gloves\u2014is familiar. He has seen it before. Categorically, it should be boring. It should not provoke anything visceral, carnal, or bodice-ripping in nature in him at all.\n\nBut Henry urging his horse across the field with the power of his thighs, his ass bouncing hard in the saddle, the way the muscles in his arms stretch and flex when he swings, looking the way he does and wearing the things he's wearing\u2014it's a lot.\n\nHe's sweating. It's February in Connecticut, and Alex is sweating under his coat.\n\nWorst of all, Henry is _good_. Alex doesn't pretend to care about the rules of the game, but his primary turn-on has always been competence. It's too easy to look at Henry's boots digging into the stirrups for leverage and conjure up a memory of bare calves underneath, bare feet planted just as firmly on the mattress. Henry's thighs open the same way, but with Alex between them. Sweat dripping down Henry's brow onto his throat. Just, uh... well, just like that.\n\nHe wants\u2014God, after all this time ignoring it, he wants it again, now, _right now._\n\nThe match ends after a circle-of-hell amount of time, and Alex feels like he'll pass out or scream if he doesn't get his hands on Henry soon, like the only thought possible in the universe is Henry's body and Henry's flushed face and every other molecule in existence is just an inconvenience.\n\n\"I don't like that look,\" Amy says when they reach the bottom of the stands, peering into his eyes. \"You look... sweaty.\"\n\n\"I'm gonna go, uh,\" Alex says. \"Say hi to Henry.\"\n\nAmy's mouth settles into a grim line. \"Please don't elaborate.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know,\" Alex says. \"Plausible deniability.\"\n\n\"I don't know what you could possibly mean.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" He rakes a hand through his hair. \"Yep.\"\n\n\"Enjoy your summit with the English delegation,\" she tells him flatly, and Alex sends up a vague prayer of thanks for staff NDAs.\n\nHe legs it toward the stables, limbs already buzzing with the steady knowledge of Henry's body getting incrementally closer to his. Long, lean legs, grass stains on pristine, tight pants, why does this sport have to be so completely _repulsive_ while Henry looks so damn _good_ doing it\u2014\n\n\"Oh shit\u2014\"\n\nHe barely stops himself from running headfirst into Henry in the flesh, who has rounded the corner of the stables.\n\n\"Oh, hello.\"\n\nThey stand there staring at each other, fifteen days removed from Henry swearing at the ceiling of Alex's bedroom and unsure how to proceed. Henry is still in his full polo regalia, gloves and all, and Alex can't decide if he is pleased or wants to brain him with a polo stick. Polo bat? Polo club? Polo... mallet? This sport is a travesty.\n\nHenry breaks the silence by adding, \"I was coming to find you, actually.\"\n\n\"Yeah, hi, here I am.\"\n\n\"Here you are.\"\n\nAlex glances over his shoulder. \"There's, uh. Cameras. Three o'clock.\"\n\n\"Right,\" Henry says, straightening his shoulders. His hair is messy and slightly damp, color still high in his cheeks from exertion. He's going to look like goddamn Apollo in the photos when they go to press. Alex smiles, knowing they'll sell.\n\n\"Hey, isn't there, uh, a thing?\" Alex says. \"You needed to. Uh. Show me?\"\n\nHenry looks at him, glances at the dozens of millionaires and socialites milling around, and back at him. \"Now?\"\n\n\"It was a four-and-a-half-hour car ride up here, and I have to go back to DC in an hour, so I don't know when else you're expecting to show it to me.\"\n\nHenry takes a beat, his eyes flickering to the cameras again before he switches on a stage smile and a laugh, cuffing Alex on the shoulder. \"Ah, yes. Right. This way.\"\n\nHe turns on his boot heel and leads the way around the back of the stables, veering right into a doorway, and Alex follows. It's a small, windowless room attached to the stables, fragrant with leather polish and stained wood from floor to ceiling, the walls lined with heavy saddles, riding crops, bridles, and reins.\n\n\"What in the rich-white-people-sex-dungeon hell?\" Alex wonders aloud as Henry crosses behind him. He whips a thick leather strap off a hook on the wall, and Alex almost blacks out.\n\n\"What?\" Henry says offhandedly, bypassing him to bind the doors shut. He turns around, sweet-faced and unbelievable. \"It's called a tack room.\"\n\nAlex drops his coat and takes three swift steps toward him. \"I don't actually care,\" he says, and grabs Henry by the stupid collar of his stupid polo and kisses his stupid mouth.\n\nIt's a good kiss, solid and hot, and Alex can't decide where to put his hands because he wants to put them everywhere at once.\n\n_\"Ugh,\"_ he groans in exasperation, shoving Henry backward by the shoulders and making a disgusted show of looking him up and down. \"You look _ridiculous._ \"\n\n\"Should I\u2014\" He steps back and puts a foot up on a nearby bench, moving to undo his kneepads.\n\n\"What? No, of course not, keep them on,\" Alex says. Henry freezes, standing there all artistically posed with his thighs apart and one knee up, the fabric straining. \"Oh my God, what are you doing? I can't even look at you.\" Henry frowns. \"No, Jesus, I just meant\u2014I'm so _mad_ at you.\" Henry gingerly puts his boot back on the floor. Alex wants to die. \"Just, come here. _Fuck._ \"\n\n\"I'm quite confused.\"\n\n\"Me fucking too,\" Alex says, profoundly suffering for something he must have done in a previous life. \"Listen, I don't know why, but this whole _thing_ \"\u2014he gestures at Henry's entire physical presence\u2014\"is... really doing it for me, so, I just need to.\" Without any further ceremony, he drops to his knees and starts undoing Henry's belt, tugging at the fastenings of his pants.\n\n\"Oh, God,\" Henry says.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Alex agrees, and he gets Henry's boxers down.\n\n\"Oh, _God,_ \" Henry repeats, this time with feeling.\n\nIt's all still so new to Alex, but it's not difficult to follow through on what's been playing out in elaborate detail in his head for the past hour. When he looks up, Henry's face is flushed and transfixed, his lips parted. It almost hurts to look at him\u2014the athlete's focus, all the dressings of aristocracy laid wide open for him. He's watching Alex, eyes blown dark and hazy, and Alex is watching him right back, every nerve in both bodies narrowed down to a single point.\n\nIt's fast and dirty and Henry is swearing up a storm, which is still disarmingly sexy, but this time it's punctuated by the occasional word of praise, and somehow that's even hotter. Alex isn't prepared for the way \"that's good\" sounds in Henry's rounded Buckingham vowels, or for how luxury leather feels when it strokes approvingly down his cheek, a gloved thumb brushing the corner of his mouth.\n\nAs soon as Henry's finished, he's got Alex on the bench and is putting his kneepads to use.\n\n\"I'm still fucking mad at you,\" Alex says, destroyed, slumped forward with his forehead resting on Henry's shoulder.\n\n\"Of course you are,\" Henry says vaguely.\n\nAlex completely undermines his point by pulling Henry into a deep and lingering kiss, and another, and they kiss for an amount of time he decides not to count or think about.\n\nThey sneak out quietly, and Henry touches Alex's shoulder at the gate near where his SUV waits, presses his palm into the wool of his coat and the knot of muscle.\n\n\"I don't suppose you'll be anywhere near Kensington anytime soon?\"\n\n\"That shithole?\" he says with a wink. \"Not if I can help it.\"\n\n\"Oi,\" Henry says. He's grinning now. \"That's disrespect of the crown, that is. Insubordination. I've thrown men in the dungeons for less.\"\n\nAlex turns, walking backward toward the car, hands in the air. \"Hey, don't threaten me with a good time.\"\n\n> Paris?\n\n* * *\n\n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 3\/3\/20 7:32 PM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Whatever,\n> \n> Don't make me learn your actual title.\n> \n> Are you going to be at the Paris fund-raiser for rainforest conservation this weekend?\n> \n> Alex\n> \n> First Son of Your Former Colony\n> \n> Re: Paris?\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 3\/4\/20 2:14 AM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex, First Son of Off-Brand England:\n> \n> First, you should know how terribly inappropriate it is for you to intentionally botch my title. I could have you made into a royal settee cushion for that kind of l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9. Fortunately for you, I do not think you would complement my sitting room decor.\n> \n> Secondly, no, I will not be attending the Paris fund-raiser; I have a previous engagement. You shall have to find someone else to accost in a cloakroom.\n> \n> Regards,\n> \n> His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales\n> \n> Re: Paris?\n\n* * *\n\n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 3\/4\/20 2:27 AM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> Huge Raging Headache Prince Henry of Who Cares,\n> \n> It is amazing you can sit down to write emails with that gigantic royal stick up your ass. I seem to remember you really enjoying being \"accosted.\"\n> \n> Everyone there is going to be boring anyway. What are you doing?\n> \n> Alex\n> \n> First Son of Hating Fund-raisers\n> \n> Re: Paris?\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 3\/4\/20 2:32 AM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex, First Son of Shirking Responsibilities:\n> \n> A royal stick is formally known as a \"scepter.\"\n> \n> I've been sent to a summit in Germany to act as if I know anything about wind power. Primarily, I'll be getting lectured by old men in lederhosen and posing for photos with windmills. The monarchy has decided we care about sustainable energy, apparently\u2014or at least that we want to appear to. An utter romp.\n> \n> Re: fund-raiser guests, I thought you said I was boring?\n> \n> Regards,\n> \n> Harangued Royal Highness\n> \n> Re: Paris?\n\n* * *\n\n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 3\/4\/20 2:34 AM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> Horrible Revolting Heir,\n> \n> It's recently come to my attention you're not quite as boring as I thought. Sometimes. Namely when you're doing the thing with your tongue.\n> \n> Alex\n> \n> First Son of Questionable Late Night Emails\n> \n> Re: Paris?\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 3\/4\/20 2:37 AM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex, First Son of Inappropriately Timed Emails When I'm in Early Morning Meetings:\n> \n> Are you trying to get fresh with me?\n> \n> Regards,\n> \n> Handsome Royal Heretic\n> \n> Re: Paris?\n\n* * *\n\n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 3\/4\/20 2:41 AM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> His Royal Horniness,\n> \n> If I were trying to get fresh with you, you would know it.\n> \n> For example: I've been thinking about your mouth on me all week, and I was hoping I'd see you in Paris so I could put it to use.\n> \n> I was also thinking you might know how to pick French cheeses. Not my area of expertise.\n> \n> Alex\n> \n> First Son of Cheese Shopping and Blowjobs\n> \n> Re: Paris?\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 3\/4\/20 2:43 AM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex, First Son of Making Me Spill My Tea in Said Early Morning Meeting:\n> \n> Hate you. Will try to get out of Germany.\n> \n> x\n\n# SEVEN\n\nHenry does get out of Germany, and he meets Alex near a herd of cr\u00eape-eating tourists by Place du Tertre, wearing a sharp blue blazer and a wicked smile. They stumble back to his hotel after two bottles of wine, and Henry sinks to his knees on the white marble and looks up at Alex with big, blue, bottomless eyes, and Alex doesn't know a word in any language to describe it.\n\nHe's so drunk, and Henry's mouth is so soft, and it's all so fucking French that he forgets to send Henry back to his own hotel. He forgets they don't spend the night. So, they do.\n\nHe discovers Henry sleeps curled up on his side, his spine poking out in little sharp points that are actually soft if you reach out and touch them, very carefully so as not to wake him because he's actually sleeping for once. In the morning, room service brings up crusty baguettes and sticky tarts filled with fat apricots and a copy of _Le Monde_ that Alex makes Henry translate out loud.\n\nHe vaguely remembers telling himself they weren't going to do things like this. It's all a little hazy right now.\n\nWhen Henry's gone, Alex finds the stationery by the bed: _Fromagerie Nicole Barth\u00e9l\u00e9my._ Leaving your clandestine hookup directions to a Parisian cheese shop. Alex has to admit: Henry really has a solid handle on his personal brand.\n\nLater, Zahra texts him a screencap of a _BuzzFeed_ article about his \"best bromance ever\" with Henry. It's a mix of photos: the state dinner, a couple of shots of them grinning outside the stables in Greenwich, one picked up from a French girl's Twitter of Alex leaning back in his chair at a tiny cafe table while Henry finishes off the bottle of red between them.\n\nBeneath it, Zahra has begrudgingly written: Good work, you little shit.\n\nHe guesses this is how they're going to do this\u2014the world is going to keep thinking they're best friends, and they're going to keep playing the part.\n\nHe knows, objectively, he should pace himself. It's only physical. But Perfect Stoic Prince Charming laughs when he comes, and texts Alex at weird hours of the night: You're a mad, spiteful, unmitigated demon, and I'm going to kiss you until you forget how to talk. And Alex is kind of obsessed with it.\n\nAlex decides not to think too hard. Normally they'd only cross paths a few times a year; it takes creative schedule wrangling and a little sweet-talking of their respective teams to see each other as often as their bodies demand. At least they've got a ruse of international public relations.\n\nTheir birthdays, it turns out, are less than three weeks apart, which means, for most of March, Henry is twenty-three and Alex is twenty-one. (\"I knew he was a goddamn Pisces,\" June says). Alex happens to have a voter registration drive at NYU at the end of March, and when he texts Henry about it, he gets a brisk response fifteen minutes later: Have rescheduled visit to New York for nonprofit business to this weekend. Will be in the city ready to carry out birthday floggings &c.\n\nThe photographers are readily visible when they meet in front of the Met, so they clasp each other's hands and Alex says through his big on-camera smile, \"I want you alone, now.\"\n\nThey're more careful in the States, and they go up to the hotel room one at a time\u2014Henry through the back flanked by two tall PPOs, and later, Alex with Cash, who grins and knows and says nothing.\n\nThere's a lot of champagne and kissing and buttercream from a birthday cupcake Henry's inexplicably procured smeared around Alex's mouth, Henry's chest, Alex's throat, between Henry's hips. Henry pins his wrists to the mattress and swallows him down, and Alex is drunk and fucking transported, feeling every moment of twenty-two years and not a single day older, some kind of hedonistic youth of history. Birthday head from another country's prince will do that.\n\nIt's the last time they see each other for weeks, and after a lot of teasing and maybe some begging, he convinces Henry to download Snapchat. Henry mostly sends tame, fully clothed thirst traps that make Alex sweat in his lectures: a mirror shot, mud-stained white polo pants, a sharp suit. On a Saturday, the C-SPAN stream on his phone gets interrupted by Henry on a sailboat, smiling into the camera with the sun bright on his bare shoulders, and Alex's heart goes so fucking weird that he has to put his head in his hands for a full minute.\n\n(But, like. It's fine. It's not a whole thing.)\n\nBetween it all, they talk about Alex's campaign job, Henry's nonprofit projects, both of their appearances. They talk about how Pez is now proclaiming himself fully in love with June and spends half his time with Henry rhapsodizing about her or begging him to ask Alex if she likes flowers (yes) or exotic birds (to look at, not to own) or jewelry in the shape of her own face (no).\n\nThere are a lot of days when Henry is happy to hear from him and quick to respond, a fast, cutting sense of humor, hungry for Alex's company and the tangle of thoughts in Alex's head. But sometimes, he's taken over by a dark mood, an unusually acerbic wit, strange and vitrified. He'll withdraw for hours or days, and Alex comes to understand this as grief time, little bouts of depression, or times of \"too much.\" Henry hates those days completely. Alex wishes he could help, but he doesn't particularly mind. He's just as attracted to Henry's cloudy tempers, the way he comes back from them, and the millions of shades in between.\n\nHe's also learned that Henry's placid demeanor is shattered with the right poking. He likes to bring up things he knows will get Henry going, including:\n\n\"Listen,\" Henry is saying, heated, over the phone on a Thursday night. \"I don't give a damn what _Joanne_ has to say, Remus John Lupin is gay as the day is long, and I won't hear a word against it.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Alex says. \"For the record, I agree with you, but also, tell me more.\"\n\nHe launches into a long-winded tirade, and Alex listens, amused and a little awed, as Henry works his way to his point: \"I just think, as the prince of this bloody country, that when it comes to Britain's _positive_ cultural landmarks, it would be nice if we could not throw our own marginalized people under the proverbial bus. People sanitize Freddie Mercury or Elton John or Bowie, who was shagging Jagger up and down Oakley Street in the seventies, I might add. It's just not the _truth._ \"\n\nIt's another thing Henry does\u2014whipping out these analyses of what he reads or watches or listens to that confronts Alex with the fact that he has both a degree in English literature and a vested interest in the gay history of his family's country. Alex has always _known_ his gay American history\u2014after all, his parents' politics have been part of it\u2014but it wasn't until he figured himself out that he started to _engage_ with it like Henry.\n\nHe's starting to understand what swelled in his chest the first time he read about Stonewall, why he ached over the SCOTUS decision in 2015. He starts catching up voraciously in his spare time: Walt Whitman, the Laws of Illinois 1961, The White Night Riot, _Paris Is Burning._ He's pinned a photo over his desk at work, a man at a rally in the '80s in a jacket that says across the back: IF I DIE OF AIDS\u2014FORGET BURIAL\u2014JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE F.D.A.\n\nJune's eyes stick on it one day when she drops by the office to have lunch with him, giving him the same strange look she gave him over coffee the morning after Henry snuck into his room. But she doesn't say anything, carries on through sushi about her latest project, pulling all her journals together into a memoir. Alex wonders if any of this stuff would make it into there. Maybe, if he tells her soon. He should tell her soon.\n\nIt's weird that the thing with Henry could make him understand this huge part of himself, but it does. When he sinks into thoughts of Henry's hands, square knuckles and elegant fingers, he wonders how he never realized it before. When he sees Henry next at a gala in Berlin, and he feels that gravitational pull, chases it down in the back of a limo, and binds Henry's wrists to a hotel bedpost with his own necktie, he knows himself better.\n\nWhen he shows up for a weekly briefing two days later, Zahra grabs his jaw with one hand and turns his head, peering closer at the side of his neck. \"Is that a _hickey_?\"\n\nAlex freezes. \"I... um, no?\"\n\n\"Do I look stupid to you, Alex?\" Zahra says. \"Who is giving you hickeys, and why have you not gotten them to sign an NDA?\"\n\n\"Oh my God,\" he says, because really, the last person Zahra needs to be concerned about leaking sordid details is Henry. \"If I needed an NDA, you would know. Chill.\"\n\nZahra does not appreciate being told to chill.\n\n\"Look at me,\" she says. \"I have known you since you were still leaving skid marks in your drawers. You think I don't know when you're lying to me?\" She jabs a pointy, polished nail into his chest. \"However you got that, it better be somebody off the approved list of girls you are allowed to be seen with during the election cycle, which I will email to you again as soon as you get out of my sight in case you have misplaced it.\"\n\n\"Jesus, okay.\"\n\n\"And to remind you,\" she goes on, \"I will chop my own tit off before I let you pull some idiotic stunt to cause your mother, our first female president, to be the first president to lose reelection since H fucking W. Do you understand me? I will lock you in your room for the next year if I have to, and you can take your finals by fucking smoke signal. I will staple your dick to the inside of your leg if that keeps it in your fucking pants.\"\n\nShe returns to her notes with smooth professionalism, as if she has not just threatened his life. Behind her, he can see June at her place at the table, very clearly aware that he's lying too.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Do you have a last name?\"\n\nAlex has never actually offered a greeting when calling Henry.\n\n\"What?\" The usual bemused, elongated, one-syllable response.\n\n\"A last name,\" Alex repeats. It's late afternoon and stormy outside the Residence, and he's on his back in the middle of the Solarium, catching up on drafts for work. \"That thing I have two of. Do you use your dad's? Henry Fox? That sounds fucking dope. Or does royalty outrank? Do you use your mom's name, then?\"\n\nHe hears some shuffling over the phone and wonders if Henry's in bed. They haven't been able to see each other in a couple weeks, so his mind is quick to supply the image.\n\n\"The official family name is Mountchristen-Windsor,\" Henry says. \"Hyphenate, like yours. So my full name is... Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor.\"\n\nAlex gapes up at the ceiling. \"Oh... my God.\"\n\n\"Truly.\"\n\n\"I thought Alexander Gabriel Claremont-Diaz was bad.\"\n\n\"Is that after someone?\"\n\n\"Alexander after the founding father, Gabriel after the patron saint of diplomats.\"\n\n\"That's a bit on the nose.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I didn't have a chance. My sister got Catalina June after the place and the Carter Cash, but I got all the self-fulfilling prophecies.\"\n\n\"I did get both of the gay kings,\" Henry points out. \"There's a prophecy for you.\"\n\nAlex laughs and kicks his files for the campaign away. He's not coming back to them tonight. \"Three last names is just mean.\"\n\nHenry sighs. \"In school, we all went by Wales. Philip is Lieutenant Windsor in the RAF now, though.\"\n\n\"Henry Wales, then? That's not too bad.\"\n\n\"No, it's not. Is this the reason you phoned?\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Alex says. \"Call it historical curiosity.\" Except the truth is closer to the slight drag in Henry's voice and the half step of hesitation before he speaks that's been there all week. \"Speaking of historical curiosity, here's a fun fact: I'm sitting in the room Nancy Reagan was in when she found out Ronald Reagan got shot.\"\n\n\"Good Lord.\"\n\n\"And it's also where ol' Tricky Dick told his family he was gonna resign.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry\u2014who or what is a _Tricky Dick_?\"\n\n\" _Nixon!_ Listen, you're undoing everything this country's crusty forefathers fought for and deflowering the darling of the republic. You at least need to know _basic_ American history.\"\n\n\"I hardly think deflowering is the word,\" Henry deadpans. \"These arrangements are supposed to be with virgin brides, you know. That certainly didn't seem to be the case.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh, and I'm sure you picked up all those skills from books.\"\n\n\"Well, I did go to uni. It just wasn't necessarily the reading that did it.\"\n\nAlex hums in suggestive agreement and lets the rhythm of banter fall out. He looks across the room\u2014the windows that were once only gauzy curtains on a sleeping room for Taft's family on hot nights, the corner now stacked with Leo's old comic book collectibles where Eisenhower used to play cards. The stuff underneath the surface. Alex has always sought those things out.\n\n\"Hey,\" he says. \"You sound weird. You good?\"\n\nHenry's breath catches and he clears his throat. \"I'm fine.\"\n\nAlex doesn't say anything, letting the silence stretch in a thin thread between them before he cuts it. \"You know, this whole arrangement we have... you can tell me stuff. I tell you stuff all the time. Politics stuff and school stuff and nutso family stuff. I know I'm, like, not the paragon of normal human communication, but. You know.\"\n\nAnother pause.\n\n\"I'm not... historically great at talking about things,\" Henry says.\n\n\"Well, I wasn't historically great at blowjobs, but we all gotta learn and grow, sweetheart.\"\n\n_\"Wasn't?\"_\n\n_\"Hey,\"_ Alex huffs. \"Are you trying to say I'm still not good at them?\"\n\n\"No, no, I wouldn't dream of it,\" Henry says, and Alex can hear the small smile in his voice. \"It was just the first one that was... Well. It was enthusiastic, at least.\"\n\n\"I don't remember you complaining.\"\n\n\"Yes, well, I'd only been fantasizing about it for _ages._ \"\n\n\"See, there's a thing,\" Alex points out. \"You just told me that. You can tell me other stuff.\"\n\n\"It's hardly the same.\"\n\nHe rolls over onto his stomach, considers, and very deliberately says, \"Baby.\"\n\nIt's become a thing: _baby._ He knows it's become a thing. He's slipped up and accidentally said it a few times, and each time, Henry positively melts and Alex pretends not to notice, but he's not above playing dirty here.\n\nThere's a slow hiss of an exhale across the line, like air escaping through a crack in a window.\n\n\"It's, ah. It's not the best time,\" he says. \"How did you put it? Nutso family stuff.\"\n\nAlex purses his lips, bites down on his cheek. There it is.\n\nHe's wondered when Henry would finally start talking about the royal family. He makes oblique references to Philip being wound so tight as to double as an atomic clock, or to his grandmother's disapproval, and he mentions Bea as often as Alex mentions June, but Alex knows there's more to it than that. He couldn't tell you when he started noticing, though, just like he doesn't know when he started ticking off the days of Henry's moods.\n\n\"Ah,\" he says. \"I see.\"\n\n\"I don't suppose you keep up with any British tabloids, do you?\"\n\n\"Not if I can help it.\"\n\nHenry offers the bitterest of laughs. \"Well, the _Daily Mail_ has always had a bit of an affinity for airing our dirty laundry. They, er, they gave my sister this nickname years ago. 'The Powder Princess.'\"\n\nA ding of recognition. \"Because of the...\"\n\n\"Yes, the cocaine, Alex.\"\n\n\"Okay, that does sound familiar.\"\n\nHenry sighs. \"Well, someone's managed to bypass security to spray paint 'Powder Princess' on the side of her car.\"\n\n\"Shit,\" Alex says. \"And she's not taking it well?\"\n\n\"Bea?\" Henry laughs, a little more genuinely this time. \"No, she doesn't usually care about those things. She's fine. More shaken up that someone got past security than anything. Gran had an entire PPO team sacked. But... I dunno.\"\n\nHe trails off, and Alex can guess.\n\n\"But you care. Because you want to protect her even though you're the little brother.\"\n\n\"I... yes.\"\n\n\"I know the feeling. Last summer I almost punched a guy at Lollapalooza because he tried to grab June's ass.\"\n\n\"But you didn't?\"\n\n\"June had already dumped her milkshake on him,\" Alex explains. He shrugs a little, knowing Henry can't see it. \"And then Amy Tased him. The smell of burnt strawberry milkshake on a sweaty frat guy is really something.\"\n\nHenry laughs fully at that. \"They never do need us, do they?\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Alex agrees. \"So you're upset because the rumors aren't true.\"\n\n\"Well... they are true, actually,\" Henry says.\n\n_Oh,_ Alex thinks.\n\n\"Oh,\" Alex says. He's not sure how else to respond, reaching into his mental store of political platitudes and finding them all clinical and intolerable.\n\nHenry, with a little trepidation, presses on. \"You know, Bea has only ever wanted to play music,\" he starts. \"Mum and Dad played too much Joni Mitchell for her growing up, I think. She wanted guitar lessons; Gran wanted violin since it was more proper. Bea was allowed to learn both, but she went to uni for classical violin. Anyway, her last year of uni, Dad died. It happened so... quickly. He just _went._ \"\n\nAlex shuts his eyes. \"Fuck.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Henry says, voice rough. \"We all went round the bend a bit. Philip just _had_ to be the man of the family, and I was an arsehole, and Mum didn't leave her rooms. Bea just stopped seeing the point in anything. I was starting uni when she finished, and Philip was deployed halfway round the globe, and she was out every single night with all the posh London hipsters, sneaking out to play guitar at secret shows and doing mountains of cocaine. The papers _loved_ it.\"\n\n\"Jesus,\" Alex hisses. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"It's fine,\" Henry says, steadiness rising in his voice as if he's stuck out his chin in that stubborn way he does sometimes. Alex wishes he could see it. \"In any event, the speculation and paparazzi photos and the goddamn nickname got to be too much, and Philip came home for a week, and he and Gran literally put her in a car and had her driven to rehab and called it a _wellness retreat_ to the press.\"\n\n\"Wait\u2014sorry,\" Alex says before he can stop himself. \"Just. Where was your mom?\"\n\n\"Mum hasn't been involved in much since Dad died,\" Henry says on an exhale, then stops short. \"Sorry. That's not fair. It's... the grief has been total for her. It was paralyzing. It _is_ paralyzing. She was such a spitfire. I dunno. She still listens, and she tries, and she wants us to be happy. But I don't know if she has it in her anymore to be a part of anyone's happiness.\"\n\n\"That's... horrible.\"\n\nA pause, heavy.\n\n\"Anyway, Bea went,\" Henry goes on, \"against her will, and didn't think she had a problem at all, even though you could see her bloody ribs and she'd barely spoken to me in months, when we grew up inseparable. Checked herself out after six hours. I remember her calling me that night from a club, and I lost it. I was, what, eighteen? I drove there and she was sitting on the back steps, high as a kite, and I sat down next to her and cried and told her she wasn't allowed to kill herself because Dad was gone and I was gay and I didn't know what the hell to do, and that was how I came out to her.\n\n\"The next day, she went back, and she's been clean ever since, and neither of us has ever told anyone about that night. Until now, I suppose. And I'm not sure why I've said all this, I just, I've never really said any of it. I mean, Pez was there for most of it, so, and I\u2014I don't know.\" He clears his throat. \"Anyway, I don't think I've ever said this many words out loud in a row in my entire life, so please feel free to put me out of my misery any time now.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" Alex says, stumbling over his own tongue in a rush. \"I'm glad you told me. Does it feel better at all to have said it?\"\n\nHenry goes silent, and Alex wants so badly to see the shadows of expressions moving across his face, to be able to touch them with his fingertips. Alex hears a swallow across the line, and Henry says, \"I suppose so. Thank you. For listening.\"\n\n\"Yeah, of course,\" Alex tells him. \"I mean, it's good to have times when it's not all about me, as tedious and exhausting as it may be.\"\n\nThat earns him a groan, and he bites back a smile when Henry says, \"You are a _wanker._ \"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah,\" Alex says, and he takes the opportunity to ask a question he's been wanting to ask for months. \"So, um. Does anybody else know? About you?\"\n\n\"Bea's the only one in the family I've told, though I'm sure the rest have suspected. I was always a bit different, never quite had the stiff upper lip. I think Dad knew and never cared. But Gran sat me down the day I finished my A levels and made it abundantly clear I was not to let anyone know about any deviant desires I might be beginning to harbor that might reflect poorly upon the crown, and there were appropriate channels to maintain appearances if necessary. So.\"\n\nAlex's stomach turns over. He pictures Henry, a teenager, back-broken with grief and told to keep it and the rest of him shut up tight.\n\n\"What the fuck. Seriously?\"\n\n\"The wonders of the monarchy,\" Henry says loftily.\n\n\"God.\" Alex scrubs a hand across his face. \"I've had to fake some shit for my mom, but nobody's ever outright told me to _lie_ about who I am.\"\n\n\"I don't think she sees it as lying. She sees it as doing what must be done.\"\n\n\"Sounds like bullshit.\"\n\nHenry sighs. \"Hardly any other options, are there?\"\n\nThere's a long pause, and Alex is thinking about Henry in his palace, Henry and the years behind him, how he got here. He bites his lip.\n\n\"Hey,\" Alex says. \"Tell me about your dad.\"\n\nAnother pause.\n\n\"Sorry?\"\n\n\"I mean, if you don't\u2014if you want to. I was just thinking I don't know much about him except that he was James Bond. What was he like?\"\n\nAlex paces the Solarium and listens to Henry talk, stories about a man with Henry's same sandy hair and strong, straight nose, someone Alex has met in shadows that pass through the way Henry speaks and moves and laughs. He hears about sneaking out of the palace and joyriding around the countryside, learning to sail, being propped up in director's chairs. The man Henry remembers is both superhuman and heartbreakingly flesh and blood, a man who encompassed Henry's entire childhood and charmed the world but was also simply a man.\n\nThe way Henry talks about him is a physical feat, drifting up in the corners with fondness but sagging in the middle under the weight. He tells Alex in a low voice how his parents met\u2014Princess Catherine, dead set on being the first princess with a doctorate, mid-twenties and wading through Shakespeare. How she went to see _Henry V_ at the RSC and Arthur was starring, how she pushed her way backstage and shook off her security to disappear into London with him and dance all night. How the Queen forbid it, but she married him anyway.\n\nHe tells Alex about growing up in Kensington, how Bea sang and Philip clung to his grandmother, but they were happy, buttoned up in cashmere and knee socks and whisked through foreign countries in helicopters and shiny cars. A brass telescope from his father for his seventh birthday. How he realized by the time he was four that every person in the country knew his name, and how he told his mother he didn't know if he wanted them to, and how she knelt down and told him she'd let nothing touch him, not ever.\n\nAlex starts talking too. Henry already hears nearly everything about Alex's current life, but talking about how they grew up has always been some invisible line of demarcation. He talks about Travis County, making campaign posters with construction paper for fifth-grade student council, family trips to Surfside, running headlong into the waves. He talks about the big bay window in the house where he grew up, and Henry doesn't tell him he's crazy for all the things he used to write and hide under there.\n\nIt starts to grow dark outside, a dull and soggy evening around the Residence, and Alex makes his way down to his room and his bed. He hears about the assortment of guys from Henry's university days, all of them enamored with the idea of sleeping with a prince, almost all of them immediately alienated by the paperwork and secrecy and, occasionally, Henry's dark moods about the paperwork and secrecy.\n\n\"But of course, er,\" Henry says, \"nobody since... well, since you and I\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" Alex says, faster than he expects, \"me neither. Nobody else.\"\n\nHe hears words coming out of his mouth, ones he can't believe he's saying out loud. About Liam, about those nights, but also how he'd sneak pills out of Liam's Adderall bottle when his grades were slipping and stay awake for two, three days at a time. About June, the unspoken knowledge that she only lives here to watch out for him, the quiet sense of guilt he carries when he can't tear himself away. About how much some of the lies people tell about his mother hurt, the fear she'll lose.\n\nThey talk for so long Alex has to plug his phone in to keep the battery from dying. He rolls onto his side and listens, trails the back of his hand across the pillow next to him and imagines Henry lying opposite in his own bed, two parentheses enclosing 3,700 miles. He looks at his chewed-up cuticles and imagines Henry there under his fingers, speaking into only inches of distance. He imagines the way Henry's face would look in the bluish-gray dark. Maybe he would have a faint shadow of stubble on his jaw, waiting for a morning shave, or maybe the circles under his eyes would wash out in the low light.\n\nSomehow, this is the same person who had Alex so convinced he didn't care about anything, who still has the rest of the world convinced he's a mild, unfettered Prince Charming. It's taken months to get here: the full realization of just how wrong he was.\n\n\"I miss you,\" Alex says before he can stop himself.\n\nHe instantly regrets it, but Henry says, \"I miss you too.\"\n\n* * *\n\n\"Hey, wait.\"\n\nAlex rolls his chair back out of his cubicle. The woman from the after-hours cleaning crew stops, her hand on the handle of the coffeepot. \"I know it looks disgusting, but would you mind leaving that? I was gonna finish it.\"\n\nShe gives him a dubious look but leaves the last burnt, sludgy vestiges of coffee where they are and rolls off with her cart.\n\nHe peers down into his CLAREMONT FOR AMERICA mug and frowns at the almond milk that's pooled in the middle. Why doesn't this office keep normal milk around? This is why people from Texas hate Washington elites. Ruining the goddamn dairy industry.\n\nOn his desk, there are three stacks of papers. He keeps staring at them, hoping if he recites them enough times in his head, he'll figure out how to feel like he's doing enough.\n\nOne. The Gun File. A detailed index of every kind of insane gun Americans can own and state-by-state regulations, which he has to comb through for research on a new set of federal assault rifle policies. It's got a giant smudge of pizza sauce on it because it makes him stress-eat.\n\nTwo. The Trans-Pacific Partnership File, which he knows he needs to work on but has barely touched because it's mind-numbingly boring.\n\nThree. The Texas File.\n\nHe's not supposed to have this file. It wasn't given to him by the policy chief of staff or anyone on the campaign. It's not even about policy. It's also more of a binder than a file. He guesses he should call it: The Texas Binder.\n\nThe Texas Binder is his baby. He guards it jealously, stuffing it into his messenger bag to take home with him when he leaves the office and hiding it from WASPy Hunter. It contains a county map of Texas with complex voter demographic breakdowns, matched up with the populations of children of undocumented immigrants, unregistered voters who are legal residents, voting patterns over the last twenty years. He's stuffed it with spreadsheets of data, voting records, projections he had Nora calculate for him.\n\nBack in 2016, when his mother squeezed out a victory in the general election, the bitterest sting was losing Texas. She was the first president since Nixon to win the presidency but lose her own state of residence. It wasn't exactly a surprise, considering Texas had been polling red, but they were all secretly holding out for the Lometa Longshot to take it in the end. She didn't.\n\nAlex keeps coming back to the numbers from 2016 and 2018 precinct by precinct, and he can't shake this nagging feeling of hope. There's something there, something shifting, he swears it.\n\nHe doesn't mean to be ungrateful for the policy job, it's just... not what he thought it was going to be. It's frustrating and slow-moving. He should stay focused, give it more time, but instead, he keeps coming back to the binder.\n\nHe plucks a pencil out of WASPy Hunter's Harvard pencil cup and starts sketching lines on the map of Texas for the millionth time, redrawing the districts old white men drew years ago to force votes their way.\n\nAlex has this spark at the base of his spine to do the most good he can, and when he sits here in his cubicle for hours a day and fidgets under all the minutiae, he doesn't know if he is. But if he could only figure out a way to make Texas' vote reflect its soul... he's nowhere near qualified to single-handedly dismantle Texas' iron curtains of gerrymandering, but what if he\u2014\n\nAn incessant buzzing snaps him present, and he digs out his phone from the bottom of his bag.\n\n\"Where are you?\" June's voice demands over the line.\n\nFuck. He checks the time: 9:44. He was supposed to meet June for dinner over an hour ago.\n\n\"Shit, June, I'm so sorry,\" he says, jumping up from his desk and shoving his things into his bag. \"I got caught up at work\u2014I, I completely forgot.\"\n\n\"I sent you like a million texts,\" she says. She sounds like she's vision-boarding his funeral.\n\n\"My phone was on silent,\" he says helplessly, booking it for the elevator. \"I'm seriously so sorry. I'm a complete jackass. I'm leaving now.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about it,\" she says. \"I got mine to go. I'll see you at home.\"\n\n\"Bug.\"\n\n\"I'm gonna need you to _not_ call me that right now.\"\n\n\"June\u2014\"\n\nThe call drops.\n\nWhen he gets back to the Residence, she's sitting on her bed, eating pasta out of a plastic container, with _Parks &_ _Recreation_ playing on her tablet. She pointedly ignores him when he comes to her doorway.\n\nHe's reminded of when they were kids\u2014around eight and eleven years old. He recalls standing next to her at the bathroom mirror, looking at the similarities between their faces: the same round tips of their noses, the same thick, unruly brows, the same square jaw inherited from their mother. He remembers studying her expression in the reflection as they brushed their teeth, the morning of the first day of school, their dad having braided June's hair for her because their mom was in DC and couldn't be there.\n\nHe recognizes the same expression on her face now: carefully tucked-away disappointment.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he tries again. \"I honestly feel like complete and total shit. Please don't be mad at me.\"\n\nJune keeps chewing, looking steadfastly at Leslie Knope chirping away.\n\n\"We can do lunch tomorrow,\" Alex says desperately. \"I'll pay.\"\n\n\"I don't care about a stupid meal, Alex.\"\n\nAlex sighs. \"Then what do you want me to do?\"\n\n\"I want you not to be Mom,\" June says, finally looking up at him. She closes her food container and gets up off her bed, pacing across the room.\n\n\"Okay,\" Alex says, raising both hands, \"is that what's happening right now?\"\n\n\"I\u2014\" She takes a deep breath. \"No. I shouldn't have said that.\"\n\n\"No, you obviously meant it,\" Alex says. He drops his messenger bag and steps into the room. \"Why don't you say whatever it is you need to say?\"\n\nShe turns to face him, arms folded, her spine braced against her dresser. \"You really don't see it? You never sleep, you're always throwing yourself into something, you're willing to let Mom use you for whatever she wants, the tabloids are always after you\u2014\"\n\n\"June, I've always been this way,\" he interrupts gently. \"I'm gonna be a politician. You always knew that. I'm starting as soon as I graduate... in a month. This is how my life is gonna be, okay? I'm choosing it.\"\n\n\"Well, maybe it's the wrong choice,\" June says, biting her lip.\n\nHe rocks back on his heels. \"Where the hell is this coming from?\"\n\n\"Alex,\" she says, \"come on.\"\n\nHe doesn't know what the hell she's getting at. \"You've always backed me up until now.\"\n\nShe flings one arm out emphatically enough to upset an entire potted cactus on her dresser and says, \"Because until now you weren't _fucking the Prince of England_!\"\n\nThat effectively snaps Alex's mouth shut. He crosses to the sitting area in front of the fireplace, sinking down into an armchair. June watches him, cheeks bright scarlet.\n\n\"Nora told you.\"\n\n\"What?\" she says. \"No. She wouldn't do that. Although it kinda sucks you told her and not me.\" She folds her arms again. \"I'm sorry, I was trying to wait for you to tell me yourself, but, Jesus, Alex. How many times was I supposed to believe you were volunteering to take those international appearances we always found excuses to get out of? And, like, did you forget I've lived across the hall from you for almost my entire life?\"\n\nAlex looks down at his shoes, June's perfectly curated midcentury rug. \"So you're mad at me because of Henry?\"\n\nJune makes a strangled noise, and when he looks back up, she's digging through the top drawer of her dresser. \"Oh my God, how are you so smart and so dumb at the same time?\" she says, pulling a magazine out from underneath her underwear. He's about to tell her he's not in the mood to look at her tabloids when she throws it at him.\n\nAn ancient issue of _J14,_ opened to a center page. The photograph of Henry, age thirteen.\n\nHe glances up. \"You knew?\"\n\n\"Of course I knew!\" she says, flopping dramatically into the chair opposite him. \"You were always leaving your greasy little fingerprints all over it! Why do you always assume you can get away with things?\" She releases a long-suffering sigh. \"I never really... got what he was to you, until I _got_ it. I thought you had a crush or something, or that I could help you make a friend, but, Alex. We meet so many people. I mean, thousands and thousands of people, and a lot of them are morons, and a lot of them are incredible, unique people, but I almost never meet somebody who's a match for you. Do you know that?\" She leans forward and touches his knee, pink fingernails on his navy chinos. \"You have so much in you, it's almost impossible to match it. But he's your match, dumbass.\"\n\nAlex stares at her, trying to process what she's said.\n\n\"I feel like this is your starry-eyed romantic thing projecting onto me,\" is what he decides to say, and she immediately withdraws her hand from his leg and returns to glaring at him.\n\n\"You know Evan didn't break up with me?\" she says. \"I broke up with him. I was gonna go to California with him, live in the same time zone as Dad, get a job at the fucking _Sacramento Bee_ or something. But I gave all that up to come _here,_ because it was the right thing to do. I did what Dad did\u2014I went where I was most needed, because it was my responsibility.\"\n\n\"And you regret it?\"\n\n\"No,\" she says. \"I don't know. I don't think so. But I\u2014I wonder. Dad wonders, sometimes. Alex, you don't have to wonder. You don't have to be our parents. You can keep Henry, and figure the rest out.\" Now she's looking at him evenly, steadily. \"Sometimes you have a fire under your ass for no good goddamn reason. You're gonna burn out like this.\"\n\nAlex leans back, thumbing the stitching on the armrest of the chair.\n\n\"So, what?\" he asks. \"You want me to quit politics and go become a princess? That's not very feminist of you.\"\n\n\"That's not how feminism works,\" she says, rolling her eyes. \"And that's not what I mean. I mean... I don't know. Have you ever considered there might be more than one path to use what you have? Or to get where you want to be to make the most difference in the world?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I'm following.\"\n\n\"Well.\" She looks down at her cuticles. \"It's like the whole _Sac Bee_ thing\u2014it never actually would have worked out. It was a dream I had before Mom was president. The kind of journalism I wanted to do is the kind of journalism that being a First Daughter pretty much disqualifies you from. But the world is better with her where she is, and right now I'm looking for a new dream that's better too.\" Her big brown Diaz eyes blink up at him. \"So, I don't know. Maybe there's more than one dream for you, or more than one way to get there.\"\n\nShe gives a crooked shrug, tilting her head to look at him openly. June is often a mystery, a big ball of complex emotions and motivations, but her heart is honest and true. She's very much what Alex holds in his memory as the sanctified idea of Southerness at its best: always generous and warm and sincere, work-strong and reliable, a light left on. She wants the best for him, plainly, in an unselfish and uncalculating way. She's been trying to talk to him for a while, he realizes.\n\nHe looks down at the magazine and feels the corner of his mouth tug upward. He can't believe June kept it all these years.\n\n\"He looks so different,\" he says after a long minute, gazing down at the baby Henry on the page and his easy, unfledged sureness. \"I mean, like, obviously. But the way he carries himself.\" His fingertips brush the page in the same place they did when he was young, over the sun-gold hair, except now he knows its exact texture. It's the first time he's seen it since he learned where this version of Henry went. \"It pisses me off sometimes, thinking about everything he's been through. He's a good person. He really cares, and he _tries._ He never deserved any of it.\"\n\nJune leans forward, looking at the picture too. \"Have you ever told him that?\"\n\n\"We don't really...\" Alex coughs. \"I don't know. Talk like that?\"\n\nJune inhales deeply and makes an enormous fart noise with her mouth, shattering the serious mood, and Alex is so grateful for it that he melts onto the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter.\n\n\"Ugh! Men!\" she groans. \"No emotional vocabulary. I can't believe our ancestors survived centuries of wars and plagues and genocide just to wind up with your sorry ass.\" She throws a pillow at him, and Alex scream-laughs as it hits him in the face. \"You should try saying some of that stuff to _him._ \"\n\n\"Stop trying to Jane Austen my life!\" he yells back.\n\n\"Listen, it's not my fault he's a mysterious and retiring young royal and you're the tempestuous ing\u00e9nue that caught his eye, okay?\"\n\nHe laughs and tries to crawl away, even as she claws at his ankle and wallops another pillow at his head. He still feels guilty for blowing her off, but he thinks they're okay now. He'll do better. They fight for a spot on her big canopy bed, and she makes him spill what it's like to be secretly hooking up with a real-life prince. And so June knows; she knows about him and she hugs him and doesn't care. He didn't realize how terrified he was of her knowing until the fear is gone.\n\nShe puts _Parks_ back on and has the kitchen send up ice cream, and Alex thinks about how she said, \"You don't have to be our parents\"\u2014she's never mentioned their dad in the same context as their mom like that before. He's always known part of her resents their mom for the position they occupy in the world, for not having a normal life, for taking herself away from them. But he never really realized she felt the same sense of loss he does deep down about their dad, that it's something she dealt with and moved past. That the stuff with their mom is something she's still going through.\n\nHe thinks she's wrong about him, mostly\u2014he doesn't necessarily believe he has to choose between politics and this thing with Henry yet, or that he's moving too fast in his career. But... there's the Texas Binder, and the knowledge of other states like Texas and millions of other people who need someone to fight for them, and the feeling at the base of his spine, like there's a lot of fight in him that could be honed down to a more productive point.\n\nThere's law school.\n\nEvery time he looks at the Texas Binder, he knows it's a big fat case for him to go take the damn LSAT like he knows both his parents wish he would instead of diving headfirst into politics. He's always, always said no. He doesn't wait for things. Doesn't put in the time like that, do what he's told.\n\nHe's never given much thought to options other than a crow's path ahead of him. Maybe he should.\n\n\"Is now a good time to point out Henry's very hot, very rich best friend is basically in love with you?\" Alex says to June. \"He's like some kind of billionaire, genius, manic-pixie-dream philanthropist. I feel like you would be into that.\"\n\n\"Please shut up,\" she says, and she steals the ice cream back.\n\n* * *\n\nOnce June knows, their circle of \"knowing\" is up to a tight seven.\n\nBefore Henry, most of his romantic entanglements as FSOTUS were one-off incidents that involved Cash or Amy confiscating phones before the act and pointing at the dotted line on the NDA on the way out\u2014Amy with mechanical professionalism, Cash with the air of a cruise ship director. It was inevitable they be looped in.\n\nAnd there's Shaan, the only member of the royal staff who knows Henry is gay, excluding his therapist. Shaan ultimately doesn't care about Henry's sexual preferences as long as they're not getting him into trouble. He's a consummate professional parceled in immaculately tailored Tom Ford, ruffled by absolutely nothing, whose affection for his charge shows in the way he tends to him like a favorite houseplant. Shaan knows for the same reason Amy and Cash know: absolute necessity.\n\nThen Nora, who still looks smug every time the subject arises. And Bea, who found out when she walked in on one of their after-dark FaceTime sessions, leaving Henry capable of nothing but flustered British stammering and thousand-yard stares for the next day and a half.\n\nPez seems to have been in on the secret all along. Alex imagines he demanded an explanation when Henry literally made them flee the country under the cover of night after putting his tongue in Alex's mouth in the Kennedy Garden.\n\nIt's Pez who answers when Alex FaceTimes Henry at four a.m. DC time, expecting to catch Henry over his morning tea. Henry is holidaying in one of the family's country homes while Alex suffocates under his last week of college. He doesn't reflect on why his migraine demands soothing images of Henry looking cozy and picturesque, sipping tea by a lush green hillside. He just hits the buttons on the phone.\n\n\"Alexander, babes,\" Pez says when he picks up. \"How lovely for you to give your auntie Pezza a ring on this magnificent Sunday morning.\" He's smiling from what looks like the passenger seat of a luxury car, wearing a cartoonishly large sunhat and a striped pashmina.\n\n\"Hi, Pez,\" Alex says, grinning back. \"Where are y'all?\"\n\n\"We are out for a drive, taking in the scenery of Carmarthenshire,\" Pez tells him. He tilts the phone over toward the driver's seat. \"Say good morning to your strumpet, Henry.\"\n\n\"Good morning, strumpet,\" Henry says, glancing away from the road to wink at the camera. He's looking fresh-faced and relaxed, all rolled-up sleeves and soft gray linen, and Alex feels calmer knowing somewhere in Wales, Henry got a decent night's sleep. \"What's got you up at four in the morning this time?\"\n\n\"My fucking economics final,\" Alex says, rolling over onto his side to squint at the screen. \"My brain isn't working anymore.\"\n\n\"Can't you get one of those Secret Service earpieces with Nora on the other end?\"\n\n\"I can take it for you,\" Pez interjects, turning the camera back to himself. \"I'm aces with money.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, Pez, we know there's nothing you can't do,\" says Henry's voice off-camera. \"No need to rub it in.\"\n\nAlex laughs under his breath. From the angle Pez is holding the phone, he can see Wales rolling by though the car window, dramatic and plunging. \"Hey, Henry, say the name of the house you're staying at again.\"\n\nPez turns the camera to catch Henry in a half smile. \"Llwynywermod.\"\n\n\"One more time.\"\n\n_\"Llwynywermod.\"_\n\nAlex groans. \"Jesus.\"\n\n\"I was _hoping_ you two would start talking dirty,\" Pez says. \"Please, do go on.\"\n\n\"I don't think you could keep up, Pez,\" Alex tells him.\n\n\"Oh _really_?\" The picture returns to Pez. \"What if I put my co\u2014\"\n\n_\"Pez,\"_ comes the sound of Henry's voice, and a hand with a signet ring on the smallest finger covers Pez's mouth. \"I beg of you. Alex, what part of 'nothing he cannot do' did you think was worth testing? Honestly, you are going to get us all killed.\"\n\n\"That's the goal,\" Alex says happily. \"So what are y'all gonna do today?\"\n\nPez frees himself by licking Henry's palm and continues talking. \"Frolic naked in the hills, frighten the sheep, return to the house for the usual: tea, biscuits, casting ourselves upon the Thighmaster of love to moan about Claremont-Diaz siblings, which has become tragically one-sided since Henry took up with you. It used to be all bottles of cognac and shared malaise and 'When will they notice us'\u2014\"\n\n_\"Don't tell him that!\"_\n\n\"\u2014and now I just ask Henry, 'What is your secret?' And he says, 'I insult Alex all the time and that seems to work.'\"\n\n\"I will _turn this car around._ \"\n\n\"That won't work on June,\" Alex says.\n\n\"Let me get a pen\u2014\"\n\nIt turns out they're spending their holiday workshopping philanthropy projects. Henry's been telling Alex for months about their plans to go international, and now they're talking three refugee programs around Western Europe, HIV clinics in Nairobi and Los Angeles, LGBT youth shelters in four different countries. It's ambitious, but since Henry still staunchly covers all his own expenses with his inheritance from his father, his royal accounts are untouched. He's determined to use them for nothing but this.\n\nAlex curls around his phone and his pillow as the sun comes up over DC. He's always wanted to be a person with a legacy in this world. Henry is undoubtedly, determinedly that. It's a little intoxicating. But it's fine. He's just a little sleep-deprived.\n\nAll in all, finals come and go with much less fanfare than Alex imagined. It's a week of cramming and presentations and the usual amount of all-nighters, and it's over.\n\nThe whole college thing in general went by like that. He didn't really have the experiences everyone else has, always isolated by fame or harangued by security. He never got a stamp on his forehead on his twenty-first birthday at The Tombs, never jumped in Dalhgren Fountain. Sometimes it's like he barely went to Georgetown, merely powered through a series of lectures that happened to be in the same geographical area.\n\nAnyway, he graduates, and the whole auditorium gives him a standing ovation, which is weird but kind of cool. A dozen of his classmates want to take a photo with him afterward. They all know him by name. He's never spoken to any of them before. He smiles for their parents' iPhones and wonders if he should have tried.\n\n_Alex Claremont-Diaz graduates summa cum laude from Georgetown University with a bachelor's degree in Government,_ his Google alerts read when he checks them from the back seat of the limo, before he's even taken his cap and gown off.\n\nThere's a huge garden party at the White House, and Nora is there in a dress and blazer and a sly smile, pressing a kiss to the side of Alex's jaw.\n\n\"The last of the White House Trio finally graduates,\" she says, grinning. \"And he didn't even have to bribe any professors with political or sexual favors to do it.\"\n\n\"I think some of them might finally manage to purge me from their nightmares soon,\" Alex says.\n\n\"Y'all do school weird,\" June says, crying a little.\n\nThere's a mixed bag of political power players and family friends in attendance\u2014including Rafael Luna, who falls under the heading of both. Alex spots him looking tired but handsome by the ceviche, involved in animated conversation with Nora's grandfather, the Veep. His dad is in from California, freshly tanned from a recent trek through Yosemite, grinning and proud. Zahra hands him a card that says, _Good job doing what was expected of you,_ and nearly shoves him into the punch bowl when he tries to hug her.\n\nAn hour in, his phone buzzes in his pocket, and June gives him a mild glare when he diverts his attention mid-sentence to check it. He's ready to brush it off, but all around him iPhones and Blackberries are coming out in a flurry of movement.\n\nIt's WASPy Hunter: Jacinto just called a presser, word is he's dropping out of the primary a.k.a. officially Claremont vs. Richards 2020.\n\n\"Shit,\" Alex says, turning his phone around to show June the message.\n\n\"So much for the party.\"\n\nShe's right\u2014in a matter of seconds, half the tables are empty as campaign staffers and congresspeople leave their seats to huddle together over their phones.\n\n\"This is a bit dramatic,\" Nora observes, sucking an olive off the end of a toothpick. \"We all knew he was gonna give Richards the nomination eventually. They probably got Jacinto in a windowless room and bench-clamped his dick to the table until he said he'd concede.\"\n\nAlex doesn't hear whatever Nora says next because a rush of movement at the doors of the Palm Room near the edge of the garden catches his eye. It's his dad, pulling Luna by the arm. They disappear into a side door, toward the housekeeper's office.\n\nHe leaves his champagne with the girls and weaves a circuitous path toward the Palm Room, pretending to check his phone. Then, after considering whether the scolding he'll get from the dry-cleaning crew will be worth it, he ducks into the shrubbery.\n\nThere's a loose windowpane in the bottom of the third fixture of the south-facing wall of the housekeeper's office. It's popped out of its frame slightly, enough that its bulletproof, soundproof seal isn't totally intact. It's one of three windowpanes like this in the Residence. He found them during his first six months at the White House, before June graduated and Nora transferred, when he was alone, with nothing better to do than these little investigative projects around the grounds.\n\nHe's never told anyone about the loose panes; he always suspected they might come in handy one day.\n\nHe crouches down and creeps up toward the window, soil rolling into his loafers, hoping he guessed their destination right, until he finds the pane he's looking for. He leans in, tries to get his ear as close to it as he can. Over the sound of the wind rustling the bushes around him, he can hear two low, tense voices.\n\n\"... hell, Oscar,\" says one voice, in Spanish. Luna. \"Did you tell her? Does she know you're asking me to do this?\"\n\n\"She's too careful,\" his father's voice says. He's speaking Spanish too\u2014a precaution the two of them occasionally take when they're concerned about being overheard. \"Sometimes it's best that she doesn't know.\"\n\nThere's the sound of a hissing exhale, weight shifting. \"I'm not going behind her back to do something I don't even want to do.\"\n\n\"You mean to tell me, after what Richards did to you, there's not a part of you that wants to burn all his shit to the ground?\"\n\n\"Of course there is, Oscar, Jesus,\" Luna says. \"But you and I both know it's not that fucking simple. It never is.\"\n\n\"Listen, Raf. I know you kept the files on everything. You don't even have to make a statement. You could leak it to the press. How many other kids do you think since\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't.\"\n\n\"\u2014and how many more\u2014\"\n\n\"You don't think she can win on her own, do you?\" Luna cuts across him. \"You still don't have faith in her, after everything.\"\n\n\"It's not about that. This time is different.\"\n\n\"Why don't you leave me and something that happened _twenty fucking years ago_ out of your unresolved feelings for your ex-wife and focus on winning this goddamn election, Oscar? I don't\u2014\"\n\nLuna cuts himself off because there's the sound of the doorknob turning, someone entering the offices.\n\nOscar switches to clipped English, making an excuse about discussing a bill, then says to Luna, in Spanish, \"Just think about it.\"\n\nThere are muffled sounds of Oscar and Luna clearing out of the office, and Alex sinks down onto his ass in the mulch, wondering what the hell he's missing.\n\n* * *\n\nIt starts with a fund-raiser, a silk suit and a big check, a nice white-tablecloth event. It starts, as it always does, with a text: Fund-raiser in LA next weekend. Pez says he's going to get us all matching embroidered kimonos. Put you down for a plus-two?\n\nHe grabs lunch with his dad, who flat-out changes the subject every time Alex brings up Luna, and afterward heads to the gala, where Alex gets to properly meet Bea for the first time. She's much shorter than Henry, shorter even than June, with Henry's clever mouth but their mom's brown hair and heart-shaped face. She's wearing a motorcycle jacket over her cocktail dress and has a slight posture he recognizes from his own mother as a reformed chainsmoker. She smiles at Alex, wide and mischievous, and he gets her immediately: another rebel kid.\n\nIt's a lot of champagne and too many handshakes and a speech by Pez, charming as always, and as soon as it's over, their collective security convenes at the exit and they're off.\n\nPez has, as promised, six matching silk kimonos waiting in the limo, each one embroidered across the back with a different riff on a name from a movie. Alex's is a lurid teal and says HOE DAMERON. Henry's lime-green one reads PRINCE BUTTERCUP.\n\nThey end up somewhere in West Hollywood at a shitty, sparkling karaoke bar Pez somehow knows about, neon bright enough that it feels spontaneous even though Cash and the rest of their security have been checking it and warning people against taking photos for half an hour before they arrive. The bartender has immaculate pink lipstick and stubble poking through thick foundation, and they rapidly line up five shots and a soda with lime.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" Henry says, peering down into his empty shot glass. \"What's in these? Vodka?\"\n\n\"Yep,\" Nora confirms, to which both Pez and Bea break out into fits of giggles.\n\n\"What?\" Alex says.\n\n\"Oh, I haven't had vodka since uni,\" Henry says. \"It tends to make me, erm. Well\u2014\"\n\n\"Flamboyant?\" Pez offers. \"Uninhibited? _Randy?_ \"\n\n\"Fun?\" Bea suggests.\n\n\" _Excuse_ you, I am _loads_ of fun all the time! I am a _delight_!\"\n\n\"Hello, excuse me, can we get another round of these please?\" Alex calls down the bar.\n\nBea screams, Henry laughs and throws up a V, and it all goes hazy and warm in the way Alex loves. They all tumble into a round booth, and the lights are low, and he and Henry are keeping a safe distance, but Alex can't stop staring at how the special-effect beams keep hitting Henry's cheekbones, hollowing his face out in blues and greens. He's something else\u2014half-drunk and grinning in a $2,000 suit and a kimono, and Alex can't tear his eyes away. He waves over a beer.\n\nOnce things get going, it's impossible to tell how Bea is the one persuaded up to the stage first, but she unearths a plastic crown from the prop chest onstage and rips through a cover of \"Call Me\" by Blondie. They all wolf whistle and cheer, and the bar crowd finally realizes they've got two members of the royal family, a millionaire philanthropist, and the White House Trio crammed into one of the sticky booths in a rainbow of vivid silk. Three rounds of shots appear\u2014one from a drunk bachelorette party, one from a herd of surly butch chicks at the bar, and one from a table of drag queens. They raise a toast, and Alex feels more welcomed than he ever has before, even at his family's victory rallies.\n\nPez gets up and launches into \"So Emotional\" by Whitney Houston in a shockingly flawless falsetto that has the whole club on their feet in a matter of moments, shouting their approval as he belts out the glory notes. Alex looks over in giddy awe at Henry, who laughs and shrugs.\n\n\"I told you, there's nothing he can't do,\" he shouts over the noise.\n\nJune is watching the whole performance with her hands clapped to her face, her mouth hanging open, and she leans over to Nora and drunkenly yells, \"Oh, _no_... he's... so... hot...\"\n\n\"I know, babe,\" Nora yells back.\n\n\"I want to... put my fingers in his mouth...\" she moans, sounding horrified.\n\nNora cackles and nods appreciatively and says, \"Can I help?\"\n\nBea, who has gone through five different lime and sodas so far, politely passes over a shot that's been handed to her as Pez pulls June up on stage, and Alex throws it back. The burn makes his smile and his legs spread a little wider, and his phone is in his hand before he registers sliding it out of his pocket. He texts Henry under the table: wanna do something stupid?\n\nHe watches Henry pull his own phone out, grin, and arch a brow over at him.\n\nWhat could be stupider than this?\n\nHenry's mouth falls open into a very unflattering expression of drunken, bewildered arousal, like a hot halibut, at his reply several beats later. Alex smiles and leans back into the booth, making a show of wrapping wet lips around the bottle of his beer. Henry looks like his entire life might be flashing before his eyes, and he says, an octave too high, \"Right, well, I'll just\u2014nip to the loo!\"\n\nAnd he's off while the rest of the group is still caught up Pez and June's performance. Alex gives it to the count of ten before slipping past Nora and following. He swaps a glance with Cash, who's standing against one wall, gamely wearing a bright pink feather boa. He rolls his eyes but peels off to watch the door.\n\nAlex finds Henry leaning against the sink, arms folded.\n\n\"Have I mentioned lately that you're a _demon_?\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah,\" Alex says, double-checking the coast is clear before grabbing Henry by the belt and backing into a stall. \"Tell me again later.\"\n\n\"You\u2014you know this is still not convincing me to sing, don't you?\" Henry chokes out as Alex mouths along his throat.\n\n\"You really think it's a good idea to present me with a challenge, sweetheart?\"\n\nWhich is how, thirty minutes and two more rounds later, Henry is in front of a screaming crowd, absolutely butchering \"Don't Stop Me Now\" by Queen while Nora sings backup and Bea throws glittery gold roses at his feet. His kimono is dangling off one shoulder so the embroidery across the back reads PRINCE BUTT. Alex does not know where the roses came from, and he can't imagine asking would get him anywhere. He also wouldn't be able to hear the answer because he's been screaming at the top of his lungs for two minutes straight.\n\n_\"I wanna make a supersonic woman of youuu!\"_ Henry shouts, lunging violently sideways, catching Nora by both arms. _\"Don't stop me! Don't stop me! Don't stop me!\"_\n\n_\"Hey, hey, hey!\"_ the entire bar yells back. Pez is practically on top of the table now, pounding the back of the booth with one hand and helping June up onto a chair with the other.\n\n_\"Don't stop me! Don't stop me!\"_\n\nAlex cups his hands around his mouth. _\"Ooh, ooh, ooh!\"_\n\nIn a cacophony of shouting and kicking and pelvic-thrusting and flashing lights, the song blasts into the guitar solo, and there's not a single person in the bar in their seat, not when a Prince of England is knee-sliding across the stage, playing passionate and somewhat erotic air guitar.\n\nNora has produced a bottle of champagne and starts spraying Henry with it, and Alex loses his _mind_ laughing, climbs on top of his seat and wolf whistles. Bea is absolutely beside herself, tears streaming down her face, and Pez actually is on top of the table now, June dancing beside him, with a bright fuschia smear of lipstick in his platinum hair.\n\nAlex feels a tug on his arm\u2014Bea, dragging him down to the stage. She grabs his hand and spins him in a ballerina twirl, and he puts one of her roses between his teeth, and they watch Henry and grin at each other through the noise. Alex feels somewhere, under the fifty layers of booze, something crystal clear radiating off her, a shared knowledge of how rare and wonderful this version of Henry is.\n\nHenry is yelling into the microphone again, stumbling to his feet, his suit and kimono stuck to him with champagne and sweat in a confusingly sexy mess. His eyes flick upward, hazy and hot, and unmistakably lock with Alex's at the edge of the stage, smiling broad and messy. _\"I wanna make a supersonic man outta youuuuu!\"_\n\nBy the end, there's a standing ovation awaiting him, and Bea, with a steady hand and a devilish smile, ruffling his champagne-sticky hair. She steers him into the booth and Alex's side, and he pulls her in after him, and the six of them fall together in a tangle of hoarse laughter and expensive shoes.\n\nHe looks at all of them. Pez, his broad smile and glowing joy, the way his white-blond hair flashes against smooth, dark skin. The curve of Bea's waist and hip and her punk-rock grin as she sucks on the rind of a lime. Nora's long legs, one of which is propped up on the table and the other crossed over one of Bea's, her thigh bare where her dress has ridden up. And Henry, flushed and callow and lean, elegant and thrown wide open, his face always turned toward Alex, his mouth unguarded around a laugh, willing.\n\nHe turns to June and slurs, \"Bisexuality is truly a rich and complex tapestry,\" and she screams with laughter and shoves a napkin in his mouth.\n\nAlex doesn't catch much of the next hour\u2014the back of the limo, Nora and Henry jostling for a spot in his lap, an In-N-Out drive-thru and June screaming next to his ear, \"Animal Style, did you hear me say Animal Style? Stop fucking laughing, Pez.\" There's the hotel, three suites booked for them on the very top floor, riding through the lobby on Cash's impossibly broad back.\n\nJune keeps shushing them as they stumble to their rooms with hands full of grease-soaked burger bags, but she's louder than any of them, so it's a zero-sum game. Bea, perpetually the lone sober voice of the group, picks one of the suites at random and deposits June and Nora in the king-size bed and Pez in the empty bathtub.\n\n\"I trust you two can handle yourselves?\" she says to Alex and Henry in the hallway, a glimmer of mischief in her eyes as she hands them the third key. \"I fully intend to put on a robe and investigate this french-fries-dipped-in-milkshake thing Nora told me about.\"\n\n\"Yes, Beatrice, we shall behave in a manner befitting the crown,\" Henry says. His eyes are slightly crossed.\n\n\"Don't be a tosser,\" she says, and quickly kisses them both on the cheek before vanishing around the corner.\n\nHenry's laughing into the curls at the nape of Alex's neck by the time Alex is fumbling the door open, and they stumble together into the wall, and then toward the bed, clothes dropping in their wake. Henry smells like expensive cologne and champagne and a distinctly Henry smell that never goes away, clean and grassy, and his chest encompasses Alex's back when he crowds up behind him at the edge of the bed, splaying his hands over his hips.\n\n_\"Supersonic man out of youuuu,\"_ Alex mumbles low, craning his head back into Henry's ear, and Henry laughs and kicks his knees out from under him.\n\nIt's a clumsy, sideways tumble into bed, both of them grabbing greedy handfuls of the other, Henry's pants still dangling from one ankle, but it doesn't matter because Henry's eyes are fluttered shut and Alex is finally kissing him again.\n\nHis hands start traveling south on instinct, sweet muscle memory of Henry's body against his, until Henry reaches down to stop him.\n\n\"Hold on, hold on,\" Henry says. \"I'm just realizing. All that earlier, and you haven't gotten off yet tonight, have you?\" He drops his head back on the pillow, regards him with narrowed eyes. \"Well. That just shall not do.\"\n\n\"Hmm, yeah?\" Alex says. He takes advantage of the moment to kiss the column of Henry's throat, the hollow at his collarbone, the knot of his Adam's apple. \"What are you gonna do about it?\"\n\nHenry pushes a hand into his hair and gives it a little pull. \"I shall just have to make it the best orgasm of your life. What can I do to make it good for you? Talk about American tax reform during the act? Have you got talking points?\"\n\nAlex looks up, and Henry is grinning at him. \"I hate you.\"\n\n\"Maybe some light lacrosse role-play?\" He's laughing now, arms coming up around Alex's shoulders to squeeze him to his chest. _\"O captain, my captain.\"_\n\n\"You're literally the worst,\" Alex says, and undercuts it by leaning up to kiss him once more, gently, then deeply, long and slow and heated. He feels Henry's body shifting beneath his, opening up.\n\n\"Hang on,\" Henry says, breaking off breathlessly. \"Wait.\" Alex opens his eyes, and when he looks down, the expression on Henry's face is a more familiar one: nervous, unsure. \"I do actually. Er. Have an idea.\"\n\nHe slides a hand up Henry's chest to the side of his jaw, ghosting over his cheek with one finger. \"Hey,\" he says, serious now. \"I'm listening. For real.\"\n\nHenry bites his lip, visibly searching for the right words, and apparently comes to a decision.\n\n\"C'mere,\" he says, surging up to kiss Alex, and he's putting his whole body into it now, sliding his hands down to palm at Alex's ass as he kisses him. Alex feels a sound tear itself from his throat, and he's following Henry's lead blindly now, kissing him deep into the mattress, riding a continuous wave of Henry's body.\n\nHe feels Henry's thighs\u2014those goddamn horseback-riding, polo-playing thighs\u2014moving around him, soft, warm skin wrapping around his waist, heels pressing into his back. When Alex breaks off to look at him, the intention on Henry's face is as plain as anything he's ever read there.\n\n\"You sure?\"\n\n\"I know we haven't,\" Henry says quietly. \"But, er. I have, before, so, I can show you.\"\n\n\"I mean, I'm familiar with the mechanics,\" Alex says, smirking a little, and he sees a corner of Henry's mouth quirk up to mirror him. \"But you want me to?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he says. He pushes his hips up, and they both make some unflattering, involuntary noises. \"Yes. Absolutely.\"\n\nHenry's shaving kit is on the nightstand, and he reaches over and fumbles blindly through it before finding what he's looking for\u2014a condom and a tiny bottle of lube.\n\nAlex almost laughs at the sight. Travel-size lube. He's had some experimental sex in his lifetime, but it never occurred to him to consider if such a thing existed, much less if Henry was jetting around with it alongside his dental floss.\n\n\"This is new.\"\n\n\"Yes, well,\" Henry says, and he takes one of Alex's hands in his and brings it to his own mouth, kissing his fingertips. \"We all must learn and grow, mustn't we?\"\n\nAlex rolls his eyes, ready to snark, except Henry sucks two fingers into his mouth, very effectively shutting him the hell up. It's incredible and baffling, the way Henry's confidence comes in waves like this, how he struggles so much to get through the asking for what he wants and then readily takes it the moment he's given permission, like at the bar, how the right push had him dancing and shouting as if he'd been waiting for someone to tell him he was allowed to do it.\n\nThey're not as drunk as they were, but there's enough alcohol in their systems, and it doesn't feel as daunting as it would otherwise, the first time, even as his fingers start to find their way. Henry's head falls back onto the pillows, and he closes his eyes and lets Alex take over.\n\nThe thing about sex with Henry is, it's never the same twice. Sometimes he moves easily, caught up in the rush, and other times he's tense and taut and wants Alex to work him loose and take him apart. Sometimes nothing gets him off faster than being talked back to, but other times they both want him to use every inch of authority in his blood, not to let Alex get there until he's told, until he begs.\n\nIt's unpredictable and it's intoxicating and it's _fun,_ because Alex has never met a challenge he didn't love, and he\u2014well, Henry is a challenge, head to toe, beginning to end.\n\nTonight, Henry's silly and warm and ready, his body quick and smooth to give Alex what he's looking for, laughing and incredulous at his own responsiveness to touch. Alex leans down to kiss him, and Henry murmurs into the corner of his mouth, \"Ready when you are, love.\"\n\nAlex takes a breath, holds it. He's ready. He thinks he's ready.\n\nHenry's hand comes up to stroke along his jaw, his sweaty hairline, and Alex settles himself between his legs, lets Henry lace the fingers of his right hand with Alex's left.\n\nHe's watching Henry's face\u2014he can't imagine looking at anything other than Henry's face right now\u2014and his expression goes so soft and his mouth so happy and astonished that Alex's voice speaks without his permission, a hoarse \"baby.\" Henry nods, so small that someone who didn't know all his tics might miss it, but Alex knows exactly what it means, so he leans down and sucks Henry's earlobe between his lips and calls him _baby_ again, and Henry says, \"Yes,\" and, \"Please,\" and tugs his hair at the root.\n\nAlex nips at Henry's throat and palms at his hips and sinks into the white-out bliss of being that impossibly close to him, of getting to share his body. Somehow it still amazes him that all this seems to be as unbelievably, singularly _good_ for Henry as it is for him. Henry's face should be illegal, the way it's turned up toward him, flushed and undone. Alex feels his own lips spreading into a pleased smile, awed and proud.\n\nAfterward, he comes back into his own body in increments\u2014his knees, still dug into the mattress and shaking; his stomach, slick and sticky; his hands, twisted up in Henry's hair, stroking it gently.\n\nHe feels like he's stepped outside of himself and returned to find everything slightly rearranged. When he pulls his face back to look at Henry, the feeling comes back into his chest: an ache in answer to the curve of Henry's top lip over white teeth.\n\n\"Jesus Christ,\" Alex says at last, and when he looks over at Henry again, he's squinting at him impishly out of one eye, smirking.\n\n\"Would you describe it as _supersonic_?\" he says, and Alex groans and slaps him across the chest, and they both dissolve into messy laughter.\n\nThey slide apart and make out and argue over who has to sleep in the wet spot until they pass out around four in the morning. Henry rolls Alex onto his side and burrows behind him until he's covering him completely, his shoulders a brace for Alex's shoulders, one of his thighs pressed on top of Alex's thighs, his arms over Alex's arms and his hands over Alex's hands, nowhere left untouched. It's the best Alex has slept in years.\n\nTheir alarms go off three hours later for their flights home.\n\nThey shower together. Henry's mood turns dark and sour over morning coffee at the harsh reality of returning to London so soon, and Alex kisses him dumbly and promises to call and wishes there was more he could do.\n\nHe watches Henry lather up and shave, put pomade in his hair, put on his Burberry for the day, and he catches himself wishing he could watch it every day. He likes taking Henry apart, but there's something incredibly intimate about sitting on the bed they wrecked the night before, the only one who watches him create Prince Henry of Wales for the day.\n\nThrough his throbbing hangover, he's got a suspicion all these feelings are why he held off on fucking Henry for so long.\n\nAlso, he might puke. It's probably unrelated.\n\nThey meet the others in the hallway, Henry passing for hungover but handsome, and Alex just doing his best. Bea is looking well-rested, fresh, and very smug about it. June, Nora, and Pez all emerge disheveled from their suite looking like the cats that caught the canaries, but it's impossible to tell who is a cat and who is a canary. Nora has a smudge of lipstick on the back of her neck. Alex doesn't ask.\n\nCash chuckles under his breath when he meets them at the elevators, a tray of six coffees balanced on one hand. Hangover tending isn't part of his job description, but he's a mother hen.\n\n\"So this is the gang now, huh?\"\n\nAnd through it all, Alex realizes with a start: He has friends now.\n\n# EIGHT\n\n> You are a dark sorcerer\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 6\/8\/20 3:23 PM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex,\n> \n> I can't think of a single other way to start this email except to say, and I do hope you will forgive both my language and my utter lack of restraint: You are so fucking beautiful.\n> \n> I've been useless for a week, driven around for appearances and meetings, lucky if I've made a single meaningful contribution to any of them. How is a man to get anything done knowing Alex Claremont-Diaz is out there on the loose? I am driven to distraction.\n> \n> It's all bloody useless because when I'm not thinking about your face, I'm thinking about your arse or your hands or your smart mouth. I suspect the latter is what got me into this predicament in the first place. Nobody's ever got the nerve to be cheeky to a prince, except you. The moment you first called me a prick, my fate was sealed. O, fathers of my bloodline! O, ye kings of olde! Take this crown from me, bury me in my ancestral soil. If only you had known the mighty work of thine loins would be undone by a gay heir who likes it when American boys with chin dimples are mean to him.\n> \n> Actually, remember those gay kings I mentioned? I feel that James I, who fell madly in love with a very fit and exceptionally dim knight at a tilting match and immediately made him a gentleman of the bedchamber (a real title), would take mercy upon my particular plight.\n> \n> I'll be damned but I miss you.\n> \n> x\n> \n> Henry\n> \n> Re: You are a dark sorcerer\n\n* * *\n\n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 6\/8\/20 5:02 PM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> H,\n> \n> Are you implying that you're James I and I'm some hot, dumb jock? I'm more than fantastic bone structure and an ass you can bounce a quarter on, Henry!!!!\n> \n> Don't apologize for calling me pretty. Because then you're putting me in a position where I have to apologize for saying you blew my fucking mind in LA and I'm gonna die if it doesn't happen again soon. How's that for lack of restraint, huh? You really wanna play that game with me?\n> \n> Listen: I'll fly to London right now and pull you out of whatever pointless meeting you're in and make you admit how much you love it when I call you \"baby.\" I'll take you apart with my teeth, sweetheart.\n> \n> xoxo\n> \n> A\n> \n> Re: You are a dark sorcerer\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 6\/8\/20 7:21 PM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex,\n> \n> You know, when you go to Oxford to get a degree in English literature, as I have, people always want to know who your favorite English author is.\n> \n> The press team compiled a list of acceptable answers. They wanted a realist, so I suggested George Eliot\u2014no, Eliot was actually Mary Anne Evans under a pen name, not a strong male author. They wanted one of the inventors of the English novel, so I suggested Daniel Defoe\u2014no, he was a dissenter from the Church of England. At one point, I threw out Jonathan Swift just to watch the collective coronary they had at the thought of an Irish political satirist.\n> \n> In the end they picked Dickens, which is hilarious. They wanted something less fruity than the truth, but truly, what is gayer than a woman who languishes away in a crumbling mansion wearing her wedding gown every day of her life, for the drama?\n> \n> The fruity truth: My favorite English author is Jane Austen.\n> \n> So, to borrow a passage from Sense and Sensibility: \"You want nothing but patience\u2014or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.\" To paraphrase: I hope to see you put your green American money where your filthy mouth is soon.\n> \n> Yours in sexual frustration,\n> \n> Henry\n\n* * *\n\nAlex feels like somebody has probably warned him about private email servers before, but he's a little fuzzy on the details. It doesn't feel important.\n\nAt first, like most things that require time when instant gratification is possible, he doesn't see the point of Henry's emails.\n\nBut when Richards tells Sean Hannity that his mother hasn't accomplished anything as president, Alex screams into his elbow and goes back to: The way you speak sometimes is like sugar spilling out of a bag with a hole in the bottom. When WASPy Hunter brings up the Harvard rowing team for the fifth time in one workday: Your arse in those trousers is a crime. When he's tired of being touched by strangers: Come back to me when you're done being flung through the firmament, you lost Pleiad.\n\nNow he gets it.\n\nHis dad wasn't wrong about how ugly things would get with Richards leading the ticket. Utah ugly, Christian ugly, ugliness couched in dog whistles and toothy white smiles. Right-wing think pieces about entitlement thrown in his and June's direction, reeking of: _Mexicans stole the First Family jobs too._\n\nHe can't allow the fear of losing in. He drinks coffee and brings his policy work on the campaign trail and drinks more coffee, reads emails from Henry, and drinks even more coffee.\n\nThe first DC Pride since his \"bisexual awakening\" happens while Alex is in Nevada, and he spends the day jealously checking Twitter\u2014confetti raining down on the Mall, grand marshal Rafael Luna with a rainbow bandana around his head. He goes back to his hotel and talks to his minibar about it.\n\nThe biggest bright spot in all the chaos is that his lobbying with one of the campaign chairs (and his own mother) has finally paid off: They're doing a massive rally at Minute Maid Park in Houston. Polls are shifting in directions they've never seen before. Politico's top story of the week: IS 2020 THE YEAR TEXAS BECOMES A TRUE BATTLEGROUND STATE?\n\n\"Yes, I will make sure everyone knows the Houston rally was your idea,\" his mother says, barely paying attention, as she goes over her speech on the plane to Texas.\n\n\"You should say 'grit,' not 'fortitude' there,\" June says, reading the speech over her shoulder. \"Texans like grit.\"\n\n\"Can y'all both go sit somewhere else?\" she says, but she adds a note.\n\nAlex knows a lot of the campaign is skeptical, even when they've seen the numbers. So when they pull up to Minute Maid and the line wraps around the block twice, he feels beyond gratified. He feels _smug._ His mom gets up to make her speech to thousands, and Alex thinks, _Hell yeah, Texas. Prove the bastards wrong._\n\nHe's still riding the high when he swipes his badge at the door of the campaign office the following Monday. He's been getting tired of sitting at a desk and going through focus groups again and again and again, but he's ready to pick the fight back up.\n\nThe fact that he rounds the corner into his cubicle to find WASPy Hunter holding the Texas Binder brings him right the fuck back down.\n\n\"Oh, you left this on your desk,\" WASPy Hunter says casually. \"I thought maybe it was a new project they were putting us on.\"\n\n\"Do I go on _your_ side of the cubicle and turn off your Dropkick Murphys Spotify station, no matter how much I want to?\" Alex demands. \"No, _Hunter,_ I don't.\"\n\n\"Well, you do kind of steal my pencils a lot\u2014\"\n\nAlex snatches the binder away before he can finish. \"It's private.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" WASPy Hunter asks as Alex shoves it back into his bag. He can't believe he left it out. \"All that data, and the district lines\u2014what are you doing with all that?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Is it about the Houston rally you pushed for?\"\n\n\"Houston was a good idea,\" he says, instantly defensive.\n\n\"Dude... you don't honestly think Texas can go blue, do you? It's one of the most backward states in the country.\"\n\n\"You're from _Boston,_ Hunter. You really want to talk about all the places bigotry comes from?\"\n\n\"Look, man, I'm just saying.\"\n\n\"You know what?\" Alex says. \"You think y'all are off the hook for institutional bigotry because you come from a blue state. Not every white supremacist is a meth-head in Bumfuck, Mississippi\u2014there are _plenty_ of them at Duke or UPenn on Daddy's money.\"\n\nWASPy Hunter looks startled but not convinced. \"None of that changes that red states have been red forever,\" he says, laughing, like it's something to joke about, \"and none of those populations seem to care enough about what's good for them to vote.\"\n\n\"Maybe _those populations_ might be more motivated to vote if we made an actual effort to campaign to them and showed them that we care, and how our platform is designed to help them, not leave them behind,\" Alex says hotly. \"Imagine if nobody who claims to have your interests at heart ever came to your state and tried to talk to you, man. Or if you were a felon, or\u2014fucking voter ID laws, people who can't access polls, who can't leave work to get to one?\"\n\n\"Yeah, I mean, it'd be great if we could magically mobilize every eligible marginalized voter in red states, but political campaigns have a finite amount of time and resources, and we have to prioritize based on projections,\" WASPy Hunter says, as if Alex, the First Son of the United States, is unfamiliar with how campaigns work. \"There just aren't the same number of bigots in blue states. If they don't want to be left behind, maybe people in red states should do something about it.\"\n\nAnd Alex has, quite frankly, had it.\n\n\"Did you forget that you're working on the campaign of someone Texas fucking created?\" he says, and his voice has officially risen to the point where staffers in the neighboring cubicles are staring, but he doesn't care. \"Why don't we talk about how there's a chapter of the Klan in every state? You think there aren't racists and homophobes growing up in Vermont? Man, I appreciate that you're doing the work here, but you're not special. You don't get to sit up here and pretend like it's someone else's problem. None of us do.\"\n\nHe takes his bag and his binder and storms out.\n\nThe minute he's outside the building, he pulls out his phone on impulse, opens up Google. There are test dates this month. He knows there are.\n\nLSAT washington dc area test center, he types.\n\n> 3 Geniuses and Alex\n\nJune 23, 2020, 12:34 PM\n\n> juniper\n> \n> BUG\n> \n> Not my name, not anyone's name, stop\n> \n> leading member of korean pop band bts kim nam-june\n> \n> BUG\n> \n> I'm blocking your number\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> Alex, please don't tell me Pez has indoctrinated you with K-pop.\n> \n> well you let nora get you into drag race so\n> \n> irl chaos demon\n> \n> [latrice royale eat it.gif]\n> \n> BUG\n> \n> What did you want Alex????\n> \n> where's my speech for milwaukee? i know you took it\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> Must you have this conversation in the group chat?\n> \n> BUG\n> \n> Part of it needed to be rewritten!!! I put it back with edits in the outside pocket of your messenger bag\n> \n> davis is gonna kill you if you keep doing this\n> \n> BUG\n> \n> Davis saw how well my tweaks to the talking points went over on Seth Meyers last week so he knows better\n> \n> why is there a rock in here too\n> \n> BUG\n> \n> That is a clear quartz crystal for clarity and good vibes do not @ me. We need all the help we can get right now\n> \n> stop putting SPELLS on my STUFF\n> \n> irl chaos demon\n> \n> BURN THE WITCH\n> \n> irl chaos demon\n> \n> hey what do we think of this #look for the college voter thing tomorrow\n> \n> irl chaos demon\n> \n> [Attached Image]\n> \n> irl chaos demon\n> \n> i'm going for, like, depressed lesbian poet who met a hot yoga instructor at a speakeasy who got her super into meditation and pottery, and now she's starting a new life as a high-powered businesswoman selling her own line of hand-thrown fruit bowls\n> \n>...\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> Bitch, you took me there.\n> \n> alskdjfadslfjad\n> \n> NORA YOU BROKE HIM\n> \n> irl chaos demon\n> \n> lmaoooooo\n\n* * *\n\nThe invitation comes certified airmail straight from Buckingham Palace. Gilded edges, spindly calligraphy: THE CHAIRMAN AND COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT OF THE CHAMPIONSHIPS REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF THE COMPANY OF ALEXANDER CLAREMONT-DIAZ IN THE ROYAL BOX ON THE 6TH OF JULY, 2020.\n\nAlex takes a picture and texts it to Henry.\n\n1. tf is this? aren't there poor people in your country?\n\n2. i've already been in the royal box\n\nHenry sends back, You are a delinquent and a plague, and then, Please come?\n\nAnd here Alex is, spending his one day off from the campaign at Wimbledon, only to get his body next to Henry's again.\n\n\"So, as I've warned you,\" Henry says as they approach the doors to the Royal Box, \"Philip will be here. And assorted other nobility with whom you may have to make conversation. People named Basil.\"\n\n\"I think I've proven that I can handle royals.\"\n\nHenry looks doubtful. \"You're brave. I could use some of that.\"\n\nThe sun is, for once, bright over London when they step outside, flooding the stands around them, which have already mostly filled with spectators. He notices David Beckham in a well-tailored suit\u2014once again, how had he convinced himself he was straight?\u2014before David Beckham turns away and Alex sees it was Bea he was talking to, her face bright when she spots them.\n\n\"Oi, Alex! Henry!\" she chirps over the murmur of the Box. She's a vision in a lime-green, drop-waist silk dress, a pair of huge, round Gucci sunglasses embellished with gold honeybees perched on her nose.\n\n\"You look gorgeous,\" Alex says, accepting a kiss on his cheek.\n\n\"Why _thank_ you, darling,\" Bea says. She takes one of their arms in each of hers and whisks them off down the steps. \"Your sister helped me pick the dress, actually. It's McQueen. She's a genius, did you know?\"\n\n\"I've been made aware.\"\n\n\"Here we are,\" Bea says when they've reached the front row. \"These are ours.\"\n\nHenry looks at the lush green cushions of the seats topped with thick and shiny _WIMBLEDON 2020_ programs, right at the front edge of the box.\n\n\"Front and center?\" he says with a note of nervousness. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes, Henry, in case you have forgotten, you are a royal and this is the Royal Box.\" She waves down to the photographers below, who are already snapping photos of them, before leaning into them and whispering, \"Don't worry, I don't think they can detect the thick air of horn-town betwixt you two from the lawn.\"\n\n\"Ha-ha, Bea,\" Henry monotones, ears pink, and despite his apprehension, he takes his seat between Alex and Bea. He keeps his elbows carefully tucked into his sides and out of Alex's space.\n\nIt's halfway through the day when Philip and Martha arrive, Philip looking as generically handsome as ever. Alex wonders how such rich genetics conspired to make Bea and Henry both so interesting to look at, all mischievous smiles and swooping cheekbones, but punted so hard on Philip. He looks like a stock photo.\n\n\"Morning,\" Philip says as he takes his reserved seat to the side of Bea. His eyes track over Alex twice, and Alex can sense skepticism as to why Alex was even allowed. Maybe it's weird Alex is here. He doesn't care. Martha's looking at him weird too, but maybe she's simply holding a grudge about her wedding cake.\n\n\"Afternoon, Pip,\" Bea says politely. \"Martha.\"\n\nBeside him, Henry's spine stiffens.\n\n\"Henry,\" Philip says. Henry's hand is tense on the program in his lap. \"Good to see you, mate. Been a bit busy, have you? Gap year and all that?\"\n\nThere's an implication under his tone. _Where exactly have you been? What exactly have you been doing?_ A muscle flexes in Henry's jaw.\n\n\"Yes,\" Henry says. \"Loads of work with Percy. It's been mad.\"\n\n\"Right, the Okonjo Foundation, isn't it?\" he says. \"Shame he couldn't make it today. Suppose we'll have to make do with our American friend, then?\"\n\nAt that, he tips a dry smile at Alex.\n\n\"Yep,\" Alex says, too loud. He grins broadly.\n\n\"Though, I do suppose Percy would look a bit out of place in the Box, wouldn't he?\"\n\n_\"Philip,\"_ Bea says.\n\n\"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Bea,\" Philip says dismissively. \"I only mean he's a peculiar sort, isn't he? Those frocks he wears? A bit much for Wimbledon.\"\n\nHenry's face is calm and genial, but one of his knees has shifted over to dig into Alex's. \"They're called dashikis, Philip, and he wore one _once._ \"\n\n\"Right,\" Philip says. \"You know I don't judge. I just think, you know, remember when we were younger and you'd spend time with my mates from uni? Or Lady Agatha's son, the one that's always quail hunting? You could consider more mates of... similar standing.\"\n\nHenry's mouth is a thin line, but he says nothing.\n\n\"We can't all be best mates with the Count of Monpezat like you, Philip,\" Bea mutters.\n\n\"In any event,\" Philip presses on, ignoring her, \"you're unlikely to find a wife unless you're running in the right circles, aren't you?\" He chuckles a little and returns to watching the match.\n\n\"If you'll excuse me,\" Henry says. He drops his program in his seat and vanishes.\n\nTen minutes later, Alex finds him in the clubhouse by a gigantic vase of lurid fuschia flowers. His eyes are intent on Alex the moment he sees him, his lip chewed the same furious red as the embroidered Union Jack on his pocket square.\n\n\"Hello, Alex,\" he says placidly.\n\nAlex takes his tone. \"Hi.\"\n\n\"Has anyone shown you round the clubhouse yet?\"\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\n\"Well, then.\"\n\nHenry touches two fingers to the back of his elbow, and Alex obeys immediately.\n\nDown a flight of stairs, through a concealed side door and a second hidden corridor, there is a small room full of chairs and tablecloths and one old, abandoned tennis racquet. As soon as the door is closed behind them, Henry slams him up against it.\n\nHe gets right up in Alex's space, but he doesn't kiss him. He hovers there, a breath away, his hands at Alex's hips and his mouth split open in a crooked smirk.\n\n\"D'you know what I want?\" he says, his voice so low and hot that it burns right through Alex's solar plexus, right into the core of him.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I want,\" he says, \"to do the absolute last thing I'm supposed to be doing right now.\"\n\nAlex juts out his chin, grinningly defiant. \"Then tell me to do it, sweetheart.\"\n\nAnd Henry, tonguing the corner of his own mouth, tugs hard to undo Alex's belt and says, \"Fuck me.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Alex grunts, \"when at Wimbledon.\"\n\nHenry laughs hoarsely and leans down to kiss him, open-mouthed and eager. He's moving fast, knowing they're on borrowed time, quick to follow the lead when Alex groans and pulls at his shoulders to change their positions. He gets Henry's back to his chest, Henry's palms braced against the door.\n\n\"Just so we're clear,\" Alex says, \"I'm about to have sex with you in this storage closet to spite your family. Like, that's what's happening?\"\n\nHenry, who has apparently been carrying his travel-size lube with him this entire time in his jacket, says, \"Right,\" and tosses it over his shoulder.\n\n\"Awesome, fuckin' love doing things out of spite,\" he says without a hint of sarcasm, and he kicks Henry's feet apart.\n\nAnd it should be\u2014it should be funny. It should be hot, stupid, ridiculous, obscene, another wild sexual adventure to add to the list. And it is, but... it shouldn't also feel like last time, like Alex might die if it ever stops. There's a laugh in his mouth, but it won't get past his tongue, because he knows this is him helping Henry get through something. Rebellion.\n\n_You're brave. I could use some of that._\n\nAfter, he kisses Henry's mouth fiercely, pushes his fingers deep into Henry's hair, sucks the air out of him. Henry smiles breathlessly against his neck, looking extremely pleased with himself, and says, \"I'm rather finished with tennis, aren't you?\"\n\nSo, they steal away behind a crowd, blocked by PPOs and umbrellas, and back at Kensington, Henry brings Alex up to his rooms.\n\nHis \"apartment\" is a sprawling warren of twenty-two rooms on the northwest side of the palace closest to the Orangery. He splits it with Bea, but there's not much of either of them in any of the high ceilings and heavy, jacquard furniture. What is there is more Bea than Henry: a leather jacket flung over the back of a chaise, Mr. Wobbles preening in a corner, a seventeenth-century Dutch oil painting on one landing literally called _Woman at her Toilet_ that only Bea would have selected from the royal collection.\n\nHenry's bedroom is as cavernous and opulent and insufferably beige as Alex could have imagined, with a gilded baroque bed and windows overlooking the gardens. He watches Henry shrug out of his suit and imagines having to live in it, wondering if Henry simply isn't allowed to choose what his rooms look like or if he never wanted to ask for something different. All those nights Henry can't sleep, just knocking around these endless, impersonal rooms, like a bird trapped in a museum.\n\nThe only room that really feels like both Henry and Bea is a small parlor on the second floor converted into a music studio. The colors are richest here: hand-woven Turkish rugs in deep reds and violets, a tobacco-colored settee. Little poufs and tables of knickknacks spring up like mushrooms, and the walls are lined with Stratocasters and Flying Vs, violins, an assortment of harps, one stout cello propped up in the corner.\n\nIn the center of the room is the grand piano, and Henry sits down at it and plucks away idly, toying with the melody of something that sounds like an old song by The Killers. David the beagle naps quietly near the pedals.\n\n\"Play something I don't know,\" Alex says.\n\nBack in high school in Texas, Alex was the most cultured of the jock crowd because he was a book nerd, a politics junkie, the only varsity letterman debating the finer points of Dred Scott in AP US History. He listens to Nina Simone and Otis Redding, likes expensive whiskey. But Henry's got an entirely different compendium of knowledge.\n\nSo he just listens and nods and smiles a little while Henry explains that _this_ is what Brahms sounds like, and _this_ is Wagner, and how they were on the two opposing sides of the Romantic movement. \"Do you hear the difference there?\" His hands are fast, almost effortless, even as he goes off into a tangent about the War of the Romantics and how Liszt's daughter left her husband for Wagner, _quel scandale._\n\nHe switches to an Alexander Scriabin sonata, winking over at Alex at the composer's first name. The andante\u2014the third movement\u2014is his favorite, he explains, because he read once that it was written to evoke the image of a castle in ruins, which he found darkly funny at the time. He goes quiet, focused, lost in the piece for long minutes. Then, without warning, it changes again, turbulent chords circling back into something familiar\u2014the Elton John songbook. Henry closes his eyes, playing from memory. It's \"Your Song.\" _Oh._\n\nAnd Alex's heart doesn't spread itself out in his chest, and he doesn't have to grip the edge of the settee to steady himself. Because that's what he would do if he were here in this palace to fall in love with Henry, and not just continuing this thing where they fly across the world to touch each other and don't talk about it. That's not why he's here. It's not.\n\nThey make out lazily for what could be hours on the settee\u2014Alex wants to do it on the piano, but it's a priceless antique or whatever\u2014and then they stagger up to Henry's room, the palatial bed. Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.\n\nIt pushes Henry over some kind of edge, melted and overwhelmed on the lush bedclothes. Alex spends nearly an hour afterward coaxing little tremors out of him, in awe of his elaborate expressions of wonder and blissful agony, ghosting featherlight fingertips over his collarbone, his ankles, the insides of his knees, the small bones of the backs of his hands, the dip of his lower lip. He touches and touches until he brings Henry to another brink with only his fingertips, only his breath on the inside of his thighs, the promise of Alex's mouth where he'd pressed his fingers before.\n\nHenry says the same two words from the secret room at Wimbledon, this time dressed up in, \"Please, I need you to.\" He still can't believe Henry can talk like this, that he gets to be the only one who hears it.\n\nSo he does.\n\nWhen they come back down, Henry practically passes out on his chest without another word, fucked-out and boneless, and Alex laughs to himself and pets his sweaty hair and listens to the soft snores that come almost immediately.\n\nIt takes him hours to fall asleep, though.\n\nHenry drools on him. David finds his way onto the bed and curls up at their feet. Alex has to be back on a plane for DNC prep in a matter of hours, but he can't sleep. It's jet lag. It's just jet lag.\n\nHe remembers, as if from a million miles away, telling Henry once not to overthink this.\n\n* * *\n\n\"As your president,\" Jeffrey Richards is saying on one of the flat screens in the campaign office, \"one of my many priorities will be encouraging young people to get involved with their government. If we're going to hold our control of the Senate and take back the House, we need the next generation to stand up and join the fight.\"\n\nThe College Republicans of Vanderbilt University cheer on the live feed, and Alex pretends to barf onto his latest policy draft.\n\n\"Why don't you come up here, Brittany?\" A pretty blond student joins Richards at the podium, and he puts an arm around her. \"Brittany here was the main organizer we worked with for this event, and she couldn't have done a better job getting us this amazing turnout!\"\n\nMore cheers. A mid-level staffer lobs a ball of paper at the screen.\n\n\"It's young people like Brittany who give us hope for the future of our party. Which is why I'm pleased to announce that, as president, I'll be launching the Richards Youth Congress program. Other politicians don't want people\u2014especially discerning young people like you\u2014to get up close in our offices and see just how the sausage gets made\u2014\"\n\ni want to see a cage match between your grandmother and this fucking ghoul running against my mom, Alex texts Henry as he turns back to his cubicle.\n\nIt's the last days before the DNC, and he hasn't been able to catch the coffeepot before it's empty in a week. The policy inboxes are overflowing since they released the official platform two days ago, and WASPy Hunter has been firing off emails like his life depends on it. He hasn't said anything else to Alex about his rant from last month, but he has started wearing headphones to spare Alex his musical choices.\n\nHe types out another text, this one to Luna: can you please go on anderson cooper or something and explain that paragraph you ghostwrote on tax law for the platform so people will stop asking? ain't got the time, vato.\n\nHe's been texting Luna all week, ever since the Richards campaign leaked that they've tapped an Independent senator for his prospective cabinet. That old bastard Stanley Connor flat-out denied every last request for an endorsement\u2014by the end, Luna privately told Alex they were lucky Connor didn't try to primary them. Nothing's official, but everyone knows Connor is the one joining Richards's ticket. But if Luna knows when the announcement's coming, he's not sharing.\n\nIt's a _week._ The polls aren't great, Paul Ryan is getting sanctimonious about the Second Amendment, and there's some _Salon_ hot take going around, WOULD ELLEN CLAREMONT HAVE GOTTEN ELECTED IF SHE WEREN'T CONVENTIONALLY BEAUTIFUL? If it weren't for her morning meditation sessions, Alex is sure his mom would have throttled an aide by now.\n\nFor his part, he misses Henry's bed, Henry's body, Henry and a place a few thousand miles removed from the factory line of the campaign. That night after Wimbledon from a week ago feels like something out of a dream now, all the more tantalizing because Henry is in New York for a few days with Pez to do paperwork for an LGBT youth shelter in Brooklyn. There aren't enough hours in the day for Alex to find a pretense to get there, and no matter how much the world enjoys their public friendship, they're running out of plausible excuses to be seen together.\n\nThis time is nothing like their first breathless trip to the DNC in 2016. His dad had been the delegate to cast the votes from California that put her over, and they all cried. Alex and June introduced their mother before her acceptance speech, and June's hands were shaking but his were steady. The crowd roared, and Alex's heart roared back.\n\nThis year, they're all frizzy-haired and exhausted from trying to run the country and a campaign simultaneously, and even one day of the DNC is a stretch. On the second night of the convention, they pile onto Air Force One to New York\u2014it'd be Marine One, but they won't all fit in one helicopter.\n\n\"Have you run a cost-benefit analysis on this?\" Zahra is saying into her phone as they take off. \"Because you know I'm right, and these assets can be transferred at any time if you disagree. Yes. Yeah, I know. Okay. That's what I thought.\" A long pause, then, under her breath, \"Love you too.\"\n\n\"Um,\" Alex says when she's hung up. \"Something you'd like to share with the class?\"\n\nZahra doesn't even look up from her phone. \"Yes, that was my boyfriend, and no, you may not ask me any further questions about him.\"\n\nJune has shut her journal in sudden interest. \"How could you possibly have a boyfriend we don't know about?\"\n\n\"I see you more than I see clean underwear,\" Alex says.\n\n\"You're not changing your underwear often enough, sugar,\" his mother interjects from across the cabin.\n\n\"I go commando a lot,\" Alex says dismissively. \"Is this like a 'my Canadian girlfriend' thing? Does he\"\u2014he does very animated air quotes\u2014\"'go to a different school'?\"\n\n\"You really are determined to get shoved out of an emergency hatch one day, huh?\" she says. \"It's long distance. But not like that. No more questions.\"\n\nCash jumps in too, insisting he deserves to know as the resident love guru of the staff, and there's a debate about appropriate information to share with your coworkers, which is laughable considering how much Cash already knows about Alex's personal life. They're circling New York when June suddenly stops talking, focused again on Zahra, who has gone silent.\n\n\"Zahra?\"\n\nAlex turns and sees Zahra sitting perfectly still, such a departure from her usual constant motion that everyone else freezes too. She's staring at her phone, mouth open.\n\n\"Zahra,\" his mother echoes now, deadly serious. \"What?\"\n\nShe looks up finally, her grip on her phone tight. \"The _Post_ just broke the name of the Independent senator joining Richards's cabinet,\" she says. \"It's not Stanley Connor. It's Rafael Luna.\"\n\n* * *\n\n_\"No,\"_ June is saying. Her heels are dangling from her hand, her eyes bright in the warm light near the hotel elevator where they've agreed to meet. Her hair is coming out of its braid in angry spikes. \"You're damn lucky I agreed to talk to you in the first place, so you get this or you get nothing.\"\n\nThe _Post_ reporter blinks, fingers faltering on his recorder. He's been hounding June on her personal phone since the minute they landed in New York for a quote about the convention, and now he's demanding something about Luna. June is not typically an angry person, but it's been a long day, and she looks about three seconds from using one of those heels to stab the guy through the eye socket.\n\n\"What about you?\" the guy asks Alex.\n\n\"If she's not giving it to you, I'm not giving it to you,\" Alex says. \"She's much nicer than me.\"\n\nJune snaps her fingers in front of the guy's hipster glasses, eyes blazing. \"You don't get to speak to him,\" June says. \"Here is my quote: My mother, the president, still fully intends to win this race. We're here to support her and to encourage the party to stay united behind her.\"\n\n\"But about Senator Luna\u2014\"\n\n\"Thank you. Vote Claremont,\" June says tightly, slapping her hand over Alex's mouth. She sweeps him off and into the waiting elevator, elbowing him when he licks her palm.\n\n\"That goddamn fucking _traitor,_ \" Alex says when they reach their floor. \"Duplicitous fucking _bastard_! I\u2014I fucking helped him get elected. I canvassed for him for twenty-seven hours straight. I went to his sister's wedding. I memorized his goddamn _Five Guys order_!\"\n\n\"I fucking know, Alex,\" June says, shoving her keycard into the slot.\n\n\"How did that Vampire Weekend\u2013looking little shit even have your personal number?\"\n\nJune throws her shoes at the bed, and they bounce off onto the floor in different directions. \"Because I slept with him last year, Alex, how do you think? You're not the only one who makes stupid sexual decisions when you're stressed out.\" She drops onto the bed and starts taking off her earrings. \"I just don't understand what the point is. Like, what is Luna's endgame here? Is he some kind of fucking sleeper agent sent from the future to give me an ulcer?\"\n\nIt's late\u2014they got into New York after nine, hurtling into crisis management meetings for hours. Alex still feels wired, but when June looks up at him, he can see some of the brightness in her eyes has started to look like frustrated tears, and he softens a little.\n\n\"If I had to guess, Luna thinks we're going to lose,\" he tells her quietly, \"and he thinks he can help push Richards farther left by joining the ticket. Like, putting the fire out from inside the house.\"\n\nJune looks at him, eyes tired, searching his face. She may be the oldest, but politics is Alex's game, not hers. He knows he would have chosen this life for himself given the option; he knows she wouldn't have.\n\n\"I think... I need to sleep. For, like, the next year. At least. Wake me up after the general.\"\n\n\"Okay, Bug,\" Alex says. He leans down to kiss the top of her head. \"I can do that.\"\n\n\"Thanks, baby bro.\"\n\n\"Don't call me that.\"\n\n\"Tiny, miniature, itty-bitty, baby brother.\"\n\n\"Fuck off.\"\n\n\"Go to bed.\"\n\nCash is waiting for him out in the hallway, his suit abandoned for plainclothes.\n\n\"Hanging in there?\" he asks Alex.\n\n\"I mean, I kind of have to.\"\n\nCash pats him on the shoulder with one gigantic hand. \"There's a bar downstairs.\"\n\nAlex considers. \"Yeah, okay.\"\n\nThe Beekman is thankfully quiet this late, and the bar is low-lit with warm, rich shades of gold on the walls and deep-green leather on the high-backed barstools. Alex orders a whiskey neat.\n\nHe looks at his phone, swallowing down his frustration with the whiskey. He texted Luna three hours ago, a succinct: what the fuck? An hour ago, he got back: I don't expect you to understand.\n\nHe wants to call Henry. He guesses it makes sense\u2014they've always been fixed points in each other's worlds, little magnetic poles. Some laws of physics would be reassuring right now.\n\nGod, whiskey makes him maudlin. He orders another.\n\nHe's contemplating texting Henry, even though he's probably somewhere over the Atlantic, when a voice curls around his ear, smooth and warm. He's sure he must be imagining it.\n\n\"I'll have a gin and tonic, thanks,\" it says, and there's Henry in the flesh, sidled up next to him at the bar, looking a little tousled in a soft gray button-down and jeans. Alex wonders for an insane second if his brain has conjured up some kind of stress-induced sex mirage, when Henry says, voice lowered, \"You looked rather tragic drinking alone.\"\n\nDefinitely the real Henry, then. \"You're\u2014what are you doing here?\"\n\n\"You know, as a figurehead of one of the most powerful countries in the world, I do manage to keep abreast on international politics.\"\n\nAlex raises an eyebrow.\n\nHenry inclines his head, sheepish. \"I sent Pez home without me because I was worried.\"\n\n\"There it is,\" Alex says with a wink. He goes for his drink to hide what he suspects is a small, sad smile; the ice clacks against his teeth. \"Speak not the bastard's name.\"\n\n\"Cheers,\" Henry says as the bartender returns with his drink.\n\nHenry takes the first sip, sucking lime juice off his thumb, and fuck, he looks _good._ There's color in his cheeks and lips, the glow of Brooklyn summertime warmth that his English blood isn't accustomed to. He looks like something soft and downy Alex wants to sink into, and he realizes the knot of anxiety in his chest has finally slackened.\n\nIt's rare anyone other than June goes out of their way to check on him. It's by his own design, mostly, a barricade of charm and fitful monologues and hard-headed independence. Henry looks at him like he's not fooled by any of it.\n\n\"Get moving on that drink, Wales,\" Alex says. \"I've got a king-size bed upstairs that's calling my name.\" He shifts on his stool, letting one of his knees graze against Henry's under the bar, nudging them apart.\n\nHenry squints at him. \"Bossy.\"\n\nThey sit there until Henry finishes his drink, Alex listening to the placating murmur of Henry talking about different brands of gin, thankful that for once Henry seems happy to carry the conversation alone. He closes his eyes, wills the disaster of the day away, and tries to forget. He remembers Henry's words in the garden months ago: \"D'you ever wonder what it's like to be some anonymous person out in the world?\"\n\nIf he's some anonymous, normal person, removed from history, he's twenty-two and he's tipsy and he's pulling a guy into his hotel room by the belt loop. He's pulling a lip between his teeth, and he's fumbling behind his back to switch on a lamp, and he's thinking, _I like this person._\n\nThey break apart, and when Alex opens his eyes, Henry is watching him.\n\n\"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?\"\n\nAlex groans.\n\nThe thing is, he _does,_ and Henry knows this too.\n\n\"It's...\" Alex starts. He paces backward, hands on his hips. \"He was supposed to be me in twenty years, you know? I was fifteen the first time I met him, and I was... in awe. He was everything I wanted to be. And he cared about people, and about doing the work because it was the right thing to do, because we were making people's lives better.\"\n\nIn the low light of the single lamp, Alex turns and sits down on the edge of the bed.\n\n\"I've never been more sure that I wanted to go into politics than when I went to Denver. I saw this young, queer guy who looked like me, sleeping at his desk because he wants kids at public schools in his state to have free lunches, and I was like, I could do this. I honestly don't know if I'm good enough or smart enough to ever be either of my parents. But I could be _that._ \" He drops his head down. He's never said the last part out loud to anyone before. \"And now I'm sitting here thinking, that son of a bitch sold out, so maybe it's all bullshit, and maybe I really am just a naive kid who believes in magical shit that doesn't happen in real life.\"\n\nHenry comes to stand in front of Alex, his thigh brushing against the inside of Alex's knee, and he reaches one hand down to still Alex's nervous fidgeting.\n\n\"Someone else's choice doesn't change who you are.\"\n\n\"I feel like it does,\" Alex tells him. \"I wanted to believe in some people being good and doing this job because they want to do good. Doing the right things most of the time and most things for the right reasons. I wanted to be the kind of person who believes in that.\"\n\nHenry's hands move, brushing up to Alex's shoulders, the dip of his throat, the underside of his jaw, and when Alex finally looks up, Henry's eyes are soft and steady. \"You still are. Because you still bloody care so much.\" He leans down and presses a kiss into Alex's hair. \"And you are good. Most things are awful most of the time, but you're good.\"\n\nAlex takes a breath. There's this way Henry has of listening to the erratic stream of consciousness that pours out of Alex's mouth and answering with the clearest, crystallized truth that Alex has been trying to arrive at all along. If Alex's head is a storm, Henry is the place lightning hits ground. He wants it to be true.\n\nHe lets Henry push him backward on the bed and kiss him until his mind is blissfully blank, lets Henry undress him carefully. He pushes into Henry and feels the tight cords of his shoulders start to release, like how Henry describes unfurling a sail.\n\nHenry kisses his mouth over and over again and says quietly, \"You are good.\"\n\n* * *\n\nThe pounding on his door comes much too early for Alex to handle loud noises. There's a sharpness to it he recognizes instantly as Zahra before she even speaks, and he wonders why the hell she didn't just call before he reaches for his phone and finds it dead. Shit. That would explain the missed alarm.\n\n\"Alex Claremont-Diaz, it is almost seven,\" Zahra shouts through the door. \"You have a strategy meeting in fifteen minutes and I have a key, so I don't care how naked you are, if you don't answer this door in the next thirty seconds, I'm coming in.\"\n\nHe is, he realizes as he rubs his eyes, extremely naked. A cursory examination of the body pressed up against his back: Henry, very comprehensively naked as well.\n\n\"Oh fuck me,\" Alex swears, sitting up so fast he gets tangled in the sheet and flails sideways out of bed.\n\n\"Blurgh,\" Henry groans.\n\n\"Fucking shit,\" says Alex, whose vocabulary is apparently now only expletives. He yanks himself free and scrambles for his chinos. \"Goddammit ass fucker.\"\n\n\"What,\" Henry says flatly to the ceiling.\n\n\"I can hear you in there, Alex, I swear to God\u2014\"\n\nThere's another sound from the door, like Zahra has kicked it, and Henry flies out of bed too. He is truly a picture, wearing an expression of bewildered panic and absolutely nothing else. He eyes the curtains furtively, as if considering hiding in them.\n\n\"Jesus tits,\" Alex continues as he fumbles to pull his pants up. He snatches a shirt and boxers at random from the floor, shoves them at Henry's chest, and points him toward the closet. \"Get in there.\"\n\n\"Quite,\" he observes.\n\n\"Yes, we can unpack the ironic symbolism later. _Go,_ \" Alex says, and Henry does, and when the door swings open, Zahra is standing there with her thermos and a look on her face that says she did not get a master's degree to babysit a fully grown adult who happens to be related to the president.\n\n\"Uh, morning,\" he says.\n\nZahra's eyes do a quick sweep of the room\u2014the sheets on the floor, the two pillows that have been slept on, the two phones on the nightstand.\n\n\"Who is she?\" she demands, marching over to the bathroom and yanking open the door like she's going to find some Hollywood starlet in the bathtub. \"You let her bring a _phone_ in here?\"\n\n\"Nobody, Jesus,\" Alex says, but his voice cracks in the middle. Zahra arches an eyebrow. \"What? I got kinda drunk last night, that's all. It's chill.\"\n\n\"Yes, it is so very, very chill that you're going to be hungover for today,\" Zahra says, rounding on him.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" he says. \"It's fine.\"\n\nAs if on cue, there's a series of bumps from the other side of the closet door, and Henry, halfway into Alex's boxers, comes literally tumbling out of the closet.\n\nIt is, Alex thinks half-hysterically, a very solid visual pun.\n\n\"Er,\" Henry says from the floor. He finishes pulling Alex's boxers up his hips. Blinks. \"Hello.\"\n\nThe silence stretches.\n\n\"I\u2014\" Zahra begins. \"Do I even want you to explain to me what the fuck is happening here? Literally how is he even _here,_ like, physically or geographically, and _why_ \u2014no, nope. Don't answer that. Don't tell me anything.\" She unscrews the top of her thermos and takes a pull of coffee. \"Oh my God, did _I_ do this? I never thought... when I set it up... oh my _God._ \"\n\nHenry has pulled himself off the floor and put on a shirt, and his ears are bright red. \"I think, perhaps, if it helps. It was. Er. Rather inevitable. At least for me. So you shouldn't blame yourself.\"\n\nAlex looks at him, trying to think of something to add, when Zahra jabs a manicured finger into his shoulder.\n\n\"Well, I hope it was _fun,_ because if anyone ever finds out about this, we're all fucked,\" Zahra says. She points at Henry. \"You too. Can I assume I don't have to make you sign an NDA?\"\n\n\"I've already signed one for him,\" Alex offers up, while Henry's ears turn from red to an alarming shade of purple. Six hours ago, he was sinking drowsily into Henry's chest, and now he's standing here half-naked, talking about the paperwork. He fucking hates paperwork. \"I think that covers it.\"\n\n\"Oh, wonderful,\" Zahra says. \"I'm so glad you thought this through. Great. How long has this been happening?\"\n\n\"Since, um. New Year's,\" Alex says.\n\n_\"New Year's?\"_ Zahra repeats, eyes wide. \"This has been going on for _seven months_? That's why you\u2014Oh my God, I thought you were getting into international relations or something.\"\n\n\"I mean, technically\u2014\"\n\n\"If you finish that sentence, I'm gonna spend tonight in jail.\"\n\nAlex winces. \"Please don't tell Mom.\"\n\n\" _Seriously?_ \" she hisses. \"You're literally putting your dick in _the leader of a foreign state,_ who is a _man,_ at _the biggest political event before the election,_ in a hotel full of _reporters,_ in a city full of _cameras,_ in a race close enough to fucking _hinge_ on some bullshit like this, like a manifestation of my fucking _stress dreams,_ and you're asking me _not_ to tell the president about it?\"\n\n\"Um. Yeah? I haven't, um, come out to her. Yet.\"\n\nZahra blinks, presses her lips together, and makes a noise like she's being strangled. \"Listen,\" she says. \"We don't have time to deal with this, and your mother has enough to manage without having to process her son's fucking quarter-life NATO sexual crisis, so\u2014I won't tell her. But once the convention is over, you have to.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Alex says on an exhale.\n\n\"Would it make any difference at all if I told you not to see him again?\"\n\nAlex looks over at Henry, looking rumpled and nauseated and terrified at the corner of the bed. \"No.\"\n\n\"God fucking dammit,\" she says, rubbing the heel of her hand against her forehead. \"Every time I see you, it takes another year off my life. I'm going downstairs, and you better be dressed and there in five minutes so we can try to save this goddamn campaign. And _you_ \"\u2014she rounds on Henry\u2014\"you need to get back to fucking England now, and if anyone sees you leave, I will personally end you. Ask me if I'm afraid of the crown.\"\n\n\"Duly noted,\" he says in a faint voice.\n\nZahra fixes him with a final glare, turns on her heel, and stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind her.\n\n# NINE\n\n\"Okay,\" he says.\n\nHis mother sits across the table, hands folded, looking at him expectantly. His palms are starting to sweat. The room is small, one of the lesser conference rooms in the West Wing. He knows he could have asked her to lunch or something, but, well, he kind of panicked.\n\nHe guesses he should just do it.\n\n\"I've been, um,\" he starts. \"I've been figuring some stuff out about myself, lately. And... I wanted to let you know, because you're my mom, and I want you to be a part of my life, and I don't want to hide things from you. And also it's, um, relevant to the campaign, from an image perspective.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Ellen says, her voice neutral.\n\n\"Okay,\" he repeats. \"All right. Um. So, I've realized I'm not straight. I'm actually bisexual.\"\n\nHer expression clears, and she laughs, unclasping her hands. \"Oh, that's it, sugar? God, I was worried it was gonna be something worse!\" She reaches across the table, covering his hand with hers. \"That's great, baby. I'm so glad you told me.\"\n\nAlex smiles back, the anxious bubble in his chest shrinking slightly, but there's one more bomb to drop. \"Um. There's something else. I kind of... met somebody.\"\n\nShe tilts her head. \"You did? Well, I'm happy for you, I hope you had them do all the paperwork\u2014\"\n\n\"It's, uh,\" he interrupts her. \"It's Henry.\"\n\nA beat. She frowns, her brow knitting together. \"Henry...?\"\n\n\"Yeah, Henry.\"\n\n\"Henry, as in... the prince?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Of England?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"So, not another Henry?\"\n\n\"No, Mom. Prince Henry. Of Wales.\"\n\n\"I thought you hated him?\" she says. \"Or... now you're friends with him?\"\n\n\"Both true at different points. But uh, now we're, like, a thing. Have been. A thing. For, like, seven-ish months? I guess?\"\n\n\"I... see.\"\n\nShe stares at him for a very long minute. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair.\n\nSuddenly, her phone is in her hand, and she's standing, kicking her chair under the table. \"Okay, I'm clearing my schedule for the afternoon,\" she says. \"I need, uh, time to prepare some materials. Are you free in an hour? We can reconvene here. I'll order food. Bring, uh, your passport and any receipts and relevant documents you have, sugar.\"\n\nShe doesn't wait to hear if he's free, just walks backward out of the room and disappears into the corridor. The door isn't even finished closing when a notification pops up on his phone. CALENDAR REQUEST FROM MOM: 2 P.M. WEST WING FIRST FLOOR, INTERNATIONAL ETHICS & SEXUAL IDENTITY DEBRIEF.\n\nAn hour later, there are several cartons of Chinese food and a PowerPoint cued up. The first slide says: SEXUAL EXPERIMENTATION WITH FOREIGN MONARCHS: A GRAY AREA. Alex wonders if it's too late to swan dive off the roof.\n\n\"Okay,\" she says when he sits down, in almost exactly the same tone he used on her earlier. \"Before we start, I\u2014I want to be clear, I love you and support you always. But this is, quite frankly, a logistical and ethical clusterfuck, so we need to make sure we have our ducks in a row. Okay?\"\n\nThe next slide is titled: EXPLORING YOUR SEXUALITY: HEALTHY, BUT DOES IT HAVE TO BE WITH THE PRINCE OF ENGLAND? She apologizes for not having time to come up with better titles. Alex actively wishes for the sweet release of death.\n\nThe one after is: FEDERAL FUNDING, TRAVEL EXPENSES, BOOTY CALLS, AND YOU.\n\nShe's mostly concerned with making sure he hasn't used any federally funded private jets to see Henry for exclusively personal visits\u2014he hasn't\u2014and with making him fill out a bunch of paperwork to cover both their asses. It feels clinical and wrong, checking little boxes about his relationship, especially when half are asking things he hasn't even discussed with Henry yet.\n\nIt's agonizing, but eventually it's over, and he doesn't die, which is something. His mother takes the last form and seals it up in an envelope with the rest. She sets it aside and takes off her reading glasses, setting those aside too.\n\n\"So,\" she says. \"Here's the thing. I know I put a lot on you. But I do it because I trust you. You're a dumbass, but I trust you, and I trust your judgment. I promised you years ago I would never tell you to be anything you're not. So I'm not gonna be the president or the mother who forbids you from seeing him.\"\n\nShe takes another breath, waiting for Alex to nod that he understands.\n\n\"But,\" she goes on, \"this is a really, really big fucking deal. This is not just some person from class or some intern. You need to think really long and hard because you are putting yourself and your career and, above all, this campaign and this entire administration, in danger here. I know you're young, but this is a forever decision. Even if you don't stay with him forever, if people find out, that sticks with you forever. So you need to figure out if you feel forever about him. And if you don't, you need to cut it the fuck out.\"\n\nShe rests her hands on the table in front of her, and the silence hangs in the air between them. Alex feels like his heart is caught somewhere between his tonsils.\n\n_Forever._ It seems like an impossibly huge word, something he's supposed to grow into ten years from now.\n\n\"Also,\" she says. \"I am so sorry to do this, sugar. But you're off the campaign.\"\n\nAlex snaps back into razor sharp reality, stomach plummeting.\n\n\"Wait, no\u2014\"\n\n\"This is not up for debate, Alex,\" she tells him, and she does look sorry, but he knows the set of her jaw too well. \"I can't risk this. You're way too close to the sun. We're telling the press you're focusing on other career options. I'll have your desk cleaned out for you over the weekend.\"\n\nShe holds out one hand, and Alex looks down into her palm, the worried lines there, until the realization clicks.\n\nHe reaches into his pocket, pulls out his campaign badge. The first artifact of his entire career, a career he's managed to derail in a matter of months. And he hands it over.\n\n\"Oh, one last thing,\" she says, her tone suddenly businesslike again, shuffling something from the bottom of her files. \"I know Texas public schools don't have sex ed for shit, and we didn't go over this when we had the talk\u2014which is on me for assuming\u2014so I just wanted to make sure you know you still need to be using condoms even if you're having anal interc\u2014\"\n\n_\"Okay, thanks, Mom!\"_ Alex half yells, nearly knocking over his chair in his rush for the door.\n\n\"Wait, honey,\" she calls after him, \"I had Planned Parenthood send over all these pamphlets, take one! They sent a bike messenger and everything!\"\n\n> A mass of fools and knaves\n\n* * *\n\n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 8\/10\/20 1:04 AM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> H,\n> \n> Have you ever read any of Alexander Hamilton's letters to John Laurens?\n> \n> What am I saying? Of course you haven't. You'd probably be disinherited for revolutionary sympathies.\n> \n> Well, since I got the boot from the campaign, there is literally nothing for me to do but watch cable news (diligently chipping away at my brain cells by the day), reread Harry Potter, and sort through all my old shit from college. Just looking at papers, thinking: Excellent, yes, I'm so glad I stayed up all night writing this for a 98 in the class, only to get summarily fired from the first job I ever had and exiled to my bedroom! Great job, Alex!\n> \n> Is this how you feel in the palace all the time? It fucking sucks, man.\n> \n> So anyway, I'm going through my college stuff, and I find this analysis I did of Hamilton's wartime correspondence, and hear me out: I think Hamilton could have been bi. His letters to Laurens are almost as romantic as his letters to his wife. Half of them are signed \"Yours\" or \"Affectionately yrs,\" and the last one before Laurens died is signed \"Yrs for ever.\" I can't figure out why nobody talks about the possibility of a Founding Father being not straight (outside of Chernow's biography, which is great btw, see attached bibliography). I mean, I know why, but.\n> \n> Anyway, I found this part of a letter he wrote to Laurens, and it made me think of you. And me, I guess:\n> \n> The truth is I am an unlucky honest man, that speak my sentiments to all and with emphasis. I say this to you because you know it and will not charge me with vanity. I hate Congress\u2014I hate the army\u2014I hate the world\u2014I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you...\n> \n> Thinking about history makes me wonder how I'll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that.\n> \n> History, huh? Bet we could make some.\n> \n> Affectionately yrs, slowly going insane,\n> \n> Alex, First Son of Founding Father Sacrilege\n> \n> Re: A mass of fools and knaves\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 8\/10\/20 4:18 AM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex, First Son of Masturbatory Historical Readings:\n> \n> The phrase \"see attached bibliography\" is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me.\n> \n> Every time you mention your slow decay inside the White House, I can't help but feel it's my fault, and I feel absolutely shit about it. I'm sorry. I should have known better than to turn up at a thing like that. I got carried away; I didn't think. I know how much that job meant to you.\n> \n> I just want to... you know. Extend the option. If you wanted less of me, and more of that\u2014the work, the uncomplicated things\u2014I would understand. Truly.\n> \n> In any event... Believe it or not, I have actually done a bit of reading on Hamilton, for a number of reasons. First, he was a brilliant writer. Second, I knew you were named after him (the pair of you share an alarming number of traits, by the by: passionate determination, never knowing when to shut up, &c &c). And third, some saucy tart once tried to impugn my virtue against an oil painting of him, and in the halls of memory, some things demand context.\n> \n> Are you angling for a revolutionary soldier role-play scenario? I must inform you, any trace of King George III blood I have would curdle in my very veins and render me useless to you.\n> \n> Or are you suggesting you'd rather exchange passionate letters by candlelight?\n> \n> Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?\n> \n> I think perhaps Hamilton said it better in a letter to Eliza:\n> \n> You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think of any thing else\u2014you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream\u2014and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.\n> \n> If you did decide to take the option mentioned at the start of this email, I do hope you haven't read the rest of this rubbish.\n> \n> Regards,\n> \n> Haplessly Romantic Heretic Prince Henry the Utterly Daft\n> \n> Re: A mass of fools and knaves\n\n* * *\n\n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 8\/10\/20 5:36 AM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> H,\n> \n> Please don't be stupid. No part of any of this will ever be uncomplicated.\n> \n> Anyway, you should be a writer. You are a writer.\n> \n> Even after all this, I still always feel like I want to know more of you. Does that sound crazy? I just sit here and wonder, who is this person who knows stuff about Hamilton and writes like this? Where does someone like that even come from? How was I so wrong?\n> \n> It's weird because I always know things about people, gut feelings that usually lead me in more or less the right direction. I do think I got a gut feeling with you, I just didn't have what I needed in my head to understand it. But I kind of kept chasing it anyway, like I was just going blindly in a certain direction and hoping for the best. I guess that makes you the North Star?\n> \n> I wanna see you again and soon. I keep reading that one paragraph over and over again. You know which one. I want you back here with me. I want your body and I want the rest of you too. And I want to get the fuck out of this house. Watching June and Nora on TV doing appearances without me is torture.\n> \n> We have this annual thing at my dad's lake house in Texas. Whole long weekend off the grid. There's a lake with a pier, and my dad always cooks something fucking amazing. You wanna come? I kind of can't stop thinking about you all sunburned and pretty sitting out there in the country. It's the weekend after next. If Shaan can talk to Zahra or somebody about flying you into Austin, we can pick you up from there. Say yes?\n> \n> Yrs,\n> \n> Alex\n> \n> P.S. Allen Ginsberg to Peter Orlovsky\u20141958:\n> \n> Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me.\n> \n> Re: A mass of fools and knaves\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 8\/10\/20 8:22 PM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex,\n> \n> If I'm north, I shudder to think where in God's name we're going.\n> \n> I'm ruminating on identity and your question about where a person like me comes from, and as best as I can explain it, here's a story:\n> \n> Once, there was a young prince who was born in a castle. His mother was a princess scholar, and his father was the most handsome, feared knight in all the land. As a boy, people would bring him everything he could ever dream of wanting. The most beautiful silk clothes, ripe fruit from the orangery. At times, he was so happy, he felt he would never grow tired of being a prince.\n> \n> He came from a long, long line of princes, but never before had there been a prince quite like him: born with his heart on the outside of his body.\n> \n> When he was small, his family would smile and laugh and say he would grow out of it one day. But as he grew, it stayed where it was, red and visible and alive. He didn't mind it very much, but every day, the family's fear grew that the people of the kingdom would soon notice and turn their backs on the prince.\n> \n> His grandmother, the queen, lived in a high tower, where she spoke only of the other princes, past and present, who were born whole.\n> \n> Then, the prince's father, the knight, was struck down in battle. The lance tore open his armor and his body and left him bleeding in the dust. And so, when the queen sent new clothes, armor for the prince to parcel his heart away safe, the prince's mother did not stop her. For she was afraid, now: afraid of her son's heart torn open too.\n> \n> So the prince wore it, and for many years, he believed it was right.\n> \n> Until he met the most devastatingly gorgeous peasant boy from a nearby village who said absolutely ghastly things to him that made him feel alive for the first time in years and who turned out to be the most mad sort of sorcerer, one who could conjure up things like gold and vodka shots and apricot tarts out of absolutely nothing, and the prince's whole life went up in a puff of dazzling purple smoke, and the kingdom said, \"I can't believe we're all so surprised.\"\n> \n> I'm in for the lake house. I must admit, I'm glad you're getting out of the house. I worry you may burn the thing down. Does this mean I'll be meeting your father?\n> \n> I miss you.\n> \n> x\n> \n> Henry\n> \n> P.S. This is mortifying and maudlin and, honestly, I hope you forget it as soon as you've read it.\n> \n> P.P.S. From Henry James to Hendrik C. Andersen, 1899:\n> \n> May the terrific U.S.A. be meanwhile not a brute to you. I feel in you a confidence, dear Boy\u2013which to show is a joy to me. My hopes and desires and sympathies right heartily and most firmly, go with you. So keep up your heart, and tell me, as it shapes itself, your (inevitably, I imagine, more or less weird) American story. May, at any rate, tutta quella gente be good to you.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Do _not,_ \" Nora says, leaning over the passenger seat. \"There is a system and you must respect the system.\"\n\n\"I don't believe in systems when I'm on vacation,\" June says, her body folded halfway over Alex's, trying to slap Nora's hand out of the way.\n\n\"It's math,\" Nora says.\n\n\"Math has no authority here,\" June tells her.\n\n\"Math is _everywhere,_ June.\"\n\n\"Get off me,\" Alex says, shoving June off his shoulder.\n\n\"You're supposed to back me up on this!\" June yelps, pulling his hair and receiving a very ugly face in response.\n\n\"I'll let you look at one boob,\" Nora tells him. \"The good one.\"\n\n\"They're both good,\" June says, suddenly distracted.\n\n\"I've seen both of them. I can practically see both of them now,\" Alex says, gesturing at what Nora is wearing for the day, which is a ratty pair of short overalls and the most perfunctory of bra-like things.\n\n\"Hashtag vacation nips,\" she says. \"Pleeeeeease.\"\n\nAlex sighs. \"Sorry, Bug, but Nora did put more hours into her playlist, so she should get the aux cord.\"\n\nThere's a combination of girl sounds from the back seat, disgust and triumph, and Nora plugs her phone in, swearing she's developed some kind of foolproof algorithm for the perfect road trip playlist. The first trumpets of \"Loco in Acapulco\" by the Four Tops blast, and Alex finally pulls out of the gas station.\n\nThe jeep is a refurb, a project his dad took on when Alex was around ten. It lives in California now, but he drives it into Texas once a year for this weekend, leaves it in Austin so Alex and June can drive it in. Alex learned to drive one summer in the valley in this jeep, and the accelerator feels just as good under his foot now as he falls into formation with two black Secret Service SUVs and heads for the interstate. He hardly ever gets to drive himself anywhere anymore.\n\nThe sky is wide open and bluebonnet blue for miles, the sun low and heavy with an early morning start, and Alex has his sunglasses on and his arms bare and the doors and roof off. He cranks up the stereo and feels like he could throw anything away on the wind whipping through his hair and it would just float away like it never was, as if nothing matters but the rush and skip in his chest.\n\nBut it's all right behind the haze of dopamine: losing the campaign job, the restless days pacing his room, _Do you feel forever about him?_\n\nHe tips his chin up to the warm, sticky hometown air, catches his own eye in the rearview mirror. He looks bronzed and soft-mouthed and young, a Texas boy, the same kid he was when he left for DC. So, no more big thoughts for today.\n\nOutside the hangar are a handful of PPOs and Henry in a short-sleeved chambray, shorts, and a pair of fashionable sunglasses, Burberry weekender over one shoulder\u2014a goddamn summer dream. Nora's playlist has segued into \"Here You Come Again\" by Dolly Parton by the time Alex swings out of the side of the jeep by one arm.\n\n\"Yes, hello, hello, it's good to see you too!\" Henry is saying from somewhere inside a smothering hug from June and Nora. Alex bites his lip and watches Henry squeeze their waists in return, and then Alex has him, inhaling the clean smell of him, laughing into the crook of his neck.\n\n\"Hi, love,\" he hears Henry say quietly, privately, right into the hair above his ear, and Alex's breath forgets how to do anything but laugh helplessly.\n\n_\"Drums, please!\"_ erupts from the jeep's stereo and the beat on \"Summertime\" kicks in, and Alex whoops his approval. Once Henry's security team has fallen in with the Secret Service cars, they're off.\n\nHenry is grinning wide beside him as they cruise down 45, happily bopping his head along to the music, and Alex can't help glancing over at him, feeling giddy that Henry\u2014Henry the prince\u2014is _here,_ in Texas, coming home with him. June pulls four bottles of Mexican Coke out of the cooler under her seat and passes them around, and Henry takes the first sip and practically melts. Alex reaches over and takes Henry's free hand into his own, lacing their fingers together on the console between them.\n\nIt takes an hour and a half to get out to Lake LBJ from Austin, and when they start weaving their way toward the water, Henry asks, \"Why is it called Lake LBJ?\"\n\n\"Nora?\" Alex says.\n\n\"Lake LBJ,\" Nora says, \"or Lake Lyndon B. Johnson, is one of six reservoirs formed by dams on the Colorado River known as the Texas Highland Lakes. Made possible by LBJ enacting the Rural Electrification Act when he was president. And LBJ had a place out here.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" Alex says.\n\n\"Also, fun fact: LBJ was obsessed with his own dick,\" Nora adds. \"He called it Jumbo and would whip it out all the time. Like, in front of colleagues, reporters, anybody.\"\n\n\"Also true.\"\n\n\"American politics,\" Henry says. \"Truly fascinating.\"\n\n\"You wanna talk, Henry VIII?\" Alex says.\n\n_\"Anyway,\"_ Henry says airily, \"how long have you lot come out here?\"\n\n\"Dad bought it when he and Mom split up, so when I was twelve,\" Alex tells him. \"He wanted to have a place close to us after he moved. We used to spend so much time here in the summers.\"\n\n\"Aw, Alex, remember when you got drunk for the first time out here?\" June says.\n\n\"Strawberry daiquiris all _day._ \"\n\n\"You threw up _so much,_ \" she says fondly.\n\nThey pull into a driveway flanked by thick trees and drive up to the house at the top of the hill, the same old vibrant orange exterior and smooth arches, tall cactuses and aloe plants. His mom was never into the whole hacienda school of home decor, so his dad went all in when he bought the lake house, tall teal doors and heavy wooden beams and Spanish tile accents in pinks and reds. There's a big wrap-around porch and stairs leading down the hill to the dock, and all the windows facing the water have been flung open, the curtains drifting out on a warm breeze.\n\nTheir teams fall back to check the perimeter\u2014they're renting out the place next door for added privacy and the obligatory security presence. Henry effortlessly lifts June's cooler up onto one shoulder and Alex pointedly does not swoon about it.\n\nThere's the loud yell of Oscar Diaz coming around the corner, dripping and apparently fresh from a swim. He's wearing his old brown huaraches and a pair of swim trunks with parrots on them, both arms extended to the sun, and June is summarily scooped up into them.\n\n\"CJ!\" he says as he spins her around and deposits her on the stucco railing. Nora is next, and then a bone-crushing hug for Alex.\n\nHenry steps forward, and Oscar looks him up and down\u2014the Burberry bag, the cooler on his shoulder, the elegant smile, the extended hand. His dad had been confused but ultimately willing to roll with it when Alex asked if he could bring a friend and casually mentioned the friend would be the Prince of Wales. He's not sure how this will go.\n\n\"Hello,\" Henry says. \"Good to meet you. I'm Henry.\"\n\nOscar slaps his hand into Henry's. \"Hope you're ready to fucking party.\"\n\n* * *\n\nOscar may be the cook of the family, but Alex's mom was the one who grilled. It didn't always track in Pemberton Heights\u2014his Mexican dad in the house diligently soaking a tres leches while his blond mom stood out in the yard flipping burgers\u2014but it worked. Alex determinedly picked up the best from both of them, and now he's the only one here who can handle racks of ribs while Oscar does the rest.\n\nThe kitchen of the lake house faces the water, always smelling like citrus and salt and herbs, and his dad keeps it stocked with plump tomatoes and clay-soft avocados when they're visiting. He's standing in front of the big open windows now, three racks of ribs spread out on pans on the counter in front of him. His dad is at the sink, shucking ears of corn and humming along to an old Chente record.\n\nBrown sugar. Smoked paprika. Onion powder. Chili powder. Garlic powder. Cayenne pepper. Salt. Pepper. More brown sugar. Alex measures each one out with his hands and dumps them into the bowl.\n\nDown by the dock, June and Nora are embroiled in what looks like an improvised jousting match, charging at each other on the backs of inflatable animals with pool noodles. Henry is tipsy and shirtless and attempting to referee, standing on the dock with one foot on a piling and waving a bottle of Shiner around like a madman.\n\nAlex smiles a little to himself, watching them. Henry and his girls.\n\n\"So, you wanna talk about it?\" says his father's voice, in Spanish, from somewhere to his left.\n\nAlex jumps a little, startled. His dad has relocated to the bar a few feet down from him, mixing up a big batch of cotija and crema and seasonings for elotes.\n\n\"Uh.\" Has he been that obvious already?\n\n\"About Raf.\"\n\nAlex exhales, his shoulders dropping, and returns his attention to the dry rub.\n\n\"Ah. That motherfucker,\" he says. They've only broached the topic in passing obscenities over text since the news broke. There's a mutual sting of betrayal. \"Do you have any idea what he's thinking?\"\n\n\"I don't have anything kinder to say about him than you do. And I don't have an explanation either. But...\" He pauses thoughtfully, still stirring. Alex can sense him weighing out several thoughts at once, as he often does. \"I don't know. After all this time, I want to believe there's a reason for him to put himself in the same room as Jeffrey Richards. But I can't figure out what.\"\n\nAlex thinks about the conversation he overheard in the housekeeper's office, wondering if his dad is ever going to let him in on the full picture. He doesn't know how to ask without revealing that he literally climbed into a bush to eavesdrop on them. His dad's relationship with Luna has always been like that\u2014grown-up talk.\n\nAlex was at the fund-raiser for Oscar's Senate run where they first met Luna, Alex only fifteen and already taking notes. Luna showed up with a pride flag unapologetically stuck in his lapel; Alex wrote that down.\n\n\"Why'd you pick him?\" Alex asks. \"I remember that campaign. We met a lot of people who would've made great politicians. Why wouldn't you pick someone easier to elect?\"\n\n\"You mean, why'd I roll the dice on the gay one?\"\n\nAlex concentrates on keeping his face neutral.\n\n\"I wasn't gonna put it like that,\" he says, \"but yeah.\"\n\n\"Raf ever tell you his parents kicked him out when he was sixteen?\"\n\nAlex winces. \"I knew he had a hard time before college, but he didn't specify.\"\n\n\"Yeah, they didn't take the news so well. He had a rough couple of years, but it made him tough. The night we met him, it was the first time he'd been back in California since he got kicked out, but he was damn sure gonna come in to support a brother out of Mexico City. It was like when Zahra showed up at your mom's office in Austin and said she wanted to prove the bastards wrong. You know a fighter when you see one.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Alex says.\n\nThere's another pause of Chente crooning in the background while his dad stirs, before he speaks again.\n\n\"You know...\" he says. \"That summer, I sent you to work on his campaign because you're the best point man I got. I knew you could do it. But I really thought there was a lot you could learn from him too. You got a lot in common.\"\n\nAlex says nothing for a long moment.\n\n\"I gotta be honest,\" his dad says, and when Alex looks up again, he's watching the window. \"I thought a prince would be more of a candy-ass.\"\n\nAlex laughs, glancing back out at Henry, the sway of his back under the afternoon sun. \"He's tougher than he looks.\"\n\n\"Not bad for a European,\" his dad says. \"Better than half the idiots June's brought home.\" Alex's hands freeze, and his head jerks back to his dad, who's still stirring with his heavy wooden spoon, face impartial. \"Half the girls you've brought around too. Not better than Nora, though. She'll always be my favorite.\" Alex stares at him, until his dad finally looks up. \"What? You're not as subtle as you think.\"\n\n\"I\u2014I don't know,\" Alex sputters. \"I thought you might need to, like, have a Catholic moment about this or something?\"\n\nHis dad slaps him on the bicep with the spoon, leaving a splatter of crema and cheese behind. \"Have a little more faith in your old man than that, eh? A little appreciation for the patron saint of gender-neutral bathrooms in California? Little shit.\"\n\n\"Okay, okay, sorry!\" Alex says, laughing. \"I just know it's different when it's your own kid.\"\n\nHis dad laughs too, rubbing a hand over his goatee. \"It's really not. Not to me, anyway. I see you.\"\n\nAlex smiles again. \"I know.\"\n\n\"Does your ma know?\"\n\n\"Yeah, I told her a couple weeks ago.\"\n\n\"How'd she take it?\"\n\n\"I mean, she doesn't care that I'm bi. She kind of freaked out it was him. There was a PowerPoint.\"\n\n\"That sounds about right.\"\n\n\"She fired me. And, uh. She told me I need to figure out if the way I feel about him is worth the risk.\"\n\n\"Well, is it?\"\n\nAlex groans. \"Please, for the love of God, do not ask me. I'm on _vacation._ I want to get drunk and eat barbecue in peace.\"\n\nHis dad laughs ruefully. \"You know, in a lot of ways, your mom and me were a stupid idea. I think we both knew it wouldn't be forever. We're both too fucking proud. But God, that woman. Your mother is, without question, the love of my life. I'll never love anyone else like that. It was wildfire. And I got you and June out of it, best things that ever happened to an old asshole like me. That kind of love is rare, even if it was a complete disaster.\" He sucks his teeth, considering. \"Sometimes you just jump and hope it's not a cliff.\"\n\nAlex closes his eyes. \"Are you done with dad monologues for the day?\"\n\n\"You're such a shit,\" he says, throwing a kitchen towel at his head. \"Go put the ribs on. I wanna eat today.\" He calls after Alex's back, \"You two better take the bunk beds tonight! Santa Maria is watching!\"\n\nThey eat later that evening, big piles of elotes, pork tamales with salsa verde, a clay pot of frijoles charros, ribs. Henry gamely piles his plate with some of each and eyeballs it as if waiting for it to reveal its secrets to him, and Alex realizes Henry has never eaten barbecue with his hands before.\n\nAlex demonstrates and watches with poorly concealed glee as Henry gingerly picks up a rib with his fingertips and considers his approach, cheering as Henry dives in face-first and rips a hunk of meat off with his teeth. He chews proudly, a huge smear of barbecue sauce across his upper lip and the tip of his nose.\n\nHis dad keeps an old guitar in the living room, and June brings it out on the porch so the two of them can pass it back and forth. Nora, one of Alex's chambrays thrown on over her bikini, floats barefoot in and out, keeping all their glasses filled from a pitcher of sangria brimming with white peaches and blackberries.\n\nThey sit around the fire pit and play old Johnny Cash songs, Selena, Fleetwood Mac. Alex sits and listens to the cicadas and the water and his dad's rough ranger voice, and when his dad slumps off to bed, June's songbird one. He feels wrapped up and warm, turning slowly under the moon.\n\nHe and Henry drift to a swing at the edge of the porch, and he curls into Henry's side, buries his face in the collar of his shirt. Henry puts an arm around him, touches the hinge of Alex's jaw with fingers that smell like smoke.\n\nJune plucks away at \"Annie's Song,\" _you fill up my senses like a night in a forest,_ and the breeze keeps moving to meet the highest branches of the trees, and the water keeps rising to meet the bulkheads, and Henry leans down to meet Alex's mouth, and Alex is. Well, Alex is so in love he could die.\n\n* * *\n\nAlex falls out of bed the following morning with a low-grade hangover and one of Henry's swimsuits tangled around his elbow. They did, technically, sleep in separate bunks. They just didn't _start_ there.\n\nOver the kitchen sink, he chugs a glass of water and stares out the window, the sun blinding and bright on the lake, and there's an incandescent little stone of certainty at the bottom of his chest.\n\nIt's this place\u2014the absolute separation from DC, the familiar old smells of cedar trees and dried chile de \u00e1rbol, the sanity of it. The roots. He could go outside and dig his fingers into the springy ground and understand anything about himself.\n\nAnd he does understand, really. He loves Henry, and it's nothing new. He's been falling in love with Henry for years, probably since he first saw him in glossy print on the pages of _J14,_ almost definitely since Henry pinned Alex to the floor of a medical supply closet and told him to shut the hell up. That long. That much.\n\nHe smiles as he reaches for a frying pan, because he knows it's exactly the kind of insane risk he can't resist.\n\nBy the time Henry comes wandering into the kitchen in his pajamas, there's an entire breakfast spread on the long green table, and Alex is at the stove, flipping his dozenth pancake.\n\n\"Is that an _apron_?\"\n\nAlex flourishes toward the polka-dotted thing he's got on over his boxers with his free hand, as if showing off one of his tailored suits. \"Morning, sweetheart.\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" Henry says. \"I was looking for someone else. Handsome, petulant, short, not pleasant until after ten a.m.? Have you seen him?\"\n\n\"Fuck off, five-nine is average.\"\n\nHenry crosses the room with a laugh and nudges up behind him at the stove to peck him on the cheek. \"Love, you and I both know you're rounding up.\"\n\nIt's only a step on the way to the coffeemaker, but Alex reaches back and gets a hand in Henry's hair before he can move, pulling him into a kiss on the mouth this time. Henry huffs a little in surprise but returns it fully.\n\nAlex forgets, momentarily, about the pancakes and everything else, not because he wants to do absolutely filthy things to Henry\u2014maybe even with the apron still on\u2014but because he _loves_ him, and isn't that wild, to know that _that's_ what makes the filthy things so good.\n\n\"I didn't realize this was a jazz brunch,\" says Nora's voice suddenly, and Henry springs backward so fast he almost puts his ass in the bowl of batter. She sidles up to the forgotten coffeemaker, grinning slyly at them.\n\n\"That doesn't seem sanitary,\" June is saying with a yawn as she folds herself into a chair at the table.\n\n\"Sorry,\" Henry says sheepishly.\n\n\"Don't be,\" Nora tells him.\n\n\"I'm not,\" Alex says.\n\n\"I'm hungover,\" June says as she reaches for the pitcher of mimosas. \"Alex, you did all this?\"\n\nAlex shrugs, and June squints at him, bleary but knowing.\n\nThat afternoon, over the sounds of the boat's engine, Henry talks to Alex's dad about the sailboats that jut up from the horizon, getting into a complex discussion on outboard motors that Alex can't hope to follow. He leans back against the bow and watches, and it's so easy to imagine it: a future Henry who comes to the lake house with him every summer, who learns how to make elotes and ties neat cleat hitches and fits right into place in his weird family.\n\nThey go swimming, yell over one another about politics, pass the guitar around again. Henry takes a photo of himself with June and Nora, one under each arm and both in their bikinis. Nora is holding his chin in one hand and licking the side of his face, and June has her fingers tangled up in his hair and her head in the crook of his neck, smiling angelically at the camera. He sends it to Pez and receives anguished keysmashes and crying emojis in response, and they all almost piss themselves laughing.\n\nIt's good. It's really, really good.\n\nAlex lies awake that night, drunk on Shiner and way too many campfire marshmallows, and he stares at whorls in the wood panels of the top bunk and thinks about coming of age out here. He remembers when he was a kid, freckly and unafraid, when the world seemed like it was blissfully endless but everything still made perfect sense. He used to leave his clothes in a pile on the pier and dive headfirst into the lake. Everything was in its right place.\n\nHe wears a key to his childhood home around his neck, but he doesn't know the last time he actually thought about the boy who used to push it into the lock.\n\nMaybe losing the job isn't the worst thing that could have happened.\n\nHe thinks about roots, about first and second languages. What he wanted when he was a kid and what he wants now and where those things overlap. Maybe that place, the meeting of the two, is here somewhere, in the gentle insistence of the water around his legs, crude letters carved with an old pocket knife. The steady thrum of another person's pulse against his.\n\n\"H?\" he whispers. \"You awake?\"\n\nHenry sighs. \"Always.\"\n\nThey sneak through the grass in hushed voices past one of Henry's PPOs dozing on the porch, racing down the pier, shoving at each other's shoulders. Henry's laugh is high and clear, his sunburned shoulders bright pink in the dark, and Alex looks at him and something so buoyant fills up his chest that he feels like he could swim the length of the lake without stopping for air. He throws his T-shirt down at the end of the pier and starts to shuck his boxers, and when Henry arches an eyebrow at him, Alex laughs and jumps.\n\n\"You're a menace,\" Henry says when Alex breaks back to the surface. But he only hesitates briefly before he's stripping out of his clothes.\n\nHe stands naked at the edge of the pier, looking at Alex's head and shoulders bobbing in the water. The lines of him are long and languid in the moonlight, just skin and skin and skin lit soft and blue, and he's so beautiful that Alex thinks this moment, the soft shadows and pale thighs and crooked smile, should be the portrait of Henry that goes down in history. There are fireflies winking around his head, landing in his hair. A crown.\n\nHis dive is infuriatingly graceful.\n\n\"Can't you ever just do one thing without having to be so goddamn extra about it?\" Alex says, splashing him as soon as he surfaces.\n\n\"That is bloody rich coming from you,\" Henry says, and he's grinning like he does when he's drinking in a challenge, like nothing in the world pleases him more than Alex's antagonizing elbow in his side.\n\n\"I don't know what you're talking about,\" Alex says, kicking over to him.\n\nThey chase each other around the pier, race down to the lake's shallow bottom and shoot back up in the moonlight, all elbows and knees. Alex finally manages to catch Henry around the waist, and he pins him, slides his wet mouth over the thudding pulse of Henry's throat. He wants to stay tangled up in Henry's legs forever. He wants to match the new freckles across Henry's nose to the stars above them and make him name the constellations.\n\n\"Hey,\" he says, his mouth right up in a breath's space from Henry's. He watches a drop of water roll down Henry's perfect nose and disappear into his mouth.\n\n\"Hi,\" Henry says back, and Alex thinks, _Goddamn, I love him._ It keeps coming back to him, and it's getting harder to look into Henry's soft smiles and not say it.\n\nHe kicks out a little to turn them in a slow circle. \"You look good out here.\"\n\nHenry's grin goes crooked and a little shy, dipping down to brush against Alex's jaw. \"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Alex says. He twists Henry's wet hair around his fingers. \"I'm glad you came this weekend,\" Alex hears himself say. \"It's been so intense lately. I... I really needed this.\"\n\nHenry's fingers give a little jab to his ribs, gently scolding. \"You carry too much.\"\n\nHis instinct has always been to shoot back, _No, I don't_ , or, _I_ _want to_ , but he bites it back and says, \"I know,\" and he realizes it's the truth. \"You know what I'm thinking right now?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I'm thinking about, after inauguration, like next year, taking you back out here, just the two of us. And we can sit under the moon and not stress about anything.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Henry says. \"That sounds nice, if unlikely.\"\n\n\"Come on, think about it, babe. Next year. My mom'll be in office again, and we won't have to worry about winning any more elections. I'll finally be able to breathe. Ugh, it'll be amazing. I'll cook migas in the mornings, and we'll swim all day and never put clothes on and make out on the pier, and it won't even matter if the neighbors see.\"\n\n\"Well. It will matter, you know. It will always matter.\"\n\nHe pulls back to find Henry's face indecipherable.\n\n\"You know what I mean.\"\n\nHenry's looking at him and looking at him, and Alex can't shake the feeling Henry's really seeing him for the first time. He realizes it's probably the only time he's ever invited love into a conversation with Henry on purpose, and it must be lying wide open on his face.\n\nSomething moves behind Henry's eyes. \"Where are you going with all this?\"\n\nAlex tries to figure out how the hell to funnel everything he needs to tell Henry into words.\n\n\"June says I have a fire under my ass for no good reason,\" he says. \"I don't know. You know how they always say to take it one day at a time? I think I take it ten years in the future. Like when I was in high school, it was all: Well, my parents hate each other, and my sister is leaving for college, and sometimes I look at other guys in the shower, but if I keep looking directly ahead, that stuff can't catch up to me. Or if I take this class, or this internship, or this job. I used to think, if I pictured the person I wanted to be and took all the crazy anxiety in my brain and narrowed it down to that point, I could rewire it. Use it to power something else. It's like I never learned how to just be where I am.\" Alex takes a breath. \"And where I am is here. With you. And I'm thinking maybe I should start trying to take it day by day. And just... feel what I feel.\"\n\nHenry doesn't say anything.\n\n\"Sweetheart.\" The water ripples quietly around him as he slides his hands up to hold Henry's face in both palms, tracing his cheekbones with the wet pads of his thumbs.\n\nThe cicadas and the wind and the lake are probably still making sounds, somewhere, but it's all faded into silence. Alex can't hear anything but his heartbeat in his ears.\n\n\"Henry, I\u2014\"\n\nAbruptly Henry shifts, ducking beneath the surface and out of his arms before he can say anything else.\n\nHe pops back up near the pier, hair sticking to his forehead, and Alex turns around and stares at him, breathless at the loss. Henry spits out lake water and sends a splash in his direction, and Alex forces a laugh.\n\n\"Christ,\" Henry says, slapping at a bug that's landed on him, \"what are these infernal creatures?\"\n\n\"Mosquitos,\" Alex supplies.\n\n\"They're awful,\" Henry says loftily. \"I'm going to catch an exotic plague.\"\n\n\"I'm... sorry?\"\n\n\"I just mean to say, you know, Philip is the heir and I'm the spare, and if that nervy bastard has a heart attack at thirty-five and I've got malaria, whither the spare?\"\n\nAlex laughs weakly again, but he's got a distinct feeling of something being pulled out of his hands right before he could grasp it. Henry's tone has gone light, clipped, superficial. His press voice.\n\n\"At any rate, I'm knackered,\" Henry is saying now. And Alex watches helplessly as he turns and starts hauling himself out of the water and onto the dock, pulling his shorts back up shivering legs. \"If it's all the same to you, I think I'll go to bed.\"\n\nAlex doesn't know what to say, so he watches Henry walk the long line of the dock, disappearing into the darkness.\n\nA ringing, scooped-out sensation starts behind his molars and rolls down his throat, into his chest, down to the pit of his stomach. Something's wrong, and he knows it, but he's too afraid to push back or ask. That, he realizes suddenly, is the danger of allowing love into this\u2014the acknowledgment that if something goes wrong, he doesn't know how he will stand it.\n\nFor the first time since Henry grabbed him and kissed him with so much certainty in the garden, the thought enters Alex's mind: What if it was never his decision to make? What if he got so wrapped up in everything Henry is\u2014the words he writes, the earnest heartsickness of him\u2014he forgot to take into account that it's just _how_ he is, all the time, with everyone?\n\nWhat if he's done the thing he swore he would never do, the thing he hates, and fallen in love with a prince because it was a fantasy?\n\nWhen he gets back to their room, Henry's already in his bunk and silent, his back turned.\n\n* * *\n\nIn the morning, Henry is gone.\n\nAlex wakes up to find his bunk empty and made up, the pillow tucked neatly beneath the blanket. He practically throws the door off its hinges running out onto the patio, only to find it empty as well. The yard is empty, the pier is empty. It's like he was never even there.\n\nHe finds the note in the kitchen:\n\n> Alex,\n> \n> Had to go early for a family matter. Left with the PPOs. Didn't want to wake you.\n> \n> Thank you for everything.\n> \n> X\n\nIt's the last message Henry sends him.\n\n# TEN\n\nHe sends Henry five texts the first day. Two the second. By day three, none. He's spent too much of his life talking, talking, talking not to know the signs when someone doesn't want to hear him anymore.\n\nHe starts forcing himself to only check his phone once every two hours instead of once an hour, makes himself hang on by his fingernails until the minutes tick down. A few times, he gets wrapped up in obsessively reading press coverage of the campaign and realizes he hasn't checked in hours, and every time he's hit with a hiccupping, desperate hope that there will be something. There never is.\n\nHe thought he was reckless before, but he understands now\u2014holding love off was the only thing keeping him from losing himself in this completely, and he's gone, stupid, lovesick, a fucking disaster. No work to distract him. The tripwire of \"Things Only People in Love Say and Do\" set off.\n\nSo, instead:\n\nA Tuesday night, hiding on the roof of the Residence, pacing so many furious laps that the skin on the backs of his heels splits open and blood soaks into his loafers.\n\nHis CLAREMONT FOR AMERICA mug, returned in a carefully marked box from his desk at the campaign office, a concrete reminder of what this already cost him smashed in his bathroom sink.\n\nThe smell of Earl Grey curling up from the kitchens, and his throat going painfully tight.\n\nTwo and a half different dreams about sandy hair wrapped around his fingers.\n\nA three-line email, an excerpt dug up from an archived letter, Hamilton to Laurens, _You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent,_ drafted and deleted.\n\nOn day five, Rafael Luna makes his fifth campaign stop as a surrogate, the Richards campaign's token twofer minority. Alex hits a momentary emotional impasse: either destroy something or destroy himself. He ends up smashing his phone on the pavement outside the Capitol. The screen is replaced by the end of the day. It doesn't make any messages from Henry magically appear.\n\nOn the morning of day seven, he's digging in the back of his closet when he stumbles upon a bundle of teal silk\u2014the stupid kimono Pez had made for him. He hasn't taken it out since LA.\n\nHe's about to shove it back into the corner when he feels something in the pocket. He finds a small folded square of paper. It's stationery from their hotel that night, the night everything inside Alex rearranged. Henry's cursive.\n\n> Dear Thisbe,\n> \n> I wish there weren't a wall.\n> \n> Love, Pyramus\n\nHe fumbles his phone out so fast he almost drops it on the floor and smashes it again. The search tells him Pyramus and Thisbe were lovers in a Greek myth, children of rival families, forbidden to be together. Their only way to speak to each other was through a thin crack in the wall built between them.\n\nAnd that is, officially, too fucking much.\n\nWhat he does next, he's sure he'll have no memory of doing, simply a white-noise gap of time that got him from point A to point B. He texts Cash, what are you doing for the next 24 hours? Then he unearths the emergency credit card from his wallet and buys two plane tickets, first class, nonstop. Boarding in two hours. Dulles International to Heathrow.\n\n* * *\n\nZahra nearly refuses to secure a car after Alex \"had the goddamn nerve\" to call her from the runway at Dulles. It's dark and pissing down rain when they land in London around nine in the evening, and he and Cash are both soaked the second they climb out of the car inside the back gates of Kensington.\n\nClearly, someone has radioed for Shaan, because he's standing there at the door to Henry's apartments in an impeccable gray peacoat, dry and unmoved under a black umbrella.\n\n\"Mr. Claremont-Diaz,\" he says. \"What a treat.\"\n\nAlex has not got the damn time. \"Move, Shaan.\"\n\n\"Ms. Bankston called ahead to warn me that you were on the way,\" he says. \"As you might have guessed by the ease with which you were able to get through our gates. We thought it best to let you kick up a fuss somewhere more private.\"\n\n\"Move.\"\n\nShaan smiles, looking as if he might be genuinely enjoying watching two hapless Americans become slowly waterlogged. \"You're aware it's quite late, and it's well within my power to have security remove you. No member of the royal family has invited you into the palace.\"\n\n\"Bullshit,\" Alex bites out. \"I need to see Henry.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I can't do that. The prince does not wish to be disturbed.\"\n\n\"Goddammit\u2014Henry!\" He sidesteps Shaan and starts shouting up at Henry's bedroom windows, where there's a light on. Fat raindrops are pelting his eyeballs. \"Henry, you motherfucker!\"\n\n\"Alex\u2014\" says Cash's nervous voice behind him.\n\n\"Henry, you piece of shit, get your ass down here!\"\n\n\"You are making a scene,\" Shaan says placidly.\n\n\"Yeah?\" Alex says, still yelling. \"How 'bout I just keep yelling and we see which of the papers show up first!\" He turns back to the window and starts flailing his arms too. \"Henry! Your Royal fucking Highness!\"\n\nShaan touches a finger to his earpiece. \"Team Bravo, we've got a situa\u2014\"\n\n\"For Christ's sake, Alex, what are you doing?\"\n\nAlex freezes, his mouth open around another shout, and there's Henry standing behind Shaan in the doorway, barefoot in worn-in sweats. Alex's heart is going to fall out of his ass. Henry looks unimpressed.\n\nHe drops his arms. \"Tell him to let me in.\"\n\nHenry sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. \"It's fine. He can come in.\"\n\n\" _Thank_ you,\" he says, pointedly looking at Shaan, who does not seem to care at all if he dies of hypothermia. He sloshes into the palace, ditching his soaked shoes as Cash and Shaan disappear behind the door.\n\nHenry, who led the way in, hasn't even stopped to speak to him, and all Alex can do is follow him up the grand staircase toward his rooms.\n\n\"Really nice,\" Alex yells after him, dripping as aggressively as he can manage along the way. He hopes he ruins a rug. \"Fuckin' ghost me for a week, make me stand in the rain like a brown John Cusack, and now you won't even talk to me. I'm really just having a great time here. I can see why all y'all had to marry your fucking cousins.\"\n\n\"I'd rather not do this where we might be overheard,\" Henry says, taking a left on the landing.\n\nAlex stomps up after him, following him into his bedroom. \"Do what?\" he says as Henry shuts the door behind them. \"What are you gonna do, Henry?\"\n\nHenry turns to face him at last, and now that Alex's eyes aren't full of rainwater, he can see the skin under his eyes is papery and purple, rimmed pink at his eyelashes. There's a tense set to his shoulders Alex hasn't seen in months, not directed at him at least.\n\n\"I'm going to let you say what you need to say,\" Henry says flatly, \"so you can leave.\"\n\nAlex stares. \"What, and then we're over?\"\n\nHenry doesn't answer him.\n\nSomething rises in Alex's throat\u2014anger, confusion, hurt, bile. Unforgivably, he feels like he might cry.\n\n\"Seriously?\" he says, helpless and indignant. He's still dripping. \"What the _fuck_ is going on? A week ago it was emails about how much you missed me and meeting my fucking _dad,_ and that's it? You thought you could fucking _ghost me_? I can't shut this off like you do, Henry.\"\n\nHenry paces over to the elaborately carved fireplace across the room and leans on the mantelpiece. \"You think I don't _care_ as much as you?\"\n\n\"You're sure as hell acting like it.\"\n\n\"I honestly haven't got the time to explain to you all the ways you're wrong\u2014\"\n\n\"Jesus, could you stop being an obtuse fucking asshole for, like, twenty seconds?\"\n\n\"So glad you flew here to _insult me_ \u2014\"\n\n\" _I fucking love you, okay?_ \" Alex half yells, finally, irreversibly. Henry goes very still against the mantelpiece. Alex watches him swallow, watches the muscle that keeps twitching in his jaw, and feels like he might shake out of his skin. \"Fuck, I swear. You don't make it fucking easy. But I'm in love with you.\"\n\nA small _click_ cuts the silence: Henry has taken his signet ring off and set it down on the mantel. He holds his naked hand to his chest, kneading the palm, the flickering light from the fire painting his face in dramatic shadows. \"Do you have any idea what that means?\"\n\n\"Of course I do\u2014\"\n\n\"Alex, _please,_ \" Henry says, and when he finally turns to look at him, he looks wretched, miserable. \"Don't. This is the entire goddamned reason. I can't do this, and you _know_ why I can't do this, so _please_ don't make me say it.\"\n\nAlex swallows hard. \"You're not even gonna try to be happy?\"\n\n\"For Christ's sake,\" Henry says, \"I've been trying to be happy my entire idiot life. My birthright is a _country,_ not happiness.\"\n\nAlex yanks the soggy note out of his pocket, _I wish there wasn't a wall,_ and throws it at Henry viciously, watches him pick it up. \"Then what is _that_ supposed to mean, if you don't want this?\"\n\nHenry stares down at his words from months ago. \"Alex, Thisbe and Pyramus both _die_ at the end.\"\n\n\"Oh my _God,_ \" Alex groans. \"So, what, was this all never going to be anything real to you?\"\n\nAnd Henry snaps.\n\n\"You really are a _complete_ idiot if you believe that,\" Henry hisses, the note balled in his fist. \"When have I _ever,_ since the first instant I touched you, pretended to be anything less than in love with you? Are you so fucking self-absorbed as to think this is about you and whether or not I love you, rather than the fact I'm an heir to the fucking throne? You at least have the _option_ to not choose a public life eventually, but I will live and die in these palaces and in this family, so don't you dare come to me and question if I love you when it's the thing that could bloody well ruin everything.\"\n\nAlex doesn't speak, doesn't move, doesn't breathe, his feet rooted to the spot. Henry isn't looking at him, but staring at a point on the mantel somewhere, tugging at his own hair in exasperation.\n\n\"It was never supposed to be an issue,\" he goes on, his voice hoarse. \"I thought I could have some part of you, and just never say it, and you'd never have to know, and one day you'd get tired of me and leave, because I'm\u2014\" He stops short, and one shaking hand moves through the air in front of him in a helpless sort of gesture at everything about himself. \"I never thought I'd be stood here faced with a choice I can't make, because I never... I never imagined you would love me back.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Alex says. \"I do. And you _can_ choose.\"\n\n\"You know bloody well I can't.\"\n\n\"You can _try,_ \" Alex tells him, feeling as if it should be the simplest fucking truth in the world. \"What do you _want_?\"\n\n\"I want you\u2014\"\n\n\"Then fucking _have me._ \"\n\n\"\u2014but I don't want _this._ \"\n\nAlex wants to grab Henry and shake him, wants to scream in his face, wants to smash every priceless antique in the room. \"What does that even _mean_?\"\n\n\"I don't _want_ it!\" Henry practically shouts. His eyes are flashing, wet and angry and afraid. \"Don't you bloody see? I'm not _like_ you. I can't afford to be _reckless._ I don't have a family who will support me. I don't go about shoving who I am in everyone's faces and dreaming about a career in fucking _politics,_ so I can be _more_ scrutinized and picked apart by the entire godforsaken world. I can love you and want you and still not want that life. I'm allowed, all right, and it doesn't make me a liar; it makes me a man with some infinitesimal shred of self-preservation, unlike _you,_ and you don't get to come here and call me a coward for it.\"\n\nAlex takes a breath. \"I never said you were a coward.\"\n\n\"I.\" Henry blinks. \"Well. The point stands.\"\n\n\"You think _I_ want _your_ life? You think I want _Martha's_? Gilded fucking cage? Barely allowed to _speak_ in public, or have a goddamn opinion\u2014\"\n\n\"Then what are we even doing here? Why are we fighting, then, if the lives we have to lead are so incompatible?\"\n\n\"Because you don't want that either!\" Alex insists. \"You don't want any of this bullshit. You _hate_ it.\"\n\n\"Don't tell me what I want,\" Henry says. \"You haven't a clue how it feels.\"\n\n\"Look, I might not be a fucking royal,\" Alex says, crosses the horrible rug, moves into Henry's space, \"but I know what it's like for your whole life to be determined by the family you were born into, okay? The lives we want\u2014they're _not that different._ Not in the ways that matter. You want to take what you were given and leave the world better than you found it. So do I. We can\u2014we can figure out a way to do that together.\"\n\nHenry stares at him silently, and Alex can see the scales balancing in his head.\n\n\"I don't think I can.\"\n\nAlex turns away from him, falling back on his heels like he's been slapped. \"Fine,\" he finally says. \"You know what? Fucking fine. I'll leave.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\n\"I'll leave,\" he says, and he turns back and leans in, \"as soon as you tell me to leave.\"\n\n_\"Alex.\"_\n\nHe's in Henry's face now. If he's getting his heart broken tonight, he's sure as hell going to make Henry have the guts to do it right. \"Tell me you're done with me. I'll get back on the plane. That's it. And you can live here in your tower and be miserable forever, write a whole book of sad fucking poems about it. Whatever. Just say it.\"\n\n\"Fuck you,\" Henry says, his voice breaking, and he gets a handful of Alex's shirt collar, and Alex knows he's going to love this stubborn shithead forever.\n\n\"Tell me,\" he says, a ghost of a smile around his lips, \"to leave.\"\n\nHe feels before he registers being shoved backward into a wall, and Henry's mouth is on his, desperate and wild. The faint taste of blood blooms on his tongue, and he smiles as he opens up to it, pushes it into Henry's mouth, tugs at his hair with both hands. Henry groans, and Alex feels it in his spine.\n\nThey grapple along the wall until Henry physically picks him up off the floor and staggers backward, toward the bed. Alex bounces when his back hits the mattress, and Henry stands over him for several breaths, staring. Alex would give anything to know what's going through that fucking head of his.\n\nHe realizes, suddenly, Henry's crying.\n\nHe swallows.\n\nThat's the thing: he doesn't know. He doesn't know if this is supposed to be some kind of consummation, or if it's one last time. He doesn't think he could go through with it if he knew it was the latter. But he doesn't want to go home without having this.\n\n\"C'mere.\"\n\nHe fucks Henry slow and deep, and if it's the last time, they go down shivering and gasping and epic, all wet mouths and wet eyelashes, and Alex is a clich\u00e9 on an ivory bedspread, and he hates himself but he's so in love. He's in stupid, unbearable love, and Henry loves him too, and at least for one night it matters, even if they both have to pretend to forget in the morning.\n\nHenry comes with his face turned into Alex's open palm, his bottom lip catching on the knob of his wrist, and Alex tries to memorize every detail down to how his lashes fan across his cheeks and the pink flush that spreads all the way up to his ears. He tells his too-fast brain: _Don't miss it this time. He's too important._\n\nIt's pitch-black outside when Henry's body finally subsides, and the room is impossibly quiet, the fire gone out. Alex rolls over onto his side and touches two fingers to his chest, right next to where the key on the chain rests. His heart is beating the same as ever under his skin. He doesn't know how that can be true.\n\nIt's a long stretch of silence before Henry shifts in the bed beside him and rolls onto his back, pulling a sheet over them. Alex reaches for something to say, but there's nothing.\n\n* * *\n\nAlex wakes up alone.\n\nIt takes a moment for everything to reorient around the fixed point in his chest where last night settled. The elaborate gilded headboard, the heavy embroidered duvet, the soft twill blanket beneath that's the only thing in the room Henry actually chose. He slides his hand across the sheet, over to Henry's side of the bed. It's cool to the touch.\n\nKensington Palace is gray and dull in the early morning. The clock on the mantelpiece says it's not even seven, and there's a violent rain lashing against the big picture window, half-revealed by parted curtains.\n\nHenry's room has never felt much like Henry, but in the quiet of morning, he shows up in pieces. A pile of journals on the desk, the topmost splotched with ink from a pen exploding in his bag on a plane. An oversized cardigan, worn through and patched at the elbows, slung over an antique wingback chair near the window. David's leash hanging from the doorknob.\n\nAnd beside him, there's a copy of _Le Monde_ on the nightstand, tucked under a gigantic leather-bound volume of Wilde's complete works. He recognizes the date: Paris. The first time they woke up next to each other.\n\nHe squeezes his eyes shut, feeling for once in his life that he should stop being so damn nosy. It's time, he realizes, to start accepting only what Henry can give him.\n\nThe sheets smell like Henry. He knows:\n\nOne. Henry isn't here.\n\nTwo. Henry never said yes to any kind of future last night.\n\nThree. This could very well be the last time he gets to inhale Henry's scent on anything.\n\nBut, four. Next to the clock on the mantel, Henry's ring still sits.\n\nThe doorknob turns, and Alex opens his eyes to find Henry, holding two mugs and smiling a wan, unreadable smile. He's in soft sweats again, brushed with morning mist.\n\n\"Your hair in the mornings is truly a wonder to behold,\" is how he breaks the silence. He crosses and kneels on the edge of the mattress, offering Alex a mug. It's coffee, one sugar, cinnamon. He doesn't want to feel anything about Henry knowing how he likes his coffee, not when he's about to be dumped, but he does.\n\nExcept, when Henry looks at him again, watches him take the first blessed sip of coffee, the smile comes back in earnest. He reaches down and palms one of Alex's feet through the duvet.\n\n\"Hi,\" Alex says carefully, squinting over his coffee. \"You seem... less pissy.\"\n\nHenry huffs a laugh. \"You're one to talk. I wasn't the one who stormed the palace in a fit of pique to call me an 'obtuse fucking asshole.'\"\n\n\"In my defense,\" Alex says, \"you _were_ an obtuse fucking asshole.\"\n\nHenry pauses, takes a sip of his tea, and places it on the nightstand. \"I was,\" he agrees, and he leans forward and presses his mouth to Alex's, one hand steadying his mug so it doesn't spill. He tastes like toothpaste and Earl Grey, and maybe Alex isn't getting dumped after all.\n\n\"Hey,\" he says when Henry pulls back. \"Where were you?\"\n\nHenry doesn't answer, and Alex watches him kick his wet sneakers onto the floor before climbing up to sit between Alex's open legs. He places his hands on Alex's thighs, bracketing him with his full attention, and when he looks up into Alex's eyes, his are clear blue and focused.\n\n\"I needed a run,\" he says. \"To clear my head a bit, figure out... what's next. Very Mr. Darcy brooding at Pemberley. And I ran into Philip. I hadn't mentioned it, but he and Martha are here for the week while they're doing renovations on Anmer Hall. He was up early for some appearance or other, eating toast. Plain toast. Have you ever seen someone eat toast without anything on it? Harrowing, truly.\"\n\nAlex chews his lip. \"Where's this going, babe?\"\n\n\"We chatted for a bit. He didn't seem to know about your... visitation... last night, thankfully. But he was on about Martha, and land holdings, and the hypothetical heirs they have to start working on, even though Philip hates children, and suddenly it was as if... as if everything you said last night came back to me. I thought, God, that's it, isn't it? Just following the plan. And it's not that he's unhappy. He's fine. It's all very deeply fine. A whole lifetime of fine.\" He's been pulling at a thread on the duvet, but he looks back up, squarely into Alex's eyes, and says, \"That's not good enough for me.\"\n\nThere's a desperate stutter in Alex's heartbeat. \"It's not?\"\n\nHe reaches up and touches a thumb to Alex's cheekbone. \"I'm not... good at saying these things like you are, but. I've always thought... ever since I knew about me, and even before, when I could sense I was _different_ \u2014and, after everything the past few years, all the mad things my head does\u2014I've always thought of myself as a problem that deserved to stay hidden. Never quite trusted myself, or what I wanted. Before you, I was all right letting everything happen to me. I honestly have never thought I deserved to choose.\" His hand moves, fingertips brushing a curl behind Alex's ear. \"But you treat me like I do.\"\n\nThere's something painfully hard in Alex's throat, but he pushes past it. He reaches over and sets his mug down next to Henry's on the nightstand.\n\n\"You do,\" he says.\n\n\"I think I'm actually beginning to believe that,\" Henry says. \"And I don't know how long it would have taken if I didn't have you to believe for me.\"\n\n\"And there's nothing wrong with you,\" Alex tells him. \"I mean, aside from the fact that you're occasionally an obtuse fucking asshole.\"\n\nHenry laughs again, wetly, his eyes crinkling up in the corners, and Alex feels his heart lift into his throat, up to the embellished ceilings, pushing out to fill the whole room all the way to the glinting gold ring still sitting above the fireplace.\n\n\"I am sorry about that,\" Henry says. \"I\u2014I wasn't ready to hear it. That night, at the lake... it was the first time I let myself think you might actually say it. I panicked, and it was daft and unfair, and I won't do it again.\"\n\n\"You better not,\" Alex tells him. \"So, you're saying... you're in?\"\n\n\"I'm saying,\" Henry begins, and the knit of his brow is nervous but his mouth keeps speaking, \"I'm terrified, and my whole life is completely mad, but trying to give you up this week nearly killed me. And when I woke up this morning and looked at you... there's no trying to get by for me anymore. I don't know if I'll ever be allowed to tell the world, but I... I want to. One day. If there's any legacy for me on this bloody earth, I want it to be true. So I can offer you all of me, in whatever way you'll have me, and I can offer you the chance of a life. If you can wait, I want you to help me try.\"\n\nAlex looks at him, taking in the whole parcel of him, the centuries of royal blood sitting under an antique Kensington chandelier, and he reaches out to touch his face and looks at his fingers and thinks about holding the Bible at his mother's inauguration with the same hand.\n\nIt hits him, fully: the weight of this. How completely neither of them will ever be able to undo it.\n\n\"Okay,\" he says. \"I'm into making history.\"\n\nHenry rolls his eyes and seals it with a smiling kiss, and they fall back into the pillows together, Henry's wet hair and sweatpants and Alex's naked limbs all tangled up in the lavish bedclothes.\n\nWhen Alex was a kid, before anyone knew his name, he dreamed of love like it was a fairy tale, as if it would come sweeping into his life on the back of a dragon one day. When he got older, he learned about love as a strange thing that could fall apart no matter how badly you wanted it, a choice you make anyway. He never imagined it'd turn out he was right both times.\n\nHenry's hands on him are unhurried and soft, and they make out lazily for hours or days, basking in the rare luxury of it. They take breaks to finish their lukewarm coffee and tea, and Henry has scones and blackcurrant jam sent up. They waste away the morning in bed, watching Mel and Sue squawk over tea cakes on Henry's laptop, listening to the rain slow to a drizzle.\n\nAt some point, Alex disentangles his jeans from the foot of the bed and fishes out his phone. He's got three missed calls from Zahra, one ominous voicemail from his mother, and forty-seven unread messages in his group text with June and Nora.\n\nALEX, Z JUST TOLD ME YOU'RE IN LONDON???????\n\nAlex oh my god\n\nI swear to god if you do something stupid and get yourself caught, I'm gonna kill you myself\n\nBut you went after him!!! That's SO Jane Austen\n\nI'm gonna punch you in the face when you get back. I can't believe you didn't tell me\n\nHow did it go??? Are you with Henry now?????\n\nGONNA PUNCH YOU\n\nIt turns out forty-six out of forty-seven texts are June and the forty-seventh is Nora asking if either of them know where she left her white Chuck Taylors. Alex texts back: your chucks are under my bed and henry says hi.\n\nThe message has barely delivered before his phone erupts with a call from June, who demands to be put on speaker and told everything. After, rather than facing Zahra's wrath himself, he convinces Henry to call Shaan.\n\n\"D'you think you could, er, phone Ms. Bankston and let her know Alex is safe and with me?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Shaan says. \"And shall I arrange a car for his departure?\"\n\n\"Er,\" Henry says, and he looks at Alex and mouths, _Stay?_ Alex nods. \"Tomorrow?\"\n\nThere's a very long pause over the line before Shaan says, \"I'll let her know,\" in a voice like he'd rather do literally anything else.\n\nAlex laughs as Henry hangs up, but he returns to his phone again, to the voicemail waiting from his mother. Henry sees his thumb hovering over the play button and nudges his ribs.\n\n\"I suppose we do have to face the consequences at some point,\" he says.\n\nAlex sighs. \"I don't think I told you, but she, uh. Well, when she fired me, she told me that if I wasn't a thousand percent serious about you, I needed to break things off.\"\n\nHenry nuzzles his nose behind Alex's ear. \"A thousand percent?\"\n\n\"Yeah, don't let it go to your head.\"\n\nHenry elbows him again, and Alex laughs and grabs his head and aggressively kisses his cheek, smashing his face into the pillow. When Alex finally relents, Henry is pink-faced and mussed and definitely pleased.\n\n\"I was thinking about that, though,\" Henry says, \"the chance being with me is going to keep ruining your career. Congress by thirty, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Come on. Look at this face. People love this face. I'll figure out the rest.\" Henry looks deeply skeptical, and Alex sighs again. \"Look, I don't know. I don't even exactly know, like, how being a legislator would work if I'm with a prince of another country. So, you know. There's stuff to figure out. But way worse people with way bigger problems than me get elected all the time.\"\n\nHenry's looking at him in the piercing way he has sometimes that makes Alex feel like a bug stuck under a shadowbox with a pushpin. \"You're really not frightened of what might happen?\"\n\n\"No, I mean, of course I am,\" he says. \"It definitely stays secret until after the election. And I know it'll be messy. But if we can get ahead of the narrative, wait for the right time and do it on our own terms, I think it could be okay.\"\n\n\"How long have you been thinking about this?\"\n\n\"Consciously? Since, like, the DNC. Subconsciously, in total denial? A long-ass time. At least since you kissed me.\"\n\nHenry stares at him from the pillow. \"That's... kind of incredible.\"\n\n\"What about you?\"\n\n\"What about _me_?\" Henry says. \"Christ, Alex. The whole bloody time.\"\n\n\"The whole time?\"\n\n\"Since the Olympics.\"\n\n\"The _Olympics_?\" Alex yanks Henry's pillow out from under him. \"But that's, that's like\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, Alex, the day we met, nothing gets past you, does it?\" Henry says, reaching to steal the pillow back. \"'What about you,' he says, as if he doesn't _know_ \u2014\"\n\n\"Shut your _mouth,_ \" Alex says, grinning like an idiot, and he stops fighting Henry for the pillow and instead straddles him and kisses him into the mattress. He pulls the blankets up and they disappear into the pile, a laughing mess of mouths and hands, until Henry rolls onto his phone and his ass presses the button on the voicemail.\n\n\"Diaz, you insane, hopeless romantic little shit,\" says the voice of the President of the United States, muffled in the bed. \"It had better be forever. Be safe.\"\n\n* * *\n\nSneaking out of the palace without security at two in the morning was, surprisingly, Henry's idea. He pulled hoodies and hats out for both of them\u2014the incognito uniform of the internationally recognizable\u2014and Bea staged a noisy exit from the opposite end of the palace while they sprinted through the gardens. Now they're on the deserted, wet pavement of South Kensington, flanked by tall, red brick buildings and a sign for\u2014\n\n\"Stop, are you kidding me?\" Alex says. \" _Prince Consort Road?_ Oh my God, take a picture of me with the sign.\"\n\n\"Not there yet!\" Henry says over his shoulder. He gives Alex's arm another pull to keep him running. \"Keep moving, you wastrel.\"\n\nThey cross to another street and duck into an alcove between two pillars while Henry fishes a keyring with dozens of keys out of his hoodie. \"Funny thing about being a prince\u2014people will give you keys to just about anything if you ask nicely.\"\n\nAlex gawks, watching Henry feel around the edge of a seemingly plain wall. \"All this time, I thought _I_ was the Ferris Bueller of this relationship.\"\n\n\"What, did you think I was Sloane?\" Henry says, pushing the panel open a crack and yanking Alex into a wide, dark plaza.\n\nThe grounds are sloping, white tiles carrying the sounds of their feet as they run. Sturdy Victorian bricks tower into the night, framing the courtyard, and Alex thinks, _Oh_. The Victoria and Albert Museum. Henry has a key to the V&A.\n\nThere's a stout old security guard waiting at the doors.\n\n\"Can't thank you enough, Gavin,\" Henry says, and Alex notices the thick wad of cash Henry slips into their handshake.\n\n\"Renaissance City tonight, yeah?\" Gavin says.\n\n\"If you would be so kind,\" Henry tells him.\n\nAnd they're off again, hustling through rooms of Chinese art and French sculptures. Henry moves fluidly from room to room, past a black stone sculpture of a seated Buddha and John the Baptist nude and in bronze, without a single false step.\n\n\"You do this a lot?\"\n\nHenry laughs. \"It's, ah, sort of my little secret. When I was young, my mum and dad would take us early in the morning, before opening. They wanted us to have a sense of the arts, I suppose, but mostly history.\" He slows and points to a massive piece, a wooden tiger mauling a man dressed as a European soldier, the sign declaring: _TIPU'S TIGER._ \"Mum would take us to look at this one and whisper to me, 'See how the tiger is eating him up? That's because my great-great-great-great grandad _stole_ this from India. I think we should give it back, but your gran says no.'\"\n\nAlex watches Henry's face in quarter profile, the slight pain that moves under his skin, but he shakes it off quickly and takes Alex's hand back up. They're running again.\n\n\"Now, I like to come at night,\" he says. \"A few of the higher-up security guards know me. Sometimes I think I keep coming because, no matter how many places I've been or people I've met or books I read, this place is proof I'll never learn it all. It's like Westminster: You can look at every individual carving or pane of stained glass and know there's this wealth of stories there, that everything was put in a specific place for a reason. Everything has a meaning, an intention. There are pieces in here\u2014 _The Great Bed of Ware,_ it's mentioned in _Twelfth Night, Epicoene, Don Juan,_ and it's here. Everything is a story, never finished. Isn't it incredible? And the archives, God, I could spend hours in the archives, they\u2014 _mmph._ \"\n\nHe's cut off mid-sentence because Alex has stopped in the middle of the corridor and yanked him backward into a kiss.\n\n\"Hello,\" Henry says when they break apart. \"What was that for?\"\n\n\"I just, like.\" Alex shrugs. \"Really love you.\"\n\nThe corridor dumps them out into a cavernous atrium, rooms sprawling out in each direction. Only some of the overhead lighting has been left on, and Alex can see an enormous chandelier looming high in the rotunda, tendrils and bubbles of glass in blues and greens and yellows. Behind it, there's an elaborate iron choir screen standing broad and gorgeous on the landing above.\n\n\"This is it,\" Henry says, pulling Alex by the hand to the left, where light spills out of an immense archway. \"I called ahead to Gavin to make sure they left a light on. It's my favorite room.\"\n\nAlex has personally helped with exhibitions at the Smithsonian and sleeps in a room once occupied by Ulysses S. Grant's father-in-law, but he still loses his breath when Henry pulls him through the marble pillars.\n\nIn the half light, the room is alive. The vaulted roof seems to stretch up forever into the inky London sky, and beneath it the room is arranged like a city square somewhere in Florence, climbing columns and towering altars and archways. Deep basins of fountains are planted in the floor between statues on heavy pedestals, and effigies lie behind black doorways with the Resurrection carved into their slate. Dominating the entire back wall is a colossal, Gothic choir screen carved from marble and adorned with ornate statues of saints, black and gold and imposing, holy.\n\nWhen Henry speaks again, it's soft, as if he's trying not to break the spell.\n\n\"In here, at night, it's almost like walking through a real piazza,\" Henry says. \"But there's nobody else around to touch you or gawk at you or try to steal a photo of you. You can just _be._ \"\n\nAlex looks over to find Henry's expression careful, waiting, and he realizes this is the same as when Alex took Henry to the lake house\u2014the most sacred place he has.\n\nHe squeezes Henry's hand and says, \"Tell me everything.\"\n\nHenry does, leading him around to each piece in turn. There's a life-size sculpture of Zephyr, the Greek god of the west wind brought to life by Francavilla, a crown on his head and one foot on a cloud. Narcissus on his knees, mesmerized by his own reflection in the pool, once thought to be Michelangelo's lost Cupid but actually carved by Cioli\u2014\"Do you see here, where they had to repair his knuckles with stucco?\"\u2014Pluto stealing Proserpina away to the underworld, and Jason with his golden fleece.\n\nThey wind up back at the first statue, _Samson Slaying a Philistine_ , the one that knocked the wind out of Alex when they walked in. He's never seen anything like it\u2014the smooth muscles, the indentations of flesh, the breathing, bleeding life of it, all carved by Giambologna out of marble. If he could touch it, he swears the skin would be warm.\n\n\"It's a bit ironic, you know,\" Henry says, gazing up at it. \"Me, the cursed gay heir, standing here in Victoria's museum, considering how much she _loved_ those sodomy laws.\" He smirks. \"Actually... you remember how I told you about the gay king, James I?\"\n\n\"The one with the dumb jock boyfriend?\"\n\n\"Yes, that one. Well, his most beloved favorite was a man named George Villiers. 'The handsomest-bodied man in all of England,' they called him. James was completely besotted. Everyone knew. This French poet, de Viau, wrote a poem about it.\" He clears his throat and starts to recite: \"'One man fucks Monsieur le Grand, another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre, and it is well known that the King of England, fucks the Duke of Buckingham.'\" Alex must be staring, because he adds, \"Well, it rhymes in French. Anyway. Did you know the reason the King James translation of the Bible exists is because the Church of England was so displeased with James for flaunting his relationship with Villiers that he had the translation commissioned to appease them?\"\n\n\"You're kidding.\"\n\n\"He stood in front of the Privy Council and said, 'Christ had John, and I have George.'\"\n\n\"Jesus.\"\n\n\"Precisely.\" Henry's still looking up at the statue, but Alex can't stop looking at him and the sly smile on his face, lost in his own thoughts. \"And James's son, Charles I, is the reason we have dear Samson. It's the only Giambologna that ever left Florence. He was a gift to Charles from the King of Spain, and Charles gave it, this massive, absolutely priceless masterpiece of a sculpture, to Villiers. And a few centuries later, here he is. One of the most beautiful pieces we own, and we didn't even steal it. We only needed Villiers and his trolloping ways with the queer monarchs. To me, if there were a registry of national gay landmarks in Britain, Samson would be on it.\"\n\nHenry's beaming like a proud parent, like Samson is his, and Alex is hit with a wave of pride in kind.\n\nHe takes his phone out and lines up a shot, Henry standing there all soft and rumpled and smiling next to one of the most exquisite works of art in the world.\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"I'm taking a picture of a national gay landmark,\" Alex tells him. \"And also a statue.\"\n\nHenry laughs indulgently, and Alex closes the space between them, takes Henry's baseball cap off and stands on his toes to kiss the ridge of his brow.\n\n\"It's funny,\" Henry says. \"I always thought of the whole thing as the most unforgivable thing about me, but you act like it's one of the best.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah,\" Alex says. \"The top list of reasons to love you goes brain, then dick, then imminent status as a revolutionary gay icon.\"\n\n\"You are quite literally Queen Victoria's worst nightmare.\"\n\n\"And that's why _you_ love _me._ \"\n\n\"My God, you're right. All this time, I was just after the bloke who'd most infuriate my homophobic forebears.\"\n\n\"Ah, and we can't forget they were also racist.\"\n\n\"Certainly not.\" Henry nods seriously. \"Next time we shall visit some of the George III pieces and see if they burst into flame.\"\n\nThrough the marble choir screen at the back of the room is a second, deeper chamber, this one filled with church relics. Past stained glass and statues of saints, at the very end of the room, is an entire high altar chapel removed from its church. The sign explains its original setting was the apse of the convent church of Santa Chiara in Florence in the fifteenth century, and it's stunning, set deep into an alcove to create a real chapel, with statues of Santa Chiara and Saint Francis of Assisi.\n\n\"When I was younger,\" Henry says, \"I had this very elaborate idea of taking somebody I loved here and standing inside the chapel, that he'd love it as much as I did, and we'd slow dance right in front of the Blessed Mother. Just a... daft pubescent fantasy.\"\n\nHenry hesitates, before finally sliding his phone out of his pocket. He presses a few buttons and extends a hand to Alex, and, quietly, \"Your Song\" starts to play from the tiny speaker.\n\nAlex exhales a laugh. \"Aren't you gonna ask if I know how to waltz?\"\n\n\"No waltzing,\" Henry says. \"Never cared for it.\"\n\nAlex takes his hand, and Henry turns to face the chapel like a nervous postulant, his cheeks hollowed out in the low light, before pulling Alex into it.\n\nWhen they kiss, Alex can hear a half-remembered old proverb from catechism, mixed up between translations of the book: \"Come, hijo m\u00edo, de la miel, porque es buena, and the honeycomb, sweet to thy taste.\" He wonders what Santa Chiara would think of them, a lost David and Jonathan, turning slowly on the spot.\n\nHe brings Henry's hand to his mouth and kisses the little knob of his knuckle, the skin over the blue vein there, bloodlines, pulses, the old blood kept in perpetuity within these walls, and he thinks, _Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen._\n\n* * *\n\nHenry charters a private plane to get him back home, and Alex is dreading the dressing-down he's going to get the minute he's stateside, but he's trying not to think about it. At the airstrip, the wind whipping his hair across his forehead, Henry fishes inside his jacket for something.\n\n\"Listen,\" he says, pulling a curled fist out of his pocket. He takes one of Alex's hands and turns it to press something small and heavy into his palm. \"I want you to know, I'm sure. A thousand percent.\"\n\nHe removes his hand and there, sitting in the center of Alex's callused palm, is the signet ring.\n\n\"What?\" Alex's eyes flash up to search Henry's face and find him smiling softly. \"I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Keep it,\" Henry tells him. \"I'm sick of wearing it.\"\n\nIt's a private airstrip, but it's still risky, so he folds Henry in a hug and whispers fiercely, \"I completely fucking love you.\"\n\nAt cruising altitude, he takes the chain off his neck and slides the ring on next to the old house key. They clink together gently as he tucks them both under his shirt, two homes side by side.\n\n# ELEVEN\n\n> Hometown stuff\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 9\/2\/20 5:12 PM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> H,\n> \n> Have been home for three hours. Already miss you. This is some bullshit.\n> \n> Hey, have I told you lately that you're brave? I still remember what you said to that little girl in the hospital about Luke Skywalker: \"He's proof that it doesn't matter where you come from or who your family is.\" Sweetheart, you're proof too.\n> \n> (By the way, in this relationship, I am absolutely the Han and you are absolutely the Leia. Don't try to argue because you'll be wrong.)\n> \n> I was also thinking about Texas again, which I guess I do a lot when I'm stressed about election stuff. There's so much stuff I haven't shown you yet. We haven't even done Austin! I wanna take you to Franklin Barbecue. You have to wait in line for hours, but that's part of the experience. I really wanna see a member of the royal family wait in line for hours to eat cow parts.\n> \n> Have you thought any more about what you said before I left? About coming out to your family? Obviously, you're not obligated. You just seemed kind of hopeful when you talked about it.\n> \n> I'll be over here, still quarantined in the White House (at least Mom didn't kill me for London), rooting for you.\n> \n> Love you.\n> \n> xoxoxoxoxo\n> \n> A\n> \n> P.S. Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf\u20141927:\n> \n> With me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.\n> \n> Re: Hometown stuff\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 9\/3\/20 2:49 AM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex,\n> \n> It is, indeed, bullshit. It's all I can do not to pack a bag and be gone forever. Perhaps I could live in your room like a recluse. You could have food sent up for me, and I'll be lurking in disguise in a shadowy corner when you answer the door. It'll all be very dreadfully Jane Eyre.\n> \n> The Mail will write mad speculations about where I've gone, if I've offed myself or vanished to St. Kilda, but only you and I will know that I'm just sprawled in your bed, reading books and feeding myself profiteroles and making love to you endlessly until we both expire in a haze of chocolate sauce. It's how I'd want to go.\n> \n> I'm afraid, though, I'm stuck here. Gran keeps asking Mum when I'm going to enlist, and did I know Philip had already served a year by the time he was my age. I do need to figure out what I'm going to do, because I'm certainly closing in on the end of what's an acceptable amount of time for a gap year. Please do keep me in your\u2014what is it American politicians say?\u2014thoughts and prayers.\n> \n> Austin sounds brilliant. Maybe in a few months, after things settle down a bit? I could take a long weekend. Can we visit your mum's house? Your room? Do you still have your lacrosse trophies? Tell me you still have posters up. Let me guess: Han Solo, Barack Obama, and... Ruth Bader Ginsburg.\n> \n> (I'll agree with your assessment that you're the Han to my Leia in that you are, without doubt, a scruffy-looking nerf herder who would pilot us into an asteroid field. I happen to like nice men.)\n> \n> I have thought more about coming out to my family, which is part of why I'm staying here for now. Bea has offered to be there when I tell Philip if I want, so I think I will. Again, thoughts and prayers.\n> \n> I love you terribly, and I want you back here soon. I need your help picking a new bed for my room; I've decided to get rid of that gold monstrosity.\n> \n> Yours,\n> \n> Henry\n> \n> P.S. From Radclyffe Hall to Evguenia Souline, 1934:\n> \n> Darling\u2014I wonder if you realize how much I am counting on your coming to England, how much it means to me\u2014it means all the world, and indeed my body shall be all, all yours, as yours will be all, all mine, beloved.... And nothing will matter but just we two, we two longing loves at last come together.\n> \n> Re: Hometown stuff\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 9\/3\/20 6:20 AM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> H,\n> \n> Shit. Do you think you're going to enlist? I haven't done any research on it yet. I'm gonna ask Zahra to have one of our people put together a binder on it. What would that mean? Would you have to be gone a lot? Would it be dangerous??? Or is it just like, wear the uniform and sit at a desk? How did we not talk about this when I was there?????\n> \n> Sorry. I'm panicking. I somehow forgot this was a thing looming on the horizon. I'm there for whatever you decide you want to do, just, like, let me know if I need to start practicing gazing wistfully out the window, waiting for my love to return from the war.\n> \n> It drives me nuts sometimes that you don't get to have more say in your life. When I picture you happy, I see you with your own apartment somewhere outside of the palace and a desk where you can write anthologies of queer history. And I'm there, using up your shampoo and making you come to the grocery store with me and waking up in the same damn time zone with you every morning.\n> \n> When the election is over, we can figure out what we'll do next. I would love to be in the same place for a bit, but I know you have to do what you have to do. Just know, I believe in you.\n> \n> Re: telling Philip, sounds like a great plan. If all else fails, just do what I did and act like a huge jackass until most of your family figures it out on their own.\n> \n> Love you. Tell Bea hi.\n> \n> A\n> \n> P.S. Eleanor Roosevelt to Lorena Hickock\u20141933:\n> \n> I miss you greatly dear. The nicest time of the day is when I write to you. You have a stormier time than I do but I miss you as much, I think.... Please keep most of your heart in Washington as long as I'm here for most of mine is with you!\n> \n> Re: Hometown stuff\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 9\/4\/20 7:58 PM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> Alex,\n> \n> Have you ever had something go so horribly, horribly, unbelievably badly that you'd like to be loaded into a cannon and jettisoned into the merciless black maw of outer space?\n> \n> I wonder sometimes what is the point of me, or anything. I should have just packed a bag like I said. I could be in your bed, languishing away until I perish, fat and sexually conquered, snuffed out in the spring of my youth. Here lies Prince Henry of Wales. He died as he lived: avoiding plans and sucking cock.\n> \n> I told Philip. Not about you, precisely\u2014about me.\n> \n> Specifically, we were discussing enlistment, Philip and Shaan and I, and I told Philip I'd rather not follow the traditional path and that I hardly think I'd be useful to anyone in the military. He asked why I was so intent on disrespecting the traditions of the men of this family, and I truly think I dissociated straight (ha) out of the conversation, because I opened my blasted mouth and said, \"Because I'm not like the rest of the men of this family, beginning with the fact that I am very deeply gay, Philip.\"\n> \n> Once Shaan managed to dislodge him from the chandelier, Philip had quite a few words for me, some of which were \"confused or misguided\" and \"ensuring the perpetuity of the bloodline\" and \"respecting the legacy.\" Honestly, I don't recall much of it. Essentially, I gathered that he was not surprised to discover I am not the heterosexual heir I'm supposed to be, but rather surprised that I do not intend to keep pretending to be the heterosexual heir I'm supposed to be.\n> \n> So, yes, I know we discussed and hoped that coming out to my family would be a good first step. I cannot say this was an encouraging sign re: our odds of going public. I don't know. I've eaten a tremendous amount of Jaffa Cakes about it, to be frank.\n> \n> Sometimes I imagine moving to New York to take over launching Pez's youth shelter there. Just leaving. Not coming back. Maybe burning something down on the way out. It would be nice.\n> \n> Here's an idea: Do you know, I've realised I've never actually told you what I thought the first time we met?\n> \n> You see, for me, memories are difficult. Very often, they hurt. A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they're inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system.\n> \n> I started to think of myself and my life and my whole lifetime worth of memories as all the dark, dusty rooms of Buckingham Palace. I took the night Bea left rehab and I begged her to take it seriously, and I put it in a room with pink peonies on the wallpaper and a golden harp in the center of the floor. I took my first time, with one of my brother's mates from uni when I was seventeen, and I found the smallest, most cramped little broom cupboard I could muster, and I shoved it in. I took my father's last night, the way his face went slack, the smell of his hands, the fever, the waiting and waiting and terrible waiting and the even worse not-waiting anymore, and I found the biggest room, a ballroom, wide open and dark, windows drawn and covered. Locked the doors.\n> \n> But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the gardens. I pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase. It didn't fit in any rooms.\n> \n> You were talking with Nora and June, happy and animated and fully alive, a person living in dimensions I couldn't access, and so beautiful. Your hair was longer then. You weren't even a president's son yet, but you weren't afraid. You had a yellow ip\u00ea-amarelo in your pocket.\n> \n> I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.\n> \n> And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.\n> \n> And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it?\n> \n> Sometimes, even now, I still can't.\n> \n> I'm sorry things didn't go better with Philip. I wish I could send hope.\n> \n> Yours,\n> \n> Henry\n> \n> P.S. From Michelangelo to Tommaso Cavalieri, 1533:\n> \n> I know well that, at this hour, I could as easily forget your name as the food by which I live; nay, it were easier to forget the food, which only nourishes my body miserably, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul, filling the one and the other with such sweetness that neither weariness nor fear of death is felt by me while memory preserves you to my mind. Think, if the eyes could also enjoy their portion, in what condition I should find myself.\n> \n> Re: Hometown stuff\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 9\/4\/20 8:31 PM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> H,\n> \n> Fuck.\n> \n> I'm so sorry. I don't know what else to say. I'm so sorry. June and Nora send their love. Not as much love as me. Obviously.\n> \n> Please don't worry about me. We'll figure it out. It just might take time. I've been working on patience. I've picked up all kinds of things from you.\n> \n> God, what can I possibly write to make this better?\n> \n> Here: I can't decide if your emails make me miss you more or less. Sometimes I feel like a funny-looking rock in the middle of the most beautiful clear ocean when I read the kinds of things you write to me. You love so much bigger than yourself, bigger than everything. I can't believe how lucky I am to even witness it\u2014to be the one who gets to have it, and so much of it, is beyond luck and feels like fate. Catholic God made me to be the person you write those things about. I'll say five Hail Marys. Muchas gracias, Santa Maria.\n> \n> I can't match you for prose, but what I can do is write you a list.\n> \n> AN INCOMPLETE LIST: THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HRH PRINCE HENRY OF WALES\n> \n> 1. The sound of your laugh when I piss you off.\n> \n> 2. The way you smell underneath your fancy cologne, like clean linens but somehow also fresh grass (what kind of magic is this?).\n> \n> 3. That thing you do where you stick out your chin to try to look tough.\n> \n> 4. How your hands look when you play piano.\n> \n> 5. All the things I understand about myself now because of you.\n> \n> 6. How you think Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars (wrong) because deep down you're a gigantic, sappy, embarrassing romantic who just wants the happily ever after.\n> \n> 7. Your ability to recite Keats.\n> \n> 8. Your ability to recite Bernadette's \"Don't let it drag you down\" monologue from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.\n> \n> 9. How hard you try.\n> \n> 10. How hard you've always tried.\n> \n> 11. How determined you are to keep trying.\n> \n> 12. That when your shoulders cover mine, nothing else in the entire stupid world matters.\n> \n> 13. The goddamn issue of Le Monde you brought back to London with you and kept and have on your nightstand (yes, I saw it).\n> \n> 14. The way you look when you first wake up.\n> \n> 15. Your shoulder-to-waist ratio.\n> \n> 16. Your huge, generous, ridiculous, indestructible heart.\n> \n> 17. Your equally huge dick.\n> \n> 18. The face you just made when you read that last one.\n> \n> 19. The way you look when you first wake up (I know I already said this, but I really, really love it).\n> \n> 20. The fact that you loved me all along.\n> \n> I keep thinking about that last one ever since you told me, and what an idiot I was. It's so hard for me to get out of my own head sometimes, but now I'm coming back to what I said to you the night in my room when it all started, and how I brushed you off when you offered to let me go after the DNC, how I used to try to act like it was nothing sometimes. I didn't even know what you were offering to do to yourself. God, I want to fight everyone who's ever hurt you, but it was me too, wasn't it? All that time. I'm so sorry.\n> \n> Please stay gorgeous and strong and unbelievable. I miss you I miss you I miss you I love you. I'm calling you as soon as I send this, but I know you like to have these things written down.\n> \n> A\n> \n> P.S. Richard Wagner to Eliza Wille, re: Ludwig II\u20131864 (Remember when you played Wagner for me? He's an asshole, but this is something.)\n> \n> It is true that I have my young king who genuinely adores me. You cannot form an idea of our relations. I recall one of the dreams of my youth. I once dreamed that Shakespeare was alive: that I really saw and spoke to him: I can never forget the impression that dream made on me. Then I would have wished to see Beethoven, though he was already dead. Something of the same kind must pass in the mind of this lovable man when with me. He says he can hardly believe that he really possesses me. None can read without astonishment, without enchantment, the letters he writes to me.\n\n# TWELVE\n\nThere's a diamond ring on Zahra's finger when she shows up with her coffee thermos and a thick stack of files. They're in June's room, scarfing down breakfast before Zahra and June leave for a rally in Pittsburgh, and June drops her waffle on the bedspread.\n\n\"Oh my God, Z, what is _that_? Did you get _engaged_?\"\n\nZahra looks down at the ring and shrugs. \"I had the weekend off.\"\n\nJune gapes at her.\n\n\"When are you going to tell us who you're dating?\" Alex asks. \"Also, _how_?\"\n\n\"Uh-uh, nope,\" she says. \" _You_ don't get to say shit to me about secret relationships in and around this campaign, princess.\"\n\n\"Point,\" Alex concedes.\n\nShe brushes past the topic as June starts wiping syrup off the bed with her pajama pants. \"We've got a lot of ground to cover this morning, so focus up, little Claremonts.\"\n\nShe's got detailed agendas for each of them, bullet-pointed and double-sided, and she dives right in. They're already on Thursday's voter registration drive in Cedar Rapids (Alex is pointedly not invited) when her phone pings with a notification. She picks it up, scrolling through the screen offhandedly.\n\n\"So I need both of you to be dressed and ready... by...\" She's looking more closely at the screen, distracted. \"By, uh...\" Her face is taken over with a horrified gasp. \"Oh, _fuck my ass._ \"\n\n\"What\u2014?\" Alex starts, but his own phone buzzes in his lap, and he looks down to find a push notification from CNN: LEAKED SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE SHOWS PRINCE HENRY AT DNC HOTEL.\n\n\"Oh, shit,\" Alex says.\n\nJune reads over his shoulder; somehow, some \"anonymous source\" got the security camera footage from the lobby of the Beekman that night of the DNC.\n\nIt's not... explicitly damning, but it very clearly does show the two of them walking out of the bar together, shoulder to shoulder, flanked by Cash, and it cuts to footage from the elevator, Henry's arm around Alex's waist while they talk with Cash. It ends with the three of them getting off together at the top floor.\n\nZahra looks up at him, practically murderous. \"Can you explain to me why this one day of our lives will not stop haunting me?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Alex says miserably. \"I can't believe this is the one that's\u2014I mean, we've done riskier things than this\u2014\"\n\n\"That's supposed to make me feel better _how_?\"\n\n\"I just mean, like, who is leaking fucking elevator tapes? Who's checking for that? It's not like Solange was in there\u2014\"\n\nA chirp from June's phone interrupts him, and she swears when she looks at it. \"Jesus, that _Post_ reporter just texted to ask for a comment on the speculation surrounding your relationship with Henry and whether it\u2014whether it has to do with you leaving the campaign after the DNC.\" She looks between Alex and Zahra, eyes wide. \"This is really bad, isn't it?\"\n\n\"It ain't great,\" Zahra says. She's got her nose buried in her phone, furiously typing out what are probably very strongly worded emails to the press team. \"What we need is a fucking diversion. We have to\u2014to send you on a date or something.\"\n\n\"What if we\u2014\" June attempts.\n\n\"Or, fuck, send _him_ on a date,\" Zahra says. \"Send you _both_ on dates.\"\n\n\"I could\u2014\" June tries again.\n\n\"Who the fuck do I call? What girl is gonna want to wade into this shitstorm to fake date either of you at this point?\" Zahra grinds the heels of both hands against her eyes. \"Jesus, be a gay beard.\"\n\n\"I have an idea!\" June finally half shouts. When they both look at her, she's biting her lip, looking at Alex. \"But I don't know if you're gonna like it.\"\n\nShe turns her phone around to show them the screen. It's a photo he recognizes as one of the ones they took for Pez in Texas, June and Henry lounging on the dock together. She's cropped Nora out so it's just the two of them, Henry sporting a wide, teasing grin under his sunglasses and June planting a kiss on his cheek.\n\n\"I was on that floor too,\" she says. \"We don't have to, like, confirm or deny anything. But we can imply something. Just to take the heat off.\"\n\nAlex swallows.\n\nHe's always known June was one inch from taking a bullet for him, but this? He would never ask her to do this.\n\nBut the thing is... it would work. Their social media friendship is well documented, even if half of it is GIFs of Colin Firth. Out of context, the photo looks as couple-y as anything, like a nice, gorgeous, heterosexual couple on vacation together. He looks over to Zahra.\n\n\"It's not a bad idea,\" Zahra says. \"We'd have to get Henry on board. Can you do that?\"\n\nAlex releases a breath. He absolutely doesn't want this, but he's also not sure what other choice he has. \"Um. Yeah, I. Yeah, I think so.\"\n\n* * *\n\n\"This is kind of exactly what we said we didn't want to do,\" Alex says into his phone.\n\n\"I know,\" Henry tells him across the line. His voice is shaky. Philip is waiting on Henry's other line. \"But.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Alex says. \"But.\"\n\nJune posts the picture from Texas, and it immediately burns through her stats to become her new most-liked post.\n\nWithin hours, it's everywhere. _BuzzFeed_ puts up a comprehensive guide to Henry and June's relationship, leading off with that goddamn photo of them dancing at the royal wedding. They dig up photos from the night in LA, analyze Twitter interactions. \"Just when you thought June Claremont-Diaz couldn't get any more #goals,\" one article writes, \"has she secretly had her own Prince Charming all along?\" Another one speculates, \"Did HRH's best friend Alex introduce them?\"\n\nJune's relieved, only because she managed to find a way to protect him, even though it means the world is digging through _her_ life for answers and evidence, which makes Alex want to murder everyone. He also wants to grab people by the shoulders and shake them and tell them Henry is _his,_ you idiots, even though the whole point of this was for it to be believable. He shouldn't feel wronged deep in his gut. But that everyone seems enamored, when the only difference between the lie and the truth that would burn up Fox News is the gender involved... well, it fucking stings.\n\nHenry is quiet. He says enough for Alex to glean that Philip is apoplectic and Her Majesty is annoyed but pleased Henry has finally found himself a girlfriend. Alex feels horrible about it. The stifling orders, pretending to be someone he's not\u2014Alex has always tried to be a refuge for Henry from it all. It was never supposed to come from his side too.\n\nIt's bad. It's stomach-cramps, walls-closing-in, no-plan-B-if-this-fails bad. He was in London barely two weeks ago, kissing Henry in front of a Giambologna. Now, this.\n\nThere's another piece in their back pocket that'll sell it. The only relationship in his life that can get more mileage than any of this. Nora comes to him at the Residence wearing bright red lipstick and presses cool, patient fingers against his temples and says, \"Take me on a date.\"\n\nThey choose a college neighborhood full of people who'll sneak shots on their phones and post them everywhere. Nora slides her hand into his back pocket, and he tries to focus on the comfort of her physical presence against his side, the familiar frizz of her curls against his cheek.\n\nFor half a second, he allows a small part of him to think about how much easier things would be if this were the truth: sliding back into comfortable, easy harmony with his best friend, leaving greasy fingerprints along her waistline outside Jumbo Slice, laughing at her crass jokes. If he could love her like people wanted him to, and she loved him, and there wasn't any more to it than that.\n\nBut she doesn't, and he can't, and his heart is on a plane over the Atlantic right now, coming to DC to seal the deal over a well-photographed lunch with June the next day. Zahra sends him an email full of Twitter threads about him and Nora that night when he's in bed, and he feels sick.\n\nHenry lands in the middle of the night and isn't even allowed to come near the Residence, instead sequestered in a hotel across town. He sounds exhausted when he calls in the morning, and Alex holds the phone close and promises he'll try to find a way to see him before he flies back out.\n\n\"Please,\" Henry says, paper-thin.\n\nHis mother, the rest of the administration, and half of the press at this point are caught up for the day dealing with news of a North Korean missile test; nobody notices when June lets him climb into her SUV with her that morning. June holds onto his elbow and makes half-hearted jokes, and when they pull up a block from the cafe, she offers him an apologetic smile.\n\n\"I'll tell him you're here,\" she says. \"If nothing else, maybe that'll make it a little easier for him.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" he says. Before she opens the door to leave, he catches her by the wrist and says, \"Seriously. Thank you.\"\n\nShe gives his hand a squeeze, and she and Amy are gone, and he's alone in a tiny, secluded alleyway with the second car of backup security and a twisted-up feeling in his stomach.\n\nIt takes all of an hour before June texts him, All done, followed by, Bringing him to you.\n\nThey worked it out before they left: Amy brings June and Henry back to the alley, they have him swap cars like a political prisoner. Alex leans forward to the two agents sitting silently in the front seats. He doesn't know if they've figured out what this really is yet, and he honestly doesn't care.\n\n\"Hey, can I have a minute?\"\n\nThey exchange a look but get out, and a minute later, there's another car alongside him and the door is opening, and he's there. Henry, looking tense and unhappy, but within arm's reach.\n\nAlex pulls him in by the shoulder on instinct, the door shutting behind him. He holds him there, and this close he can see the faint gray tinge to Henry's complexion, the way his eyes aren't connecting. It's the worst he's ever seen him, worse than a violent fit or the verge of tears. He looks hollowed-out, vacant.\n\n\"Hey,\" Alex says. Henry's gaze is still unfocused, and Alex shifts toward the middle of the seat and into his line of vision. \"Hey. Look at me. Hey. I'm right here.\"\n\nHenry's hands are shaking, his breaths coming shallow, and Alex knows the signs, the low hum of an impending panic attack. He reaches down and wraps his hands around one of Henry's wrists, feeling the racing pulse under his thumbs.\n\nHenry finally meets his eyes. \"I hate it,\" he says. \"I _hate_ this.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Alex says.\n\n\"It was... _tolerable_ before, somehow,\" Henry says. \"When there was never\u2014never the possibility of anything else. But, Christ, this is\u2014it's _vile._ It's a bloody farce. And June and Nora, what, they just get to be _used_? Gran wanted me to bring my own photographers for this. Did you know that?\" He inhales, and it gets caught in his throat and shudders violently on the way back out. \"Alex. I don't want to _do_ this.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Alex tells him again, reaching up to smooth out Henry's brow with the pad of his thumb. \"I know. I hate it too.\"\n\n\"It's not fucking _fair_!\" he goes on, his voice nearly breaking. \"My shit ancestors walked around doing a thousand times worse than any of this, and nobody _cared_!\"\n\n\" _Baby,_ \" Alex says, moving his hand to Henry's chin to bring him back down. \"I know. I'm so sorry, babe. But it won't be like this forever, okay? I promise.\"\n\nHenry closes his eyes and exhales through his nose. \"I want to believe you. I do. But I'm so afraid I'll never be allowed.\"\n\nAlex wants to go to war for this man, wants to get his hands on everything and everyone that ever hurt him, but for once, he's trying to be the steady one. So he rubs the side of Henry's neck gently until his eyes drift back open, and he smiles softly, tipping their foreheads together.\n\n\"Hey,\" he says. \"I'm not gonna let that happen. Listen, I'm telling you right now, I will physically fight your grandmother myself if I have to, okay? And, like, she's old. I know I can take her.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't be so cocky,\" Henry says with a small laugh. \"She's full of dark surprises.\"\n\nAlex laughs, cuffing him on the shoulder.\n\n\"Seriously,\" he says. Henry's looking back at him, beautiful and vital and heartsick and still, always, the person Alex is willing to risk ruining his life for. \"I hate this so much. I know. But we're gonna do it together. And we're gonna make it work. You and me and history, remember? We're just gonna fucking fight. Because you're it, okay? I'm never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you. So, I promise you, one day we'll be able to just _be,_ and fuck everyone else.\"\n\nHe pulls Henry in by the nape of his neck and kisses him hard, Henry's knee knocking against the center console as his hands move up to Alex's face. Even though the windows are tinted black, it's the closest they've ever come to kissing in public, and Alex knows it's reckless, but all he can think is a supercut of other people's letters they've quietly sent to each other. Words that went down in history. \"Meet you in every dream... Keep most of your heart in Washington... Miss you like a home... We two longing loves... My young king.\"\n\n_One day,_ he tells himself. _One day, us too._\n\n* * *\n\nThe anxiety feels like buzzing little wings in his ear in the silence, like a petulant wasp. It catches him when he tries to sleep and startles him awake, follows him on laps paced up and down the floors of the Residence. It's getting harder to brush off the feeling he's being watched.\n\nThe worst part is that there's no end in sight. They'll definitely have to keep it up at least until the election is over, and even then, there's the always looming possibility of the queen outright forbidding it. His idealistic streak won't let him fully accept it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.\n\nHe keeps waking up in DC, and Henry keeps waking up in London, and the whole world keeps waking up to talk about the two of them in love with other people. Pictures of Nora's hand in his. Speculation about whether June will get an official announcement of royal courtship. And the two of them, Henry and Alex, like the world's worst illustration of the _Symposium_ : split down the middle and sent bleeding into separate lives.\n\nEven that thought depresses him because Henry's the only reason he's become a person who cites Plato. Henry and his classics. Henry in his palace, in love, in misery, not talking much anymore.\n\nEven with both of them trying as hard as they are, it's impossible to feel like it's not pulling them apart. The whole charade takes and takes from them, takes days that were sacred\u2014the night in LA, the weekend at the lake, the missed chance in Rio\u2014and records over the tape with something more palatable. The narrative: two fresh-faced young men who love two beautiful young women and definitely not ever each other.\n\nHe doesn't want Henry to know. Henry has a hard enough time as it is, looked at sideways by his whole family, Philip who knows and has not been kind. He tries to sound calm and whole over the phone when they talk, but he doesn't think it's convincing.\n\nWhen he was younger and the anxiety got this bad, when the stakes in his life were much, much lower, this would be the point of self-destruction. If he were in California, he'd sneak the jeep out and drive way too fast down the 101, doors off, blasting N.W.A., inches from being painted on the pavement. In Texas, he'd steal a bottle of Maker's from the liquor cabinet and get wasted with half the lacrosse team and maybe, afterward, climb through Liam's window and hope to forget by morning.\n\nThe first debate is in a matter of weeks. He doesn't even have work to keep him busy, so he stews and stresses and goes for long, punishing runs until he has the satisfaction of blisters. He wants to set himself on fire, but he can't afford for anyone to see him burn.\n\nHe's returning a box of borrowed files to his dad's office in the Dirksen Building after hours when he hears the faint sound of Muddy Waters from the floor above, and it hits him. There's one person he can burn down instead.\n\nHe finds Rafael Luna hunched at his office's open window, sucking down a cigarette. There are two empty, crumpled packs of Marlboros next to a lighter and an overflowing ashtray on the sill. When he turns around at the slam of the door, he coughs out a startled cloud of smoke.\n\n\"Those things are gonna fucking kill you,\" Alex says. He said the same thing about five hundred times that summer in Denver, but now he means, _I kinda wish they would._\n\n\"Kid\u2014\"\n\n\" _Don't_ call me that.\"\n\nLuna turns, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray, and Alex can see a muscle clenching in his jaw. As handsome as he always is, he looks like shit. \"You shouldn't be here.\"\n\n\"No shit,\" Alex says. \"I just wanted to see if you would have the balls to actually talk to me.\"\n\n\"You do realize you're talking to a United States senator,\" he says placidly.\n\n\"Yeah, big fucking man,\" Alex says. He's advancing on Luna now, kicking a chair out of the way. \"Important fucking job. Hey, how 'bout you tell me how you're serving the people who voted for you by being Jeffrey Richards's chickenshit little sellout?\"\n\n\"What the hell did you come here for, Alex, eh?\" Luna asks him, unmoved. \"You gonna fight me?\"\n\n\"I want you to tell me _why._ \"\n\nHis jaw clenches again. \"You wouldn't understand. You're\u2014\"\n\n\"I swear to God, if you say I'm too young, I'm gonna lose my shit.\"\n\n\"This isn't you losing your shit?\" Luna asks mildly, and the look that crosses Alex's face must be murderous because he immediately puts a hand up. \"Okay, bad timing. Look, I know. I know it seems shitty, but there's\u2014there are moving parts at work here that you can't even imagine. You know I'll always be indebted to your family for what you all have done for me, but\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't give a shit about what you _owe_ us. I _trusted_ you,\" he says. \"Don't condescend to me. You know as much as anyone what I'm capable of, what I've seen. If you told me, I would get it.\"\n\nHe's so close he's practically breathing Luna's reeking cigarette smoke, and when he looks into his face, there's a flicker of recognition at the bloodshot, blackened eyes and the gaunt cheekbones. It reminds him of how Henry looked in the back of the Secret Service car.\n\n\"Does Richards have something on you?\" he asks. \"Is he making you do this?\"\n\nLuna hesitates. \"I'm doing this because it's what needs to be done, Alex. It was my choice. Nobody else's.\"\n\n\"Then tell me why.\"\n\nLuna takes a deep breath and says, \" _No._ \"\n\nAlex imagines his fist in Luna's face and removes himself by two steps, out of range.\n\n\"You remember that night in Denver,\" he says, measured, his voice quavering, \"when we ordered pizza and you showed me pictures of all the kids you fought for in court? And we drank that nice bottle of scotch from the mayor of Boulder? I remember lying on the floor of your office, on the ugly-ass carpet, drunk off my ass, thinking, 'God, I hope I can be like him.' Because you were brave. Because you stood up for things. And I couldn't stop wondering how you had the nerve to get up and do what you do every day with everyone knowing what they know about you.\"\n\nBriefly, Alex thinks he's gotten through to Luna, from the way he closes his eyes and braces himself against the sill. But when he faces Alex again, his stare is hard.\n\n\"People don't know a damn thing about me. They don't know the half of it. And neither do you,\" he says. \"Jesus, Alex, please, don't be like me. Find another fucking role model.\"\n\nAlex, finally at his limit, lifts his chin and spits out, \"I already _am_ like you.\"\n\nIt hangs in the air between them, as physical as the kicked-over chair. Luna blinks. \"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"You know what I'm saying. I think you always knew, before I even did.\"\n\n\"You don't\u2014\" he says, stammering, trying to put it off. \"You're not like me.\"\n\nAlex levels his stare. \"Close enough. And you know what I mean.\"\n\n\"Okay, fine, kid,\" Luna finally snaps, \"you want me to be your fucking sherpa? Here's my advice: Don't tell anyone. Go find a nice girl and marry her. You're luckier than me\u2014you can do that, and it wouldn't even be a lie.\"\n\nAnd what comes out of Alex's mouth, comes so fast he has no chance to stop it, only divert it out of English at the last second in case it's overheard: \"Ser\u00eda una mentira, porque no ser\u00eda \u00e9l.\" It would be a lie, because it wouldn't be _him._\n\nHe knows immediately Raf has caught his meaning, because he takes a sharp step backward, his back hitting the sill again.\n\n\"You can't tell me this shit, Alex!\" he says, clawing inside his jacket until he finds and removes another pack of cigarettes. He shakes one out and fumbles with the lighter. \"What are you even _thinking_? I'm on the opponent's fucking campaign! I can't hear this! How can you possibly think you can be a politician like this?\"\n\n\"Who fucking decided that politics had to be about lying and hiding and being something you're not?\"\n\n\"It's _always_ been that, Alex!\"\n\n\"Since when did _you_ buy into it?\" Alex spits. \"You, me, my family, the people we run with\u2014we were gonna be the honest ones! I have absolutely zero interest in being a politician with some perfect veneer and two-point-five kids. Didn't we decide it was supposed to be about helping people? About the fight? What part of that is so fucking irreconcilable with letting people see who I really am? Who _you_ are, Raf?\"\n\n\"Alex, please. Please. Jesus Christ. You have to leave. I can't know this. You can't tell me this. You have to be more careful than this.\"\n\n\"God,\" Alex says, voice bitter, his hands on his hips. \"You know, it's worse than trust. I _believed_ in you.\"\n\n\"I know you did,\" Luna says. He's not even looking at Alex anymore. \"I wish you hadn't. Now, I need you to get out.\"\n\n\"Raf\u2014\"\n\n\"Alex. Get. Out.\"\n\nHe goes, slamming the door behind him.\n\nBack at the Residence, he tries to call Henry. He doesn't pick up, but he texts: Sorry. Meeting with Philip. Love you.\n\nHe reaches under the bed and gropes in the dark until he finds it: a bottle of Maker's. The emergency stash.\n\n\"Salud,\" he mutters under his breath, and he unscrews the top.\n\n> bad metaphors about maps\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> A <agcd@eclare45.com> 9\/25\/20 3:21 AM\n> \n> to Henry\n> \n> h,\n> \n> i have had whiskey. bear with me.\n> \n> there's this thing you do. this thing. it drives me crazy. i think about it all the time.\n> \n> there's a corner of your mouth, and a place that it goes. pinched and worried like you're afraid you're forgetting something. i used to hate it. used to think it was your little tic of disapproval.\n> \n> but i've kissed your mouth, that corner, that place it goes, so many times now. i've memorized it. topography on the map of you, a world i'm still charting. i know it. i added it to the key. here: inches to miles. i can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude. recite your coordinates like la rosaria.\n> \n> this thing, your mouth, its place. it's what you do when you're trying not to give yourself away. not in the way that you do all the time, those empty, greedy grabs for you. i mean the truth of you. the weird, perfect shape of your heart. the one on the outside of your chest.\n> \n> on the map of you, my fingers can always find the green hills, wales. cool waters and a shore of white chalk. the ancient part of you carved out of stone in a prayerful circle, sacrosanct. your spine's a ridge i'd die climbing.\n> \n> if i could spread it out on my desk, i'd find the corner of your mouth where it pinches with my fingers, and i'd smooth it away and you'd be marked with the names of saints like all the old maps. i get the nomenclature now\u2014saints' names belong to miracles.\n> \n> give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart. there's so much of you.\n> \n> fucking yrs,\n> \n> a\n> \n> p.s. wilfred owen to siegfried sassoon\u20141917:\n> \n> And you have fixed my Life\u2014however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze.\n> \n> Re: Bad metaphors about maps\n> \n> * * *\n> \n> Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 9\/25\/20 6:07 AM\n> \n> to A\n> \n> From Jean Cocteau to Jean Marais, 1939:\n> \n> Thank you from the bottom of my heart for having saved me. I was drowning and you threw yourself into the water without hesitation, without a backward look.\n\n* * *\n\nThe sound of Alex's phone buzzing on his nightstand startles him out of a dead sleep. He falls halfway out of bed, fumbling to answer it.\n\n\"Hello?\"\n\n\" _What did you do?_ \" Zahra's voice nearly shouts. By the clicking of heels in the background and muttered swearing, she's running somewhere.\n\n\"Um,\" Alex says. He rubs his eyes, trying to get his brain back online. What _did_ he do? \"Be more specific?\"\n\n\"Check the fucking news, you horny little miscreant\u2014how could you possibly be _stupid enough to get photographed_? I swear to God\u2014\"\n\nAlex doesn't even hear the last part of what she says, because his stomach has just dropped all the way down through the floor and into the fucking basements two floors below.\n\n\"Fuck.\"\n\nHands shaking, he switches Zahra to speaker, opens up Google, and types his own name.\n\n> BREAKING: Photos Reveal Romantic Relationship Between Prince Henry and Alex Claremont-Diaz\n> \n> OMFG: FSOTUS and Prince Henry\u2014Totally Doing It\n> \n> THE ORAL OFFICE: READ FSOTUS'S STEAMY EMAILS TO PRINCE HENRY\n> \n> Royal Family Declines to Comment on Reports of Prince Henry's Relationship with First Son\n> \n> 25 GIFs That Perfectly Describe Our Reaction When We Heard About Prince Henry & FSOTUS\n> \n> DON'T LET FIRST SON GO DOWN ON ME\n\nA bubble of hysterical laughter emerges from his throat.\n\nHis bedroom door flies open, and Zahra slams on the light, a steely expression of rage barely concealing the sheer terror on her face. Alex's brain flashes to the panic button behind his headboard and wonders if the Secret Service will be able to find him before he bleeds out.\n\n\"You're on communications lockdown,\" she says, and instead of punching him, she snatches his phone out of his hand and shoves it down the front of her blouse, which has been buttoned wrong in her rush. She doesn't even blink at his state of half-nakedness, just dumps an armload of newspapers onto his bedspread.\n\nQUEEN HENRY! twenty copies of the _Daily Mail_ proclaim in gigantic letters. INSIDE THE PRINCE'S GAY AFFAIR WITH THE FIRST SON OF THE UNITED STATES!\n\nThe cover is splashed with a blown-up photo of what is undeniably himself and Henry kissing in the back seat of the car behind the cafe, apparently shot with a long-range lens through the windshield. Tinted windows, but he forgot about the fucking _windshield._\n\nTwo smaller photos are inset on the bottom of the page: one of the shots of them on the Beekman's elevator and a photo of them side by side at Wimbledon, him whispering something in Henry's ear while Henry smiles a soft, private smile.\n\nFucking shitting hell. He is so fucked. Henry is so fucked. And, Jesus Christ, his mother's campaign is fucked, and his political career is fucked, and his ears are ringing, and he's going to throw up.\n\n\" _Fuck,_ \" Alex says again. \"I need my phone. I have to call Henry\u2014\"\n\n\"No, you do fucking not,\" Zahra says. \"We don't know yet how the emails got out, so it's radio silence until we find the leak.\"\n\n\"The\u2014what? Is Henry okay?\" God, Henry. All he can think about is Henry's big blue eyes looking terrified, Henry's breathing coming shallow and quick, locked in his bedroom in Kensington Palace and desperately alone, and his jaw locks up, something burning in the back of his throat.\n\n\"The president is sitting down right now with as many members of the Office of Communications as we could drag out of bed at three in the morning,\" Zahra tells him, ignoring his question. Her phone is buzzing nonstop in her hand. \"It's about to be gay DEFCON five in this administration. For God's sake, put some clothes on.\"\n\nZahra disappears into Alex's closet, and he flips the newspaper open to the story, his heart pounding. There are even more photos inside. He glances over the copy, but there's too much to even begin to process.\n\nOn the second page, he sees them: printed and annotated excerpts of their emails. One is labeled: PRINCE HENRY: SECRET POET? It begins with a line he's read about a thousand times by now.\n\n_Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams..._\n\n_\"Fuck!\"_ he says a third time, spiking the newspaper at the floor. That one was _his._ It feels obscene to see it there. \"How the fuck did they _get these_?\"\n\n\"Yep,\" Zahra agrees. \"You dirty did it.\" She throws a white button-down and a pair of jeans at him, and he pitches himself out of bed. Zahra gamely holds out an arm for him to steady himself while he pulls his pants up, and despite it all, he's struck with overwhelming gratitude for her.\n\n\"Listen, I need to talk to Henry as soon as possible. I can't even imagine\u2014 God, I need to talk to him.\"\n\n\"Get some shoes, we're running,\" Zahra tells him. \"Priority one is damage control, not feelings.\"\n\nHe grabs a pair of sneakers, and they take off while he's still pulling them on, running west. His brain is struggling to keep up, running through about five thousand possible ways this could go, imagining himself ten years down the road being frozen out of Congress, plummeting approval ratings, Henry's name scratched off the line of succession, his mother losing reelection on a swing state's disapproval of him. He's so screwed, and he can't even decide who to be the angriest with, himself or the _Mail_ or the monarchy or the whole stupid country.\n\nHe nearly crashes into Zahra's back as she skids to a stop in front of a door.\n\nHe pushes the door open, and the whole room goes silent.\n\nHis mother stares at him from the head of the table and says flatly, \"Out.\"\n\nAt first he thinks she's talking to him, but she cuts her eyes down to the people around the table with her.\n\n\"Was I not clear? Everyone, out, now,\" she says. \"I need to talk to my son.\"\n\n# THIRTEEN\n\n\"Sit down,\" his mother tells him, and Alex feels dread coil deep in his stomach. He has no clue what to expect\u2014knowing your parent as the person who raised you isn't the same as being able to guess their moves as a world leader.\n\nHe sits, and the silence hovers over them, his mother's hands folded in a considering pose against her lips. She looks exhausted.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" she says finally. When he looks up in surprise, there's no anger in her eyes.\n\nThe president stands on the edge of a career-ending scandal, measures her breaths evenly, and waits for her son to answer.\n\nOh.\n\nIt hits him with sudden clarity that he hasn't at all stopped to consider his own feelings. There simply hasn't been the time. When he reaches for an emotion to name, he finds he can't pin one down, and something shudders inside him and shuts down completely.\n\nHe doesn't often wish away his position in life, but in this moment, he does. He wants to be having this conversation in a different life, just his mother sitting across from him at the dinner table, asking him how he feels about his nice, respectable boyfriend, if he's doing okay with figuring his identity out. Not like this, in a West Wing briefing room, his dirty emails spread out between them on the table.\n\n\"I'm...\" he begins. To his horror, he hears something shake in his voice, which he quickly swallows down. \"I don't know. This isn't how I wanted to tell people. I thought we'd get a chance to do this right.\"\n\nSomething softens and resolves in her face, and he suspects he's answered a question for her beyond the one she asked.\n\nShe reaches over and covers one of his hands with her own.\n\n\"You listen to me,\" she says. Her jaw is set, ironclad. It's the game face he's seen her use to stare down Congress, to cow autocrats. Her grip on his hand is steady and strong. He wonders, half-hysterically, if this is how it felt to charge into war under Washington. \"I am your mother. I was your mother before I was ever the president, and I'll be your mother long after, to the day they put me in the ground and beyond this earth. You are my child. So, if you're serious about this, I'll back your play.\"\n\nAlex is silent.\n\n_But the debates,_ he thinks. _But the general._\n\nHer gaze is hard. He knows better than to say either of those things. She'll handle it.\n\n\"So,\" she says. \"Do you feel forever about him?\"\n\nAnd there's no room left to agonize over it, nothing left to do but say the thing he's known all along.\n\n\"Yeah,\" he says, \"I do.\"\n\nEllen Claremont exhales slowly, and she grins a small, secret grin, the crooked, unflattering one she never uses in public, the one he knows best from when he was a kid around her knees in a small kitchen in Travis County.\n\n\"Then, fuck it.\"\n\n> The Washington Post\n> \n> As details emerge about Alex Claremont-Diaz's affair with Prince Henry, White House goes silent\n> \n> * * *\n\nSeptember 27, 2020\n\n> \"Thinking about history makes me wonder how I'll fit into it one day, I guess,\" First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz writes in one of the many emails to Prince Henry published by the _Daily Mail_ this morning. \"And you too.\"\n> \n> It seems the answer to that question may have come sooner than any anticipated with the sudden exposure of the First Son's romantic relationship with Prince Henry, an arrangement with major repercussions for two of the world's most powerful nations, less than two months before the United States casts its vote on President Claremont's second term.\n> \n> As security experts within the FBI and the Claremont administration scramble to find the sources that provided the British tabloid with evidence of the affair, the usually high-profile First Family has shuttered, with no official statement from the First Son.\n> \n> \"The First Family has always and continues to keep their personal lives separate from the political and diplomatic dealings of the presidency,\" White House Press Secretary Davis Sutherland said in a brief prepared statement this morning. \"They ask for patience and understanding from the American people as they handle this very private matter.\"\n> \n> The _Daily Mail_ 's report this morning revealed that First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz has been involved romantically and sexually with Prince Henry since at least February of this year, according to emails and photographs obtained by the paper.\n> \n> The full email transcripts have been uploaded to WikiLeaks under the moniker \"The Waterloo Letters,\" seemingly named for a reference to the Waterloo Vase in the Buckingham Palace Gardens in one email composed by Prince Henry. The correspondence continues regularly up to Sunday night and appears to have been lifted from a private email server used by residents of the White House.\n> \n> \"Setting aside the ramifications for President Claremont's ability to be impartial on issues of both international relations and traditional family values,\" Republican presidential candidate Senator Jeffrey Richards said at a press conference earlier today, \"I'm extremely concerned about this private email server. What kind of information was being disseminated on this server?\"\n> \n> Richards added that he believes the American voters have a right to know everything else for which President Claremont's server may have been used.\n> \n> Sources close to the Claremont administration insist the private server is similar to the one set up during President George W. Bush's administration and used only for communication within the White House about day-to-day operations and personal correspondence for the First Family and core White House personnel.\n> \n> First rounds of examination of \"The Waterloo Letters\" by experts have yet to reveal any evidence of classified information or otherwise compromising content outside of the nature of the First Son's relationship with Prince Henry.\n\n* * *\n\nFor five endless, unbearable hours, Alex is shuffled from room to room in the West Wing, meeting with what seems to be every strategist, press staffer, and crisis manager his mother's administration has to offer.\n\nThe only moment he recalls with any clarity is pulling his mother into an alcove to say, \"I told Raf.\"\n\nShe stares at him. \"You told Rafael Luna that you're bisexual?\"\n\n\"I told Rafael Luna about Henry,\" he says flatly. \"Two days ago.\"\n\nShe doesn't ask why, just sighs grimly, and they both hover over the implication before she says, \"No. No, those pictures were taken before that. It couldn't have been him.\"\n\nHe runs through pro and con lists, models of different outcomes, fucking charts and graphs and more data than he has ever wanted to see about his own relationship and its ramifications for the world around him. _This is the damage you cause, Alex,_ it all seems to say, right there in hard facts and figures. _This is who you hurt._\n\nHe hates himself, but he doesn't regret anything, and maybe that makes him a bad person and a worse politician, but he doesn't regret Henry.\n\nFor five endless, unbearable hours, he's not allowed to even try to contact Henry. The press sec drafts a statement. It looks like any other memo.\n\nFor five hours, he doesn't shower or change his clothes or laugh or smile or cry. It's eight in the morning when he's finally released and told to stay in the Residence and stand by for further instructions.\n\nHe's handed his phone, at last, but there's no answer when he calls Henry, and no response when he texts. Nothing at all.\n\nAmy walks him through the colonnade and up the stairs, saying nothing, and when they reach the hallway between the East and West Bedrooms, he sees them.\n\nJune, her hair in a haphazard knot on the top of her head and in a pink bathrobe, her eyes red-rimmed. His mom, in a sharp, no-nonsense black dress and pointed heels, jaw set. Leo, barefoot in his pajamas. And his dad, a leather duffel still hanging off one shoulder, looking harried and exhausted.\n\nThey all turn to look at him, and Alex feels a wave of something so much bigger than himself sweep over him, like when he was a child standing bowlegged in the Gulf of Mexico, riptide sucking at his feet. A sound escapes his throat uninvited, something that he barely even recognizes, and June has him first, then the rest of them, arms and arms and hands and hands, pulling him close and touching his face and moving him until he's on the floor, the goddamn terrible hideous antique rug that he hates, sitting on the floor and staring at the rug and the threads of the rug and hearing the Gulf rushing in his ears and thinking distantly that he's having a panic attack, and that's why he can't breathe, but he's just staring at the rug and he's having a panic attack and knowing why his lungs won't work doesn't make them work again.\n\nHe's faintly aware of being shifted into his room, to his bed, which is still covered in the godforsaken fucking _newspapers,_ and someone guides him onto it, and he sits down and tries very, very hard to make a list in his head.\n\nOne.\n\nOne.\n\nOne.\n\n* * *\n\nHe sleeps in fits and starts, wakes up sweating, wakes up shivering. He dreams in short, fractured scenes that swell and fade erratically. He dreams of himself at war, in a muddy trench, love letter soaking red in his chest pocket. He dreams of a house in Travis County, doors locked, unwilling to let him in again. He dreams of a crown.\n\nHe dreams once, briefly, of the lake house, an orange beacon under the moon. He sees himself there, standing in water up to his neck. He sees Henry, sitting naked on the pier. He sees June and Nora, hands clasped together, and Pez on the grass between them, and Bea, digging pink fingertips into the wet soil.\n\nIn the trees next to them, he hears the snap, snap, snap of branches.\n\n\"Look,\" Henry says, pointing up at the stars.\n\nAnd Alex tries to say, _Don't you hear it?_ Tries to say, _Something's coming._ He opens his mouth: a spill of fireflies, and nothing.\n\nWhen he opens his eyes, June is sitting up against the pillows next to him, bitten nails pressed against her bottom lip, still in her bathrobe and keeping watch. She reaches down and squeezes his hand. He squeezes back.\n\n* * *\n\nBetween dreams he catches the sound of muffled voices in the hallway.\n\n\"Nothing,\" Zahra's voice is saying. \"Not a thing. Nobody is taking our calls.\"\n\n\"How can they not be taking our calls? I'm the goddamn president.\"\n\n\"Permission to do a thing, ma'am, slightly outside diplomatic protocol.\"\n\n* * *\n\nA comment: The First Family Has Been Lying To Us, The American People!!1 WHAT ELSE Are They Lying About??!?!\n\nA tweet: I KNEW IT I KNEW ALEX WAS GAY I TOLD YOU BITCHES\n\nA comment: My 12 y\/o daughter has been crying all day. She's dreamt of marrying Prince Henry since she was a little girl. She is heartbroken.\n\nA comment: Are we really supposed to believe that no federal funds were used to cover this up?\n\nA tweet: lmaoooo wait look at page 22 of the emails alex is such a hoe\n\nA tweet: OMFG DID YOU SEE somebody who went to uni with Henry posted some photos of him at a party and he is just like Profoundly Gay in them i'm screaming\n\nA tweet: READ\u2014My column with @WSJ on what the #WaterlooLetters say about the inner workings of the Claremont White House.\n\nMore comments. Slurs. Lies.\n\nJune takes his phone away and shoves it under a couch cushion. He doesn't bother protesting. Henry's not going to call.\n\n* * *\n\nAt one in the afternoon, for the second time in twelve hours, Zahra bursts through his bedroom door.\n\n\"Pack a bag,\" she says. \"We're going to London.\"\n\n* * *\n\nJune helps him stuff a backpack with jeans and a pair of shoes and a broken-in copy of _Prisoner of Azkaban,_ and he stumbles into a clean shirt and out of his room. Zahra is waiting in the hall with her own bag and a freshly pressed suit of Alex's, a sensible navy one that she has apparently decided is appropriate for meeting the queen.\n\nShe's told him very little, except that Buckingham Palace has shut down communication channels in and out, and they're just going to show up and demand a meeting. She seems confident Shaan will agree to it and willing to physically overpower him if not.\n\nThe feeling rolling around in his gut is bizarre. His mom has signed off on them going public with the truth, which is _incredible,_ but there's no reason to expect that from the crown. He could get marching orders to deny everything. He thinks he might grab Henry and run if it comes down to that.\n\nHe's almost completely sure Henry wouldn't go along with pretending it was all fake. He trusts Henry, and he believes in him.\n\nBut they were also supposed to have more time.\n\nThere's a secluded side entrance of the Residence that Alex can sneak out of without being seen, and June and his parents meet him there.\n\n\"I know this is scary,\" his mom says, \"but you can handle it.\"\n\n\"Give 'em hell,\" his dad adds.\n\nJune hugs him, and he shoves on his sunglasses and a hat and jogs out the door and toward whatever way this is all going to end.\n\nCash and Amy are waiting on the plane. Alex wonders briefly if they volunteered for the assignment, but he's trying to get his emotions back under control, and that's not going to help. He bumps his fist against Cash's as he passes, and Amy nods up from the denim jacket she's needling yellow flowers into.\n\nIt's all happened so quickly that now, knees curled up to his chin as they leave the ground, is the first time Alex is able to actually think about everything.\n\nHe's not, he thinks, upset people know. He's always been pretty unapologetic when it came to things like who he dates and what he's into, although those were never anything like this. Still, the cocky shithead part of him is slightly pleased to finally have a claim on Henry. Yep, the prince? Most eligible bachelor in the world? British accent, face like a Greek god, legs for days? _Mine._\n\nBut that's only a tiny, tiny fraction of it. The rest is a knot of fear, anger, violation, humiliation, uncertainty, panic. There are the flaws everyone's allowed to see\u2014his big mouth, his mercurial temper, his searing impulses\u2014and then there's this. It's like how he only wears his glasses when nobody's around: Nobody's supposed to see how much he needs.\n\nHe doesn't care that people think about his body and write about his sex life, real or imagined. He cares that they know, in his own private words, what's pumping out of his heart.\n\nAnd Henry. God, Henry. Those emails\u2014those _letters_ \u2014were the one place Henry could say what he was really thinking. There's nothing that wasn't laid out in there: Henry being gay, Bea going to rehab, the queen tacitly keeping Henry in the closet. Alex hasn't been a good Catholic in a long time, but he knows confession is a sacrament. They were supposed to stay safe.\n\nFuck.\n\nHe can't sit still. He tosses _Prisoner of Azkaban_ aside after four pages. He encounters a think piece on his own relationship on Twitter and has to shut down the whole app. He paces up and down the aisle of the jet, kicking at the bottoms of the seats.\n\n\"Can you _please_ sit down?\" Zahra says after twenty minutes of watching him twitch around the cabin. \"You're giving my ulcer an ulcer.\"\n\n\"Are you sure they're gonna let us in when we get there?\" Alex asks her. \"Like, what if they don't? What if they, like, call the Royal Guard on us and have us arrested? Can they do that? Amy could probably fight them. Will she get arrested if she tries to fight them?\"\n\n\"For fuck's sake,\" Zahra groans, and she pulls out her phone and starts dialing.\n\n\"Who are you calling?\"\n\nShe sighs, holding the phone up to her ear as it rings. \"Srivastava.\"\n\n\"What makes you think he'll answer?\"\n\n\"It's his personal line.\"\n\nAlex stares at her. \"You have his personal line and you haven't used it until now?\"\n\n\" _Shaan,_ \" Zahra snaps. \"Listen up, you fuck. We are in the air right now. FSOTUS is with me. ETA six hours. You will have a car waiting. We will meet the queen and whoever the fuck else we have to meet to hash this shit out, or so help me God I will personally make your balls into fucking earrings. I will scorched-earth your entire motherfucking life.\" She pauses, presumably to listen to him agree because Alex can't imagine him doing anything else. \"Now, put Henry on the phone, and do _not_ try to tell me he's not there, because I know you haven't let him out of your sight.\"\n\nAnd she shoves her phone at Alex's face.\n\nHe takes it uncertainly and lifts it to his ear. There's rustling, a confused noise.\n\n\"Hello?\"\n\nIt's Henry's voice, sweet and posh and shaky and confused, and relief knocks the wind out of him.\n\n_\"Sweetheart.\"_\n\nHe hears Henry's exhale over the line. \"Hi, love. Are you okay?\"\n\nHe laughs wetly, amazed. \"Fuck, are you kidding me? I'm fine, I'm fine, are _you_ okay?\"\n\n\"I'm... managing.\"\n\nAlex winces. \"How bad is it?\"\n\n\"Philip broke a vase that belonged to Anne Boleyn, Gran ordered a communications lockdown, and Mum hasn't spoken to anyone,\" Henry tells him. \"But, er, other than that. All things considered. It's, er.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Alex says. \"I'll be there soon.\"\n\nThere's another pause, Henry's breath shaky over the receiver. \"I'm not sorry,\" he says. \"That people know.\"\n\nAlex feels his heart climb up into his throat.\n\n\"Henry,\" he attempts, \"I...\"\n\n\"Maybe\u2014\"\n\n\"I talked to my mom\u2014\"\n\n\"I know the timing isn't ideal\u2014\"\n\n\"Would you\u2014\"\n\n\"I want\u2014\"\n\n\"Hang on,\" Alex says. \"Are we. Um. Are we both asking the same thing?\"\n\n\"That depends. Were you going to ask me if I want to tell the truth?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Alex says, and he thinks his knuckles must be white around the phone. \"Yeah, I was.\"\n\n\"Then, yes.\"\n\nA breath, barely. \"You want that?\"\n\nHenry takes a moment to respond, but his voice is level. \"I don't know if I would have chosen it yet, but it's out there now, and... I won't lie. Not about this. Not about you.\"\n\nAlex's eyelashes are wet.\n\n\"I fucking love you.\"\n\n\"I love you too.\"\n\n\"Just hold on until I get there; we're gonna figure this out.\"\n\n\"I will.\"\n\n\"I'm coming. I'll be there soon.\"\n\nHenry exhales a wet, broken laugh. \"Please, do hurry.\"\n\nThey hang up, and he passes the phone back to Zahra, who takes it wordlessly and tucks it back into her bag.\n\n\"Thank you, Zahra, I\u2014\"\n\nShe holds up one hand, eyes closed. \"Don't.\"\n\n\"Seriously, you didn't have to do that.\"\n\n\"Look, I'm only going to say this once, and if you ever repeat it, I'll have you kneecapped.\" She drops her hand, fixing him with a glare that manages to be both chilly and fond. \"I'm rooting for you, okay?\"\n\n\"Wait. Zahra. Oh my God. I just realized. You're... my friend.\"\n\n\"No, I'm not.\"\n\n\"Zahra, you're my _mean friend._ \"\n\n\"Am not.\" She yanks a blanket from her pile of belongings, turning her back to Alex and wrapping it around her. \"Don't speak to me for the next six hours. I deserve a fucking nap.\"\n\n\"Wait, wait, okay, wait,\" Alex says. \"I have one question.\"\n\nShe sighs heavily. \"What?\"\n\n\"Why'd you wait to use Shaan's personal number?\"\n\n\"Because he's my fianc\u00e9, asshole, but _some_ of us understand the meaning of discretion, so you wouldn't know about it,\" she tells him without even so much as looking at him, curled up against the window of the plane. \"We agreed we'd never use our personal numbers for work contact. Now shut up and let me get some sleep before we have to deal with the rest of this. I'm running on nothing but black coffee, a Wetzel's Pretzel, and a fistful of B12. Do not even breathe in my direction.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIt's not Henry but Bea who answers when Alex knocks on the closed door of the music room on the second floor of Kensington.\n\n\"I _told_ you to stay away\u2014\" Bea is saying as soon as the door is open, brandishing a guitar over her shoulder. She drops it as soon as she sees him. \"Oh, Alex, I'm so sorry, I thought you were Philip.\" She scoops him up with her free hand into a surprisingly bone-crushing hug. \"Thank God you're here, I was about to come get you myself.\"\n\nWhen she releases him, he's finally able to see Henry behind her, slumped on the settee with a bottle of brandy. He smiles at Alex, weakly, and says, \"Bit short for a stormtrooper.\"\n\nAlex's laugh comes out half sob, and it's impossible to know if he moves first or if Henry does, but they meet in the middle of the room, Henry's arms around Alex's neck, swallowing him up. If Henry's voice on the phone was a tether, his body is the gravity that makes it possible, his hand gripping the back of Alex's neck a magnetic force, a permanent compass north.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" is what comes out of Alex's mouth, miserably, earnestly, muffled against Henry's throat. \"It's my fault. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.\"\n\nHenry releases him, hands on his shoulders, jaw set. \"Don't you dare. I'm not sorry for a thing.\"\n\nAlex laughs again, incredulous, looking into the heavy circles under Henry's eyes and the chewed-up bottom lip and, for the first time, seeing a man born to lead a nation.\n\n\"You're unbelievable,\" Alex says. He leans up and kisses the underside of his jaw, finding it rough from a full, fitful day without a shave. He pushes his nose, his cheek into it, feels some of the tension sap out of Henry at the touch. \"You know that?\"\n\nThey find their way onto the lush purples and reds of the Persian rugs on the floor, Henry's head in Alex's lap and Bea on a pouf, plucking away at a weird little instrument she tells Alex is called an autoharp. Bea pulls over a tiny table and sets out crackers and a little chunk of soft cheese and takes away the brandy bottle.\n\nFrom the sound of it, the queen is absolutely livid\u2014not just to finally have confirmation about Henry, but because it's via something as undignified as a tabloid scandal. Philip drove in from Anmer Hall the minute the news broke and has been rebuffed by Bea every time he tries to get near Henry for what he says \"will simply be a stern discussion about the consequences of his actions.\" Catherine has been by, once, three hours ago, stone-faced and sad, to tell Henry that she loves him and he could have told her sooner.\n\n\"And I said, 'That's great, Mum, but as long as you're letting Gran keep me trapped, it doesn't mean a fucking thing,'\" Henry says. Alex stares down at him, shocked and a little impressed. Henry rests an arm over his face. \"I feel awful. I was\u2014I dunno. All the times she should have been there the past few years, it caught up to me.\"\n\nBea sighs. \"Maybe it was the kick in the arse she needs. We've been trying to get her to do _anything_ for years since Dad.\"\n\n\"Still,\" Henry says. \"The way Gran is\u2014Mum isn't to blame for that. And she did manage to protect us, before. It's not fair.\"\n\n\"H,\" Bea says firmly. \"It's hard, but she needed to hear it.\" She looks down at the little buttons of the autoharp. \"We deserve to have one parent, at least.\"\n\nThe corner of her mouth pinches, so much like Henry's.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" Alex asks her. \"I know I\u2014I saw a couple articles...\" He doesn't finish the sentence. \"The Powder Princess\" was the fourth-highest Twitter trend ten hours ago.\n\nHer frown twitches into a half-smile. \"Me? Honestly, it's almost a relief. I've always said that the most comfortable I could be is everyone knowing my story upfront, so I don't have hear the speculations or lie to cover the truth\u2014or explain it. I'd rather it, you know, hadn't been this way. But here we are. At least now I can stop acting as if it's something to be ashamed of.\"\n\n\"I know the feeling,\" Henry says softly.\n\nThe quiet ebbs and flows after a while, the London night black and pressing in against the windowpanes. David the beagle curls up protectively at Henry's side, and Bea picks a Bowie song to play. She sings under her breath, \"I, I will be king, and you, you will be queen,\" and Alex almost laughs. It feels like how Zahra has described hurricane days to him: stuck together, hoping the sandbags will hold.\n\nHenry drifts asleep at some point, and Alex is thankful for it, but he can still feel tension in every part of Henry's body against him.\n\n\"He hasn't slept since the news,\" Bea tells him quietly.\n\nAlex nods slightly, searching her face. \"Can I ask you something?\"\n\n\"Always.\"\n\n\"I feel like he's not telling me something,\" Alex whispers. \"I believe him when he says he's in, and he wants to tell everyone the truth. But there's something else he's not saying, and it's freaking me out that I can't figure out what it is.\"\n\nBea looks up, her fingers stilling. \"Oh, love,\" she says simply. \"He misses Dad.\"\n\n_Oh._\n\nHe sighs, putting his head in his hands. Of course.\n\n\"Can you explain?\" he attempts lamely. \"What that's like? What I can do?\"\n\nShe shifts on her pouf, repositioning the harp onto the floor, and reaches into her sweater. She withdraws a silver coin on a chain: her sobriety chip.\n\n\"D'you mind if I go a bit sponsor?\" she asks with a smirk. He offers her a weak half smile, and she continues.\n\n\"So, imagine we're all born with a set of feelings. Some are broader or deeper than others, but for everyone, there's that ground floor, a bottom crust of the pie. That's the maximum depth of feeling you've ever experienced. And then, the worst thing happens to you. The very worst thing that could have happened. The thing you had nightmares about as a child, and you thought, it's all right because that thing will happen to me when I'm older and wiser, and I'll have felt so many feelings by then that this one worst feeling, the worst possible feeling, won't seem so terrible.\n\n\"But it happens to you when you're young. It happens when your brain isn't even fully done cooking\u2014when you've barely experienced anything, really. The worst thing is one of the first big things that ever happens to you in your life. It happens to you, and it goes all the way down to the bottom of what you know how to feel, and it rips it open and carves out this chasm down below to make room. And because you were so young, and because it was one of the first big things to happen in your life, you'll always carry it inside you. Every time something terrible happens to you from then on, it doesn't just stop at the bottom\u2014it goes all the way down.\"\n\nShe reaches across the tiny tea table and the sad little pile of water crackers and touches the back of Alex's hand.\n\n\"Do you understand?\" she asks him, looking right into his eyes. \"You need to understand this to be with Henry. He is the most loving, nurturing, selfless person you could hope to meet, but there is a sadness and a hurt in him that is tremendous, and you may very well never truly understand it, but you need to love it as much as you love the rest of him, because that's him. That is him, part and parcel. And he is prepared to give it all to you, which is far more than I ever, in a thousand years, thought I would see him do.\"\n\nAlex sits, trying for a long moment to absorb it, and says, \"I've never... I haven't been through anything like that,\" he says, voice rough. \"But I've always felt it, in him. There's this side of him that's... unknowable.\" He takes a breath. \"But the thing is, jumping off cliffs is kinda my thing. That's the choice. I love him, with all that, _because_ of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.\"\n\nBea smiles gently. \"Then you'll do fine.\"\n\nSometime around four in the morning, he climbs into bed behind Henry, Henry whose spine pokes out in soft points, Henry who has been through the worst thing and now the next worst thing and is still alive. He reaches out a hand and touches the ridge of Henry's shoulder blade, the skin where the sheet has slid off him, where his lungs stubbornly refuse to stop pulling air. Six feet of boy curled around kicked-in ribs and a recalcitrant heart.\n\nCarefully, his chest to Henry's back, he slots himself into place.\n\n* * *\n\n\"It's foolishness, Henry,\" Philip is saying. \"You're too young to understand.\"\n\nAlex's ears are ringing.\n\nThey sat down in Henry's kitchen this morning with scones and a note from Bea that she'd gone to meet with Catherine. And then suddenly, Philip was bursting through the door, suit askew, hair uncombed, shouting at Henry about the nerve to break the communications embargo, to bring Alex here while the palace is being watched, to keep embarrassing the family.\n\nPresently, Alex is thinking about breaking his nose with the coffee percolator.\n\n\"I'm _twenty-three,_ Philip,\" Henry says, audibly struggling to keep his voice even. \"Mum was barely more than that when she met Dad.\"\n\n\"Yes, and you think that was a _wise_ decision?\" Philip says nastily. \"Marrying a man who spent half our childhoods making films, who never served his country, who got sick and _left_ us and Mum\u2014\"\n\n\" _Don't,_ Philip,\" Henry says. \"I swear to God. Just because your obsession with family legacy didn't impress _him_ \u2014\"\n\n\"You clearly don't know the first fucking thing about what a legacy means if you can let something like this happen,\" Philip snaps. \"The only thing to do now is bury it and hope that somehow people will believe that none of it was real. That's your duty, Henry. It's the _least_ you can do.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Henry says, sounding wretched, but there's a bitter defiance rising in him too. \"I'm sorry that I'm such a _disgrace_ for being the way I am.\"\n\n\"I don't care if you're _gay,_ \" Philip says, dropping that big fat _if_ like Henry hasn't already specifically _told_ him. \"I care that you've made this choice, with _him_ \"\u2014he cuts his eyes sharply to Alex as if he finally exists in the same room as this conversation\u2014\"someone with a fucking target on his back, to be so stupid and naive and _selfish_ as to think it wouldn't completely fuck us all.\"\n\n\"I knew, Philip. Christ,\" Henry says. \"I knew it could ruin everything. I was _terrified_ of exactly this. But how could I have predicted? How?\"\n\n\"As I said, _naive,_ \" Philip tells him. \"This is the life we live, Henry. You've always known it. I've tried to tell you. I wanted to be a good brother to you, but you don't bloody _listen._ It's time to remember your place in this family. Be a man. Stand up and take responsibility. _Fix this._ For once in your life, don't be a coward.\"\n\nHenry flinches like he's been physically slapped. Alex can see it now\u2014this is how he was broken down over the years. Maybe not always as explicitly, but always there, always implied. _Remember your place._\n\nAnd he does the thing Alex loves so much: He sticks his chin out, steeling himself up. \"I'm not a coward,\" he says. \"And I don't want to fix it.\"\n\nPhilip slants a harsh, humorless laugh at him. \"You don't know what you're talking about. You can't possibly know.\"\n\n\"Fuck off, Philip, I love him,\" Henry says.\n\n\"Oh, you _love him,_ do you?\" It's so patronizing that Alex's hand twitches into a fist under the table. \"What exactly do you intend to do, then, Henry? Hmm? _Marry him?_ Make him the Duchess of Cambridge? The First Son of the United bloody States, fourth in line to be Queen of England?\"\n\n\"I'll fucking abdicate!\" Henry says, voice rising. \"I don't care!\"\n\n\"You wouldn't _dare,_ \" Philip spits back.\n\n\"We have a great uncle who abdicated because he was a _fucking Nazi,_ so it'd hardly be the worst reason anyone's done it, would it?\" Henry's yelling now, and he's out of his chair, hands shaking, towering over Philip, and Alex notices that he's actually taller. \"What are we even _defending_ here, Philip? What kind of legacy? What kind of _family,_ that says, we'll take the murder, we'll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we'll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you're a bloody poof? That's beyond our sense of decorum! I've bloody well _had it._ I've sat about long enough letting you and Gran and the weight of the damned world keep me pinned, and I'm finished. _I don't care._ You can take your legacy and your decorum and you can _shove it up your fucking arse,_ Philip. I'm _done._ \"\n\nHe huffs out an almighty breath, turns on his heel, and stalks out of the kitchen.\n\nAlex, mouth hanging open, remains frozen in his seat for a few seconds. Across from him, Philip is looking red-faced and queasy. Alex clears his throat, stands, and buttons his jacket.\n\n\"For what it's worth,\" he says to Philip, \"that is the bravest son of a bitch I've ever met.\"\n\nAnd he leaves too.\n\n* * *\n\nShaan looks like he hasn't slept in thirty-six hours. Well, he looks perfectly composed and groomed, but the tag is sticking out of his sweater and the strong smell of whiskey is emanating from his tea.\n\nNext to him, in the back of the incognito van they're taking to Buckingham Palace, Zahra has her arms folded resolutely. The engagement ring on her left hand glints in the muted London morning.\n\n\"So, uh,\" Alex attempts. \"Are you two in a fight now?\"\n\nZahra looks at him. \"No. Why would you think that?\"\n\n\"Oh. I just thought because\u2014\"\n\n\"It's fine,\" Shaan says, still typing on his iPhone. \"This is why we set rules about the personal-slash-professional lines at the outset of the relationship. It works for us.\"\n\n\"If you want a fight, you should have seen it when I found out he had known about you two all along,\" Zahra says. \"Why do you think I got a rock this big?\"\n\n\"It _usually_ works for us,\" Shaan amends.\n\n\"Yep,\" Zahra agrees. \"Plus, we banged it out last night.\"\n\nWithout looking up, Shaan meets her hand in a high five.\n\nShaan and Zahra's forces combined have managed to secure them a meeting with the queen at Buckingham Palace, but they've been told to take a winding, circumspect route to avoid the paparazzi. Alex can feel a buzzing static electricity in London this morning, millions of voices murmuring about him and Henry and what might happen next. But Henry's beside him, holding his hand, and he's holding Henry's hand back, so at least that's something.\n\nThere's a small, older woman with Bea's upturned nose and Henry's blue eyes waiting outside the conference room when they approach it. She's wearing thick glasses, a worn-in maroon sweater, and a pair of cuffed jeans, looking decidedly out of place in the halls of Buckingham Palace. She has a paperback tucked into her back pocket.\n\nHenry's mother turns to face them, and Alex watches her expression flutter through something pained to reserved to gentle when she lays eyes on them.\n\n\"Hi, my baby,\" she says as Henry draws up even with her.\n\nHenry's jaw is tight, but it's not anger, only fear. Alex can see on his face an expression he recognizes: Henry wondering if it's safe to accept the love offered to him, and wanting desperately to take it regardless. He puts his arm around her, lets her kiss his cheek.\n\n\"Mum, this is Alex,\" Henry says, and adds, as if it's not obvious, \"my boyfriend.\"\n\nShe turns to Alex, and he's honestly not sure what to expect, but she pulls him toward her and kisses his cheek too.\n\n\"My Bea has told me what you've done for my son,\" she says, her gaze piercing. \"Thank you.\"\n\nBea is behind her, looking tired but focused, and Alex can only imagine the come-to-Jesus talk she must have given her mother before they got to the palace. She locks eyes with Zahra as their little party assembles in the hall, and Alex feels like they couldn't possibly be in more capable hands. He wonders if Catherine is up to joining the ranks.\n\n\"What are you going to say to her?\" Henry asks his mother.\n\nShe sighs, touching the edge of her glasses. \"Well, the old bird isn't much moved by emotion, so I suppose I'll try to appeal to her with political strategy.\"\n\nHenry blinks. \"Sorry\u2014what are you saying?\"\n\n\"I'm saying that I've come to fight,\" she says, straightforward and plain. \"You want to tell the truth, don't you?\"\n\n\"I\u2014yeah, Mum.\" A light of hope has switched on behind his eyes. \"Yes, I do.\"\n\n\"Then we can try.\"\n\nThey take their seats around the long, ornately carved table in the meeting room, awaiting the queen's arrival in nervous silence. Philip is there, looking like he's about to chew through his tongue, and Henry can't stop fidgeting with his tie.\n\nQueen Mary glides in wearing slate-gray separates and a stony expression, her gray bob arranged with razor precision around the edges of her face. Alex is struck by how tall she is, straight-backed and fine-jawed even in her early eighties. She's not exactly beautiful, but there's a definite story in her shrewd blue eyes and angular features, the heavy creases of frowns around her mouth.\n\nThe temperature in the room drops as she takes her seat at the head of the table. A royal attendant fetches the teapot from the center of the table and pours into the pristine china, and the quiet hangs as she fixes her tea at a glacial pace, making them wait. The milk, poured with one gently tremoring, ancient hand. One cube of sugar, picked up with deliberate care with the tiny silver tongs. A second cube.\n\nAlex coughs. Shaan shoots him a look. Bea presses her lips together.\n\n\"I had a visit earlier this year,\" the queen says at last. She takes up her teaspoon and begins to stir slowly. \"The President of China. You'll forgive me if the name escapes me. But he told me the most fascinating story about how technology has advanced in different parts of the world for these modern times. Did you know, one can manipulate a photograph to make it appear as if the most outlandish things are real? Just a simple... program, is it? A computer. And any manner of unbelievable falsehood could be made actual. One's eyes could hardly detect a difference.\"\n\nThe silence in the room is total, except for the sound of the queen's teaspoon scraping circular motions in the bottom of her teacup.\n\n\"I'm afraid I am too old to understand how things are filed away in space,\" she goes on, \"but I have been told any number of lies can be manufactured and disseminated. One could... create files that never existed and plant them somewhere easy to find. None of it real. The most flagrant of evidence can be discredited and dismissed, just like that.\"\n\nWith the delicate tinkling of silver on porcelain, she rests her spoon on the saucer and finally looks at Henry.\n\n\"I wonder, Henry. I wonder if you think any of this had to do with these unseemly reports.\"\n\nIt's right on the table between them: an offer. Keep ignoring it. Pretend it was a lie. Make it all go away.\n\nHenry grits his teeth.\n\n\"It's real,\" he says. \"All of it.\"\n\nThe queen's face moves through a series of expressions, settling on a terse frown, as if she's found something unsightly on the bottom of one of her kitten heels.\n\n\"Very well. In that case.\" Her gaze shifts to Alex. \"Alexander. Had I known you were involved with my grandson, I would have insisted upon a more formal first meeting.\"\n\n\"Gran\u2014\"\n\n\"Do be quiet, Henry, dear.\"\n\nCatherine speaks up, then. \"Mum\u2014\"\n\nThe queen holds up one wizened hand to silence her. \"I thought we had been humiliated enough in the papers when Beatrice had her little _problem._ And I made myself clear, Henry, years ago, that if you were drawn in _unnatural_ directions, appropriate measures could be taken. Why you have chosen to undermine the hard work I've done to maintain the crown's standing is beyond me, and why you seem set on disrupting my efforts to restore it by demanding I summit with some... _boy_ \"\u2014here, a nasty lilt to her polite tone, under which Alex can hear epithets for everything from his race to his sexuality\u2014\"when you were told to await orders, is truly a mystery. Clearly you have taken leave of your senses. My position is unchanged, dear: Your role in this family is to perpetuate our bloodline and maintain the appearance of the monarchy as the ideal of British excellence, and I simply cannot allow anything less.\"\n\nHenry is looking down, eyes distant and cast toward the grain of the table, and Alex can practically feel the energy roiling up from Catherine across from him. An answer to the fury tight in his own chest. The princess who ran away with James Bond, who told her children to give back what their country stole, making a choice.\n\n\"Mum,\" she says evenly. \"Don't you think we ought to at least have a conversation about other options?\"\n\nThe queen's head turns slowly. \"And what options might those be, Catherine?\"\n\n\"Well, I think there's something to be said for coming clean. It could save us a great deal of face to treat it not as a scandal, but as an intrusion upon the privacy of the family and the victimization of a young man in love.\"\n\n\"Which is what it was,\" Bea chimes in.\n\n\"We could integrate this into our narrative,\" Catherine says, choosing her words with extreme precision. \"Reclaim the dignity of it. Make Alex an official suitor.\"\n\n\"I see. So your plan is to allow him to choose this life?\"\n\nHere, a slight tell. \"It's the only life for him that's honest, Mum.\"\n\nThe queen purses her lips. \"Henry,\" she says, returning to him, \"wouldn't you have a more pleasant go of it without all these unnecessary complications? You know we have the resources to find a wife for you and compensate her handsomely. You understand, I'm only trying to protect you. I know it seems important to you in this moment, but you really must think of the future. You do realize this would mean years of reporters hounding you, all sorts of allegations? I can't imagine people would be as eager to welcome you into children's hospitals\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop it!\" Henry bursts out. All the eyes in the room swivel to him, and he looks pale and shocked at the sound of his own voice, but he goes on. \"You can't\u2014you can't intimidate me into submission forever!\"\n\nAlex's hand gropes across the space between them under the table, and the moment his fingertips catch on the back of Henry's wrist, Henry's hand is gripping his, hard.\n\n\"I know it will be difficult,\" Henry says. \"I... It's terrifying. And if you'd asked me a year ago, I probably would have said it was fine, that nobody needs to know. But... I'm as much a person and a part of this family as you. I deserve to be happy as much as any of you do. And I don't think I ever will be if I have to spend my whole life pretending.\"\n\n\"Nobody's saying you don't deserve to be happy,\" Philip cuts in. \"First love makes everyone mad\u2014it's foolish to throw away your future because of one hormonal decision based on less than a year of your life when you were barely in your twenties.\"\n\nHenry looks Philip square in the face and says, \"I've been gay as a maypole since the day I came out of Mum, Philip.\"\n\nIn the silence that follows, Alex has to bite down very hard on his tongue to suppress the urge to laugh hysterically.\n\n\"Well,\" the queen eventually says. She's holding her teacup daintily in the air, eyeing Henry over it. \"Even if you're willing to submit to the flogging in the papers, it doesn't erase the stipulations of your birthright: You are to produce heirs.\"\n\nAnd Alex apparently hasn't been biting his tongue hard enough, because he blurts out, \"We could still do that.\"\n\nEven Henry's head whips around at that.\n\n\"I don't recall giving you permission to speak in my presence,\" Queen Mary says.\n\n_\"Mum\u2014\"_\n\n\"That raises the issue of surrogates, or donors,\" Philip jumps back in, \"and rights to the throne\u2014\"\n\n\"Are those details pertinent right now, Philip?\" Catherine interrupts.\n\n\" _Someone_ has to bear the stewardship for the royal legacy, Mum.\"\n\n\"I don't care for _that_ tone at all.\"\n\n\"We can entertain hypotheticals, but the fact of the matter is that anything but maintaining the royal image is out of the question,\" the queen says, setting down her teacup. \"The country simply will not accept a prince of his proclivities. I am sorry, dear, but to them, it's perverse.\"\n\n\"Perverse to them or perverse to you?\" Catherine asks her.\n\n\"That isn't fair\u2014\" Philip says.\n\n\"It's _my_ life\u2014\" Henry interjects.\n\n\"We haven't even gotten a chance yet to see how people will react.\"\n\n\"I have been serving this country for forty-seven years, Catherine. I believe I know its heart by now. As I have told you since you were a little girl, you must remove your head from the clouds\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, will you all shut up for a second?\" Bea says. She's standing now, brandishing Shaan's tablet in one hand. \"Look.\"\n\nShe thunks it down on the table so Queen Mary and Philip can see it, and the rest of them stand to look too.\n\nIt's a news report from the BBC, and the sound is off, but Alex reads the scroll at the bottom of the screen: WORLDWIDE SUPPORT POURS IN FOR PRINCE HENRY AND FIRST SON OF US.\n\nThe room falls silent at the images on the screen. A rally in New York outside the Beekman, decked out in rainbows, with waving signs that say things like: FIRST SON OF OUR HEARTS. A banner on the side of a bridge in Paris that reads: HENRY + ALEX WERE HERE. A hasty mural on a wall in Mexico City of Alex's face in blue, purple, and pink, a crown on his head. A herd of people in Hyde Park with rainbow Union Jacks and Henry's face ripped out of magazines and pasted onto poster boards reading: FREE HENRY. A young woman with a buzz cut throwing two fingers up at the windows of the _Daily Mail._ A crowd of teenagers in front of the White House, wearing homemade T-shirts that all say the same thing in crooked Sharpie letters, a phrase he recognizes from one of his own emails: HISTORY, HUH?\n\nAlex tries to swallow, but he can't. He looks up, and Henry is looking back at him, mouth open, eyes wet.\n\nPrincess Catherine turns and crosses the room slowly, toward the tall windows on the east side of the room.\n\n\"Catherine, don't\u2014\" the queen says, but Catherine grabs the heavy curtains with both hands and throws them open.\n\nA burst of sunlight and color pushes the air out of the room. Down on the mall in front of Buckingham Palace, there's a mass of people with banners, signs, American flags, Union Jacks, pride pennants streaming over their heads. It's not as big as the royal wedding crowd, but it's huge, filling up the pavement and pressed up to the gates. Alex and Henry were told to come in through the back of the palace\u2014they never saw it.\n\nHenry has carefully approached the window, and Alex watches from across the room as he reaches out and grazes his fingertips against the glass.\n\nCatherine turns to him and says on a shaky sigh, \"Oh, my love,\" and pulls him into her chest somehow, even though he's nearly a foot taller. Alex has to look away\u2014even after everything, this feels too private for him to witness.\n\nThe queen clears her throat.\n\n\"This is... hardly representative of how the country as a whole will respond,\" she says.\n\n\"Jesus _Christ,_ Mum,\" Catherine says, releasing Henry and nudging him behind her on protective reflex.\n\n\"This is precisely why I didn't want you to see. You're too softhearted to accept the truth, Catherine, given any other option. The majority of this country still wants the ways of old.\"\n\nCatherine draws herself up, her posture ramrod straight as she approaches the table again. It's a product of royal breeding, but it comes off more like a bow being drawn. \"Of course they do, Mum. Of course the bloody Tories in Kensington and the Brexit fools don't want it. That's not the _point._ Are you so determined to believe nothing could change? That nothing _should_ change? We can have a real legacy here, of hope, and love, and _change._ Not the same tepid shite and drudgery we've been selling since World War II\u2014\"\n\n\"You will not speak to me this way,\" Queen Mary says icily, one tremulous, ancient hand still resting on her teaspoon.\n\n\"I'm sixty years old, Mum,\" Catherine says. \"Can't we eschew decorum at this point?\"\n\n\"No respect. Never an ounce of respect for the _sanctity_ \u2014\"\n\n\"Or, perhaps I should bring some of my concerns to Parliament?\" Catherine says, leaning in to lower her voice right in Queen Mary's face. Alex recognizes the glint in her eyes. He never knew\u2014he always assumed Henry got it from his dad. \"You know, I do think Labour is rather finished with the old guard. I wonder, if I were to mention those meetings you keep forgetting about, or the names of countries you can't quite keep straight, if they might decide that forty-seven is perhaps enough years for the people of Britain to expect you to serve?\"\n\nThe tremor in the queen's hand has doubled, but her jaw is steely. The room is deadly silent. \"You wouldn't dare.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't I, Mum? Would you like to find out?\"\n\nCatherine turns to face Henry, and Alex is surprised to see tears on her face.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Henry,\" she says. \"I've failed you. I've failed all of you. You needed your mum, and I wasn't there. And I was so frightened that I started to think maybe it was for the best, to let you all be kept behind glass.\" She turns back to her mother. \"Look at them, Mum. They're not props of a legacy. They're my _children._ And I swear on my life, and _Arthur's,_ I will take you off the throne before I will let them feel the things you made me feel.\"\n\nThe room hangs in suspense for a few agonizing seconds, then:\n\n\"I still don't think\u2014\" Philip begins, but Bea seizes the pot of tea from the center of the table and dumps it into his lap.\n\n\"Oh, I'm _terribly_ sorry, Pip!\" she says, grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him, sputtering and yelping, toward the door. \"So _dreadfully_ clumsy. You know, I think all that _cocaine_ I did must have really done a job on my reflexes! Let's go get you cleaned up, shall we?\"\n\nShe heaves him out, throwing Henry a thumbs-up over her shoulder, and shuts the door behind them.\n\nThe queen looks over at Alex and Henry, and Alex sees it in her eyes at last: She's afraid of them. She's afraid of the threat they pose to the perfect Faberge veneer she's spent her whole life maintaining. They _terrify_ her.\n\nAnd Catherine isn't backing down.\n\n\"Well,\" Queen Mary says. \"I suppose. I suppose you don't leave me much choice, do you?\"\n\n\"Oh, you have a choice, Mum,\" Catherine says. \"You've always had a choice. Perhaps today you'll make the right one.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIn the corridor of Buckingham Palace, as soon as the door has shut behind them, they fall sideways into a tapestry on a wall, breathless and delirious and laughing, cheeks wet. Henry pulls Alex close and kisses him, whispers, \"I love you I love you I love you,\" and it doesn't matter, it _doesn't matter_ if anyone sees.\n\n* * *\n\nHe's on the way back to the airstrip when he sees it, emblazoned on the side of a brick building, a shock of color against a gray street.\n\n\"Wait!\" Alex yells up to the driver. \"Stop! Stop the car!\"\n\nUp close, it's beautiful. Two stories tall. He can't imagine how somebody was able to put together something like this so fast.\n\nIt's a mural of himself and Henry, facing each other, haloed by a bright yellow sun, depicted as Han and Leia. Henry in all white, starlight in his hair. Alex dressed as a scruffy smuggler, a blaster at his hip. A royal and a rebel, arms around each other.\n\nHe snaps a photo on his phone, and fingers shaking, types out a tweet: _Never tell me the odds._\n\n* * *\n\nHe calls June from the air over the Atlantic.\n\n\"I need your help,\" he says.\n\nHe hears the click of her pen cocking on the other end of the line. \"Whatcha got?\"\n\n# FOURTEEN\n\n> Jezebel   @Jezebel\n> \n> WATCH: DC Dykes on Bikes chase protesters from Westboro Baptist Church down Pennsylvania Avenue, and yes, it's as amazing as it sounds. bit.ly\/2ySPeRj\n> \n> 9:15 PM \u00b7 29 Sept 2020\n\n* * *\n\nThe very first time Alex pulled up to Pennsylvania Avenue as the First Son of the United States, he almost fell into a bush.\n\nHe can remember it vividly, even though the whole day was surreal. He remembers the interior of the limo, how he was still unused to the way the leather felt under his clammy palms, still green and jittery and pressed too close to the window to look at all the crowds.\n\nHe remembers his mother, her long hair pulled back from her face in an elegant, no-nonsense twist at the back of her head. She'd worn it down for her first day as mayor, her first day in the House, her first day as Speaker, but that day it was up. She said she didn't want any distractions. He thought it made her look tough, like she was ready for a brawl if it came down to it, as if she might have a razor in her shoe. She sat there across from him, going over the notes for her speech, a twenty-four-karat gold American flag on her lapel, and Alex was so proud he thought he'd throw up.\n\nThere was a changeover at some point\u2014Ellen and Leo escorted to the north entrance and Alex and June shuffled off in another direction. He remembers, very specifically, a handful of things. His cuff links, custom sterling silver X-wings. A tiny scuff in the plaster on a western wall of the White House, which he was seeing up close for the first time. His own shoelace, untied. And he remembers bending over to tie his shoe, losing his balance because of nerves, and June grabbing the back of his jacket to keep him from plunging face-first into a thorny rosebush in front of seventy-five cameras.\n\nThat was the moment he decided he wasn't going to allow himself nerves ever again. Not as Alex Claremont-Diaz, First Son of the United States, and not as Alex Claremont-Diaz, rising political star.\n\nNow, he's Alex Claremont-Diaz, center of an international political sex scandal and boyfriend of a Prince of England, and he's back in a limo on Pennsylvania Avenue, and there's another crowd, and the imminent barf feeling is back.\n\nWhen the car door opens, it's June, standing there in a bright yellow T-shirt that says: HISTORY, HUH?\n\n\"You like it?\" she says. \"There's a guy selling them down the block. I got his card. Gonna put it in my next column for _Vogue._ \"\n\nAlex launches himself at her, engulfing her in a hug that lifts her feet off the ground, and she yelps and pulls his hair, and they topple sideways into a shrub, as Alex was always destined to do.\n\nTheir mother is in a decathlon of meetings, so they sneak out onto the Truman Balcony and catch each other up over hot chocolates and a plate of donuts. Pez has been trying to play telephone between the respective camps, but it's only so effective. June cries first when she hears about the phone call on the plane, then again at Henry standing up to Philip, and a third time at the crowd outside Buckingham Palace. Alex watches her text Henry about a hundred heart emojis, and he sends her back a short video of himself and Catherine drinking champagne while Bea plays \"God Save the Queen\" on electric guitar.\n\n\"Okay, here's the thing,\" June says afterward. \"Nobody has seen Nora in two days.\"\n\nAlex stares at her. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I mean, I've called her, Zahra's called her, Mike and her parents have all called her, she's not answering anyone. The guard at her apartment says she hasn't left this whole time. Apparently, she's 'fine but busy.' I tried just showing up, but she'd told the doorman not to let me in.\"\n\n\"That's... concerning. And also, uh, kind of shitty.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know.\"\n\nAlex turns away, pacing over to the railing. He really could have used Nora's nonplussed approach in this situation, or, really, just his best friend's company. He feels somewhat betrayed she's abandoned him when he needs her most\u2014when he and June _both_ need her most. She has a tendency to bury herself in complex calculations on purpose when especially bad things happen around her.\n\n\"Oh, hey,\" June says. \"And here's the favor you asked for.\"\n\nShe reaches into the pocket of her jeans and hands him a folded-up piece of paper.\n\nHe skims the first few lines.\n\n\"Oh my God, Bug,\" he says. \"I\u2014 Oh my God.\"\n\n\"Do you like it?\" She looks a little nervous. \"I was trying to capture, like, who you are, and your place in history, and what your role means to you, and\u2014\"\n\nShe's cut off because he's scooped her up in another bear hug, teary-eyed. \"It's perfect, June.\"\n\n\"Hey, First Offspring,\" says a voice suddenly, and when Alex puts June down, Amy is waiting in the doorway connecting the balcony to the Oval Room. \"Madam President wants to see you in her office.\" Her attention shifts, listening to her earpiece. \"She says to bring the donuts.\"\n\n\"How does she always _know_?\" June mutters, scooping up the plate.\n\n\"I have Bluebonnet and Barracuda, on the move,\" Amy says, touching her earpiece.\n\n\"I still can't believe you picked that for your stupid code name,\" June says to him. Alex trips her on the way through the door.\n\n* * *\n\nThe donuts have been gone for two hours.\n\nOne, on the couch: June, tying and untying and retying the laces on her Keds, for lack of anything else to do with her hands. Two, against a far wall: Zahra, rapidly typing out an email on her phone, then another. Three, at the Resolute Desk: Ellen, buried in probability projections. Four, on the other couch: Alex, counting.\n\nThe doors to the Oval Office fly open and Nora comes careening in.\n\nShe's wearing a bleach-stained HOLLERAN FOR CONGRESS '72 sweatshirt and the frenzied, sun-blinded expression of someone who has emerged from a doomsday bunker for the first time in a decade. She nearly crashes into the bust of Abraham Lincoln in her rush to Ellen's desk.\n\nAlex is already on his feet. \"Where the fuck have you _been_?\"\n\nShe slaps a thick folder down on the desk and turns halfway to face Alex and June, out of breath. \"Okay, I know you're pissed, and you have every right to be, but\"\u2014she braces herself against the desk with both hands, gesturing toward the folder with her chin\u2014\"I have been holed up in my apartment for two days doing _this,_ and you are super not gonna be mad anymore when you see what it is.\"\n\nAlex's mother blinks at her, perturbed. \"Nora, honey, we're trying to figure out\u2014\"\n\n\" _Ellen,_ \" Nora practically yells. The room goes silent, and Nora freezes, realizing. \"Uh. Ma'am. Mom-in-law. Please, just. You need to read this.\"\n\nAlex watches her sigh and put down her pen before pulling the folder toward her. Nora looks like she's about to pass out on top of the desk. He looks across to June on the opposite couch, who appears as clueless as he feels, and\u2014\n\n\"Holy... _fucking_ shit,\" his mother says, a dawning mix of fury and bemusement. \"Is this\u2014?\"\n\n\"Yup,\" Nora says.\n\n\"And the\u2014?\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\nEllen covers her mouth with one hand. \"How the hell did you _get_ this? Wait, let me rephrase\u2014how the hell did _you_ get this?\"\n\n\"Okay, so.\" Nora withdraws herself from the desk and steps backward. Alex has no idea what the fuck is happening, but it's something, something big. Nora is pacing now, both hands clutched to her forehead. \"The day of the leaks, I get an anonymous email. Obvious sockpuppet account, but untraceable. I tried. They sent me a link to a fucking massive file dump and told me they were a hacker and had obtained the contents of the Richards campaign's private email server in their entirety.\"\n\nAlex stares at her. \" _What?_ \"\n\nNora looks back at him. \"I know.\"\n\nZahra, who has been standing behind Ellen's desk with her arms folded, cuts in to ask, \"And you didn't report this to any of the proper channels because?\"\n\n\"Because I wasn't sure it was anything at first. And when it was, I didn't trust anybody else to handle it. They said they sent it specifically to me because they knew I was personally invested in Alex's situation and would work as fast as possible to find what they didn't have time to.\"\n\n\"Which is?\" Alex can't believe he still has to ask.\n\n\"Proof,\" Nora says. And her voice is shaking now. \"That Richards fucking set you up.\"\n\nHe hears, distantly, the sound of June swearing under her breath and getting up from the couch, walking off to a far corner of the room. His knees give out, so he sits back down.\n\n\"We... we suspected that maybe the RNC had somehow been involved with some of what happened,\" his mother says. She's coming around the desk now, kneeling on the floor in front of him in her starched gray dress, the folder held against her chest. \"I had people looking into it. I never imagined... the whole thing, straight from Richards's campaign.\"\n\nShe takes the folder and spreads it open on the coffee table in the middle of the room.\n\n\"There were\u2014I mean, just, hundreds of thousands of emails,\" Nora is saying as Alex climbs down onto the rug and starts staring at the pages, \"and I swear a third of them were from dummy accounts, but I wrote a code that narrowed it down to about three thousand. I went through the rest manually. This is everything about Alex and Henry.\"\n\nAlex notices his own face first. It's a photo: blurry, out of focus, caught on a long-range lens, only barely recognizable. It's hard to place where he is, until he sees the elegant ivory curtains at the edge of the frame. Henry's bedroom.\n\nHe looks above the photo and sees it's attached to an email between two people. _Negative. Nilsen says that's not nearly clear enough. You need to tell the P we're not paying for Bigfoot sightings._ Nilsen. Nilsen, as in Richards's campaign manager.\n\n\"Richards outed you, Alex,\" Nora says. \"As soon as you left the campaign, it started. He hired a firm that hired the hackers who got the surveillance tapes from the Beekman.\"\n\nHis mother is next to him with a highlighter cap already between her teeth, slashing bright yellow lines across pages. There's movement to his right: Zahra is there too, pulling a stack of papers toward her and starting in with a red pen.\n\n\"I\u2014I don't have any bank account numbers or anything but, if you look, there are pay stubs and invoices and requests of service,\" Nora says. \"Everything, guys. It's all through back channels and go-between firms and fake names but it's\u2014there's a digital paper trail for everything. Enough for a federal investigation, which could subpoena the financial stuff, I think. Basically, Richards hired a firm that hired the photographers who followed Alex and the hackers who breached your server, and then he hired another third party to buy everything and resell it to the _Daily Mail._ I mean, we're talking about having private contractors surveil a member of the First Family and infiltrate White House security to try to induce a sex scandal to win a presidential race, that is some fucked-up shi\u2014\"\n\n\"Nora, can you\u2014?\" June says suddenly, having returned to one of the couches. \"Just, please.\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" Nora says. She sits down heavily. \"I drank like nine Red Bulls to get through all of those and ate a weed gummy to level back out, so I'm flying at fasten-seat-belts right now.\"\n\nAlex closes his eyes.\n\nThere's so fucking much in front of him, and it's impossible to process it all right now, and he's pissed, _furious,_ but he can also put a name on it. He can do something about it. He can go outside. He can walk out of this office and call Henry and tell him: \"We're safe. The worst is over.\"\n\nHe opens his eyes again, looks down at the pages on the table.\n\n\"What do we do with this now?\" June asks.\n\n\"What if we just leaked it?\" Alex offers. \"WikiLeaks\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not giving them shit,\" Ellen cuts him off immediately, not even looking up, \"especially not after what they did to you. This is real shit. I'm taking this motherfucker down. It has to stick.\" She finally puts her highlighter down. \"We're leaking it to the press.\"\n\n\"No major publication is going to run this without verification from someone on the Richards campaign that these emails are real,\" June points out, \"and that kind of thing takes months.\"\n\n\"Nora,\" Ellen says, fixing her with a steely gaze, \"is there anything you can do at all to trace the person who sent this to you?\"\n\n\"I tried,\" Nora says. \"They did everything to obscure their identity.\" She reaches down into her shirt and produces her phone. \"I can show you the email they sent.\"\n\nShe swipes through a few screens and places her phone face-up on the table. The email is exactly as she described, with a signature at the bottom that's apparently a random combination of numbers and letters: 2021 SCB. BAC CHZ GR ON A1.\n\n2021 SCB.\n\nAlex's eyes stop on the last line. He picks up the phone. Stares at it.\n\n\"Goddammit.\"\n\nHe keeps staring at the stupid letters. 2021 SCB.\n\n2021 South Colorado Boulevard.\n\nThe closest Five Guys to the office where he worked that summer in Denver. He still remembers the order he was sent out to pick up at least once a week. Bacon cheeseburger, grilled onions, A1 Sauce. Alex memorized the goddamn Five Guys order. He feels himself start to laugh.\n\nIt's code, for Alex and Alex only: _You're the only one I trust._\n\n\"This isn't a hacker,\" Alex says. \"Rafael Luna sent this to you. That's your verification.\" He looks at his mother. \"If you can protect him, he'll confirm it for you.\"\n\n> [MUSICAL INTRODUCTION: 15 SECOND INSTRUMENTAL FROM DESTINY'S CHILD'S 1999 SINGLE \"BILLS, BILLS, BILLS\"]\n> \n> VOICEOVER: This is a Range Audio podcast.\n> \n> You're listening to \"Bills, Bills, Bills,\" hosted by Oliver Westbrook, Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU.\n> \n> [END MUSICAL INTRODUCTION]\n> \n> WESTBROOK: Hi. I'm Oliver Westbrook, and with me, as always, is my exceedingly patient, talented, merciful, and lovely producer, Sufia, without whom I would be lost, bereft, floating on a sea of bad thoughts and drinking my own piss. We love her. Say hi, Sufia.\n> \n> SUFIA JARWAR, PRODUCER, RANGE AUDIO: Hello, please send help.\n> \n> WESTBROOK: And this is Bills, Bills, Bills, the podcast where I attempt every week to break down for you, in layman's terms, what's happening in Congress, why you should care, and what you can do about it.\n> \n> Well. I gotta tell you, guys, I had a very different show planned out a few days ago, but I don't really see the point in getting into any of it.\n> \n> Let's just, ah. Take a minute to review the story the Washington Post broke this morning. We've got emails, anonymously leaked, confirmed by an anonymous source on the Richards campaign, that clearly show Jeffrey Richards\u2014or at least high-ranking staffers at his campaign\u2014orchestrated this fucking diabolical plan to have Alex Claremont-Diaz stalked, surveilled, hacked, and outed by the Daily Mail as part of an effort to take down Ellen Claremont in the general. And then, about\u2014uh, what is it, Suf? Forty minutes?\u2014forty minutes before we started recording this, Senator Rafael Luna tweeted he was parting ways with the Richards campaign.\n> \n> So. Wow.\n> \n> I don't think there's any need to discuss a leak from that campaign other than Luna. It's obviously him. From where I sit, this looks like the case of a man who\u2014maybe he didn't really want to be there in the first place, maybe he was already having second thoughts. Maybe he even infiltrated the campaign to do something exactly like this\u2014Sufia, am I allowed to say that?\n> \n> JARWAR: Literally, when has that ever stopped you?\n> \n> WESTBROOK: Point. Anyway, Casper Mattresses is paying me the big sponsorship bucks to give you a Washington analysis podcast, so I'm gonna attempt to do that here, even though what has happened to Alex Claremont-Diaz\u2014and Prince Henry too\u2014over the past few days has been obscene, and it feels cheap and gross to even talk about it like this. But in my opinion, here are the three big things to take away from the news we've gotten today.\n> \n> First, the First Son of the United States didn't actually do anything wrong.\n> \n> Second, Jeffrey Richards committed a hostile act of conspiracy against a sitting president, and I am eagerly awaiting the federal investigation that is coming to him once he loses this election.\n> \n> Third, Rafael Luna is perhaps the unlikeliest hero of the 2020 presidential race.\n\n* * *\n\nA speech has to be made.\n\nNot just a statement. A speech.\n\n\"You wrote this?\" their mother says, holding the folded-up page June had handed Alex on the balcony. \"Alex told you to scrap the statement our press secretary drafted and write this whole thing?\" June bites her lip and nods. \"This is\u2014this is _good,_ June. Why the hell aren't you writing all our speeches?\"\n\nThe press briefing room in the West Wing is ruled too impersonal, so they've called the press pool to the Diplomatic Reception Room on the ground floor. It's the room where FDR once recorded his fireside chats, and Alex is going to walk in there and make a speech and hope the country doesn't hate him for the truth.\n\nThey've flown Henry in from London for the telecast. He'll be positioned right at Alex's shoulder, steady and sure, the emblematic politician's spouse. Alex's brain can't stop sprinting laps around it. He keeps picturing it: an hour from now, millions and millions of TVs across America simulcasting his face, his voice, June's words, Henry at his side. Everyone will know. Everyone already knows now, but they don't _know,_ not the right way.\n\nIn an hour, every person in America will be able to look at a screen and see their First Son and his boyfriend.\n\nAnd, across the Atlantic, almost as many will look up over a beer at a pub or dinner with their family or a quiet night in and see their youngest prince, the most beautiful one, Prince Charming.\n\nThis is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered.\n\nAlex waits on the South Lawn, within view of the linden trees of the Kennedy Garden, where they first kissed. Marine One touches down in a cacophony of noise and wind and rotors, and Henry emerges in head-to-toe Burberry looking dramatic and windswept, like a dashing hero here to rip bodices and mend war-torn countries, and Alex has to laugh.\n\n\"What?\" Henry shouts over the noise when he sees the look on Alex's face.\n\n\"My life is cosmic joke and you're not a real person,\" Alex says, wheezing.\n\n\" _What?_ \" Henry yells again.\n\n\"I said, you look great, baby!\"\n\nThey sneak off to make out in a stairwell until Zahra finds them and drags Henry off to get camera-ready, and soon they're being shuffled to the Diplomatic Reception Room, and it's time.\n\nIt's time.\n\nIt's been one long, long year of learning Henry inside and out, learning himself, learning how much he still had to learn, and just like that, it's time to walk out there and stand at a podium and confidently declare it all as fact.\n\nHe's not afraid of anything he feels. He's not afraid of saying it. He's only afraid of what happens when he does.\n\nHenry touches his hand, gently, two fingertips against his palm.\n\n\"Five minutes for the rest of our lives,\" he says, laughing a grim little laugh.\n\nAlex reaches for him in return, presses one thumb into the hollow of his collarbone, slipping right under the knot of his tie. The tie is purple silk, and Alex is counting his breaths.\n\n\"You are,\" he says, \"the absolute worst idea I've ever had.\"\n\nHenry's mouth spreads into a slow smile, and Alex kisses it.\n\n> FIRST SON ALEXANDER CLAREMONT-DIAZ'S ADDRESS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, OCTOBER 2, 2020\n> \n> Good morning.\n> \n> I am, and have been\u2014first, last, and always\u2014a child of America.\n> \n> You raised me. I grew up in the pastures and hills of Texas, but I had been to thirty-four states before I learned how to drive. When I caught the stomach flu in the fifth grade, my mother sent a note to school written on the back of a holiday memo from Vice President Biden. Sorry, sir\u2014we were in a rush, and it was the only paper she had on hand.\n> \n> I spoke to you for the first time when I was eighteen, on the stage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, when I introduced my mother as the nominee for president. You cheered for me. I was young and full of hope, and you let me embody the American dream: that a boy who grew up speaking two languages, whose family was blended and beautiful and enduring, could make a home for himself in the White House.\n> \n> You pinned the flag to my lapel and said, \"We're rooting for you.\" As I stand before you today, my hope is that I have not let you down.\n> \n> Years ago, I met a prince. And though I didn't realize it at the time, his country had raised him too.\n> \n> The truth is, Henry and I have been together since the beginning of this year. The truth is, as many of you have read, we have both struggled every day with what this means for our families, our countries, and our futures. The truth is, we have both had to make compromises that cost us sleep at night in order to afford us enough time to share our relationship with the world on our own terms.\n> \n> We were not afforded that liberty.\n> \n> But the truth is, also, simply this: love is indomitable. America has always believed this. And so, I am not ashamed to stand here today where presidents have stood and say that I love him, the same as Jack loved Jackie, the same as Lyndon loved Lady Bird. Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it, whom the American people will hold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: He is my choice.\n> \n> Like countless other Americans, I was afraid to say this out loud because of what the consequences might be. To you, specifically, I say: I see you. I am one of you. As long as I have a place in this White House, so will you. I am the First Son of the United States, and I'm bisexual. History will remember us.\n> \n> If I can ask only one thing of the American people, it's this: Please, do not let my actions influence your decision in November. The decision you will make this year is so much bigger than anything I could ever say or do, and it will determine the fate of this country for years to come. My mother, your president, is the warrior and the champion that each and every American deserves for four more years of growth, progress, and prosperity. Please, don't let my actions send us backward. I ask the media not to focus on me or on Henry, but on the campaign, on policy, on the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans at stake in this election.\n> \n> And finally, I hope America will remember that I am still the son you raised. My blood still runs from Lometa, Texas, and San Diego, California, and Mexico City. I still remember the sound of your voices from that stage in Philadelphia. I wake up every morning thinking of your hometowns, of the families I've met at rallies in Idaho and Oregon and South Carolina. I have never hoped to be anything other than what I was to you then, and what I am to you now\u2014the First Son, yours in actions and words. And I hope when Inauguration Day comes again in January, I will continue to be.\n\n* * *\n\nThe first twenty-four hours after the speech are a blur, but a few snapshots will stay with him for the rest of his life.\n\nA picture: the morning after, a new crowd gathered on the Mall, the biggest yet. He stays in the Residence for safety, but he and Henry and June and Nora and all three of his parents sit in the living room on the second floor and watch the live stream on CNN. In the middle of the broadcast: Amy at the front of the cheering crowd wearing June's yellow HISTORY, HUH? T-shirt and a trans flag pin. Next to her: Cash, with Amy's wife on his shoulders in what Alex can now tell is the jean jacket Amy was embroidering on the plane in the colors of the pansexual flag. He whoops so hard he spills his coffee on George Bush's favorite rug.\n\nA picture: Senator Jeffrey Richards's stupid Sam the Eagle face on CNN, talking about his grave concern for President Claremont's ability to remain impartial on matters of traditional family values due to the acts her son engages in on the sacred grounds of the house our forefathers built. Followed by: Senator Oscar Diaz, responding via satellite, that President Claremont's primary value is upholding the Constitution, and that the White House was built by slaves, not our forefathers.\n\nA picture: the expression on Rafael Luna's face when he looks up from his paperwork to see Alex standing in the doorway of his office.\n\n\"Why do you even have a staff?\" Alex says. \"Nobody has ever tried to stop me from walking straight in here.\"\n\nLuna has his reading glasses on, and he looks like he hasn't shaved in weeks. He smiles, a little apprehensive.\n\nAfter Alex decoded the message in the email, his mother called Luna directly and told him, no questions asked, she would grant him full protection from criminal charges if he helped her take Richards down. He knows his dad has been in touch too. Luna knows neither of his parents are holding a grudge. But this is the first time they've spoken.\n\n\"If you think I don't tell every hire on their first day that you have a free pass,\" he says, \"you do not have an accurate sense of yourself.\"\n\nAlex grins, and he reaches into his pocket and produces a packet of Skittles, lobbing them underhand onto Luna's desk.\n\nLuna looks down at them.\n\nThe chair is next to his desk these days, and he pushes it out.\n\nAlex hasn't gotten a chance to thank him yet, and he doesn't know where to start. He doesn't even feel like it's the first order of business. He watches Luna rip open the packet and dump the candy out onto his papers.\n\nThere's a question hanging in the air, and they can both see it. Alex doesn't want to ask. They just got Luna back. He's afraid of losing him again to the answer. But he has to know.\n\n\"Did you know?\" he finally says. \"Before it happened, did you know what he was going to do?\"\n\nLuna takes his glasses off and sets them down grimly on his blotter.\n\n\"Alex, I know I... completely destroyed your faith in me, so I don't blame you for asking me,\" he says. He leans forward on his elbows, his eye contact hard and deliberate. \"But I need you to know I would never, ever intentionally let something like that happen to you. Ever. I had no idea until it came out. Same as you.\"\n\nAlex releases a long breath.\n\n\"Okay,\" he says. He watches Luna lean back, looks at the fine lines on his face, slightly heavier than they were before. \"So, what happened?\"\n\nLuna sighs, a hoarse, tired sound in the back of his throat. It's a sound that makes Alex think about what his dad told him at the lake, about how much of Luna is still hidden.\n\n\"So,\" he says, \"you know I interned for Richards?\"\n\nAlex blinks. \"What?\"\n\nLuna barks a small, humorless laugh. \"Yeah, you wouldn't have heard. Richards made pretty damn sure to get rid of the evidence. But, yeah, 2000. I was nineteen. It was back when he was AG in Utah. One of my professors called in a favor.\"\n\nThere were rumors, Luna explains, among the low-level staffers. Usually the female interns, but occasionally an especially pretty boy\u2014a boy like him. Promises, from Richards: mentorship, connections, if \"you'd just get a drink with me after work.\" A strong implication that \"no\" was unacceptable.\n\n\"I had _nothing_ back then,\" Luna says. \"No money, no family, no connections, no experience. I thought, 'This is your only way to get your foot in the door. Maybe he means it.'\"\n\nLuna pauses, taking a breath. Alex's stomach is twisting uncomfortably.\n\n\"He sent a car, made me meet him at a hotel, got me drunk. He wanted\u2014he tried to\u2014\" Luna grimaces away from finishing the sentence. \"Anyway, I got away. I remember I got home that night, and the guy I was renting a room with took one look at me and handed me a cigarette. That's when I started smoking, by the way.\"\n\nHe's been looking down at the Skittles on his desk, sorting the reds from oranges, but here he looks up at Alex with a bitter, cutting smile.\n\n\"And I went back to work the next day like nothing happened. I made _small talk_ with him in the _break room,_ because I wanted it to be okay, and that's what I hated myself the most for. So the next time he sent me an email, I walked into his office and told him that if he didn't leave me alone, I'd take it to the paper. And that's when he pulled out the file.\n\n\"He called it an 'insurance policy.' He knew stuff I did as a teenager, how I got kicked out by my parents and a youth shelter in Seattle. That I have family who are undocumented. He told me that if I ever said a word about what happened, not only would I never have a career in politics, but he would ruin my life. He'd ruin my _family's_ lives. So, I shut the fuck up.\"\n\nLuna's eyes when they meet his again are ice cold, sharp. A window slammed shut.\n\n\"But I've never forgotten. I'd see him in the Senate chamber, and he'd look at me like I owed _him_ something, because he hadn't destroyed me when he could have. And I knew he was going to do whatever shady shit it took to win the presidency, and I couldn't let a fucking _predator_ be the most powerful man in the country if it was within my power to stop it.\"\n\nHe turns now, a tiny shake of his shoulders like he's dusting off a light snowfall, pivoting his chair to pluck up a few Skittles and pop them into his mouth, and he's trying for casual but his hands aren't steady.\n\nHe explains that the moment he decided was this summer, when he saw Richards on TV talking about the Youth Congress program. That he knew, with more access, he could find and leak evidence of abuse. Even if he was too old for Richards to want to fuck, he could play him. Convince him he didn't believe Ellen would win, that he'd get the Hispanic and moderate vote in exchange for power.\n\n\"I fucking hated myself every minute of working with that campaign, but I spent the whole time looking for evidence. I was close. I was so focused, so zeroed in that, that I... I never noticed if there were whispers about you. I had no idea. But when everything came out... I knew. I just couldn't prove it. But I had access to the servers. I don't know much, but I'd been around the block enough in my teenage anarchist days to know people who know how to do a file dump. Don't look at me like that. I'm not _that_ old.\"\n\nAlex laughs, and Luna laughs too, and it's a relief, like the air coming back in the room.\n\n\"Anyway, getting it straight to you and your mother was the fastest way to expose him, and I knew Nora could do that. And I... I knew you would understand.\"\n\nHe pauses, sucking on a Skittle, and Alex decides to ask.\n\n\"Did my dad know?\"\n\n\"About me going triple agent? No, nobody does. Half my staff quit because they didn't know. My sister hasn't spoken to me in months.\"\n\n\"No, about what Richards did to you?\"\n\n\"Alex, your father is the only other person alive I've ever told any of this to,\" he says. \"Your father took it upon himself to help me when I wouldn't let anyone else, and I'll never stop being grateful to him. But he wanted me to come forward with what Richards did to me, and I... couldn't. I said it was a risk I wasn't willing to take with my own career, but truthfully, I didn't think what happened to one gay Mexican kid twenty years ago would make a difference to his base. I didn't think anyone would believe me.\"\n\n\"I believe you,\" Alex says readily. \"I just wish you would have told me what you were doing. Or, like, anybody.\"\n\n\"You would have tried to stop me,\" Luna says. \"You all would have.\"\n\n\"I mean... Raf, it was a fucking crazy plan.\"\n\n\"I know. And I don't know if I'll ever be able to fix the damage I've done, but I honestly don't care. I did what I had to do. There was no way in hell I was going to let Richards win. My whole life has been about fighting. I fought.\"\n\nAlex thinks it over. He can relate\u2014it echoes the same deliberations he's been having with himself. He thinks of something he hasn't allowed himself to think about since all this started after London: his LSAT results, unopened and tucked away inside the desk in his bedroom. How do you do all the good you can do?\n\n\"I'm sorry, by the way,\" Luna says. \"For the things I said to you.\" He doesn't have to specify which things. \"I was... fucked up.\"\n\n\"It's cool,\" Alex tells him, and he means it. He forgave Luna before he ever walked into the office, but he appreciates the apology. \"I'm sorry too. But also, I hope you know that if you ever call me 'kid' again after all this, I am literally going to kick your ass.\"\n\nLuna laughs in earnest. \"Listen, you've had your first big sex scandal. No more sitting at the kids' table.\"\n\nAlex nods appreciatively, stretching in his chair and folding his hands behind his head. \"Man, it fucking sucks it has to be like this, with Richards. Even if you expose him now, straight people always want the homophobic bastards to be closet cases so they can wash their hands of it. As if ninety-nine out of a hundred aren't just regular old hateful bigots.\"\n\n\"Yeah, especially since I think I'm the only male intern he ever took to a hotel. It's the same as any fucking predator\u2014it has nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with power.\"\n\n\"Do you think you'll say anything?\" Alex says. \"At this point?\"\n\n\"I've been thinking about it a lot.\" He leans in. \"Most people have kind of already figured out that I'm the leak. And I think, sooner or later, someone is going to come to me with an allegation that is within the statute of limitations. Then we can open up a congressional investigation. _Big-time._ And _that_ will make a difference.\"\n\n\"I heard a 'we' in there,\" Alex says.\n\n\"Well,\" Luna says. \"Me and someone else with law experience.\"\n\n\"Is that a hint?\"\n\n\"It's a suggestion,\" Luna says. \"But I'm not gonna tell you what to do with your life. I'm busy trying to get my own shit together. Look at this.\" He lifts his sleeve. \"Nicotine patch, bitch.\"\n\n\"No way,\" Alex says. \"Are you actually quitting for real?\"\n\n\"I am a changed man, unburdened by the demons of my past,\" Luna says solemnly, with a jerk-off hand gesture.\n\n\"You fucker, I'm proud of you.\"\n\n\"Hola,\" says a voice at the door of the office.\n\nIt's his dad, in a T-shirt and jeans, a six-pack of beer in one hand.\n\n\"Oscar,\" Luna says, grinning. \"We were just talking about how I've decimated my reputation and killed my own political career.\"\n\n\"Ay,\" he says, dragging an extra chair over to the desk and passing out beers. \"Sounds like a job for Los Bastardos.\"\n\nAlex cracks open his can. \"We can also discuss how I might cost Mom the election because I'm a one-man bisexual wrecking ball who exposed the vulnerability of the White House private email server.\"\n\n\"You think?\" his dad says. \"Nah. Come on. I don't think this election is gonna hinge on an email server.\"\n\nAlex arches a brow. \"You sure about that?\"\n\n\"Listen, maybe if Richards had more time to sow those seeds of doubt, but I don't think we're there. Maybe if it were 2016. Maybe if this weren't an America that already elected a woman to the highest office once. Maybe if I weren't sitting in a room with the three assholes responsible for electing the first openly gay man to the Senate in US history.\" Alex whoops and Luna inclines his head and raises his beer. \"But, nah. Is it gonna be a pain in your mom's ass for the second term? Shit, yeah. But she'll handle it.\"\n\n\"Look at you,\" Luna says over his beer. \"Answer for everything, eh?\"\n\n\"Listen,\" his dad says, \"somebody on this damn campaign has to keep their fucking cool while everyone else catastrophizes. Everything's gonna be fine. I believe that.\"\n\n\"And what about me?\" Alex says. \"You think I got a chance in politics after going supernova in every paper in the world?\"\n\n\"They got you,\" Oscar says, shrugging. \"It happens. Give it time. Try again.\"\n\nAlex laughs, but still, he reaches in and plucks up something deep down in his chest. Something shaped not like Claremont but Diaz\u2014no better, no worse, just different.\n\n* * *\n\nHenry gets his own room in the White House while he's in. The crown spared him for two nights before he returns to England for his own damage control tour. Once again, they're lucky to have Catherine back in the game; Alex doubts the queen would have been so generous.\n\nThis particularly is what makes it a little funny that Henry's room\u2014the customary quarters for royal guests\u2014is called the Queen's Bedroom.\n\n\"It's quite... aggressively pink, innit?\" Henry mutters sleepily.\n\nThe room is, really, aggressively pink, done up in the Federal style with pink walls and rose-covered rugs and bedding, pink upholstery on everything from the chairs and settee in the sitting area to the canopy on the four-poster bed.\n\nHenry's agreed to sleep in the room rather than Alex's \"because I respect your mother,\" as if every person who had a hand in raising Alex has not read in graphic detail the things they get up to when they share a bed. Alex has no such hang-ups and enjoys Henry's half-hearted grumblings when he sneaks in from the East Bedroom right down the hall.\n\nThey've woken up half-naked and warm, tucked in tight while the first autumn chill creeps in under the lacy curtains. Humming low in his chest, Alex presses the length of his body against Henry's under the blankets, his back to Henry's chest, the swell of his ass against\u2014\n\n\"Argh, hello,\" Henry mumbles, his hips hitching at the contact. Henry can't see his face, but Alex smiles anyway.\n\n\"Morning,\" Alex says. He gives his ass a little wiggle.\n\n\"Time's it?\"\n\n\"Seven thirty-two.\"\n\n\"Plane in two hours.\"\n\nAlex makes a small sound in the back of his throat and turns over, finding Henry's face soft and close, eyes only half-open. \"You sure you don't need me to come with you?\"\n\nHenry shakes his head without picking it up from the pillow, so his cheek squishes against it. It's cute. \"You're not the one who slagged off the crown and your own family in the emails that everybody in the world has read. I've got to handle that on my own before you come back over.\"\n\n\"That's fair,\" Alex says. \"But soon?\"\n\nHenry's mouth tugs into a smile. \"Absolutely. You've got the royal suitor photos to take, the Christmas cards to sign... Oh, I wonder if they'll have you do a line of skincare products like Martha\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop,\" Alex groans, poking him in the ribs. \"You're enjoying this too much.\"\n\n\"I'm enjoying it the perfect amount,\" Henry says. \"But, in all seriousness, it's... frightening but a bit nice. To do this on my own. I've not gotten to do that much, well, ever.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Alex says. \"I'm proud of you.\"\n\n\"Ew,\" Henry says in a flat American accent, and he laughs and Alex throws an elbow.\n\nHenry's pulling him and kissing him, sandy hair on a pink bedspread, long lashes and long legs and blue eyes, elegant hands pinning his wrists to the mattress. It's like everything he's ever loved about Henry in a moment, in a laugh, in the way he shivers, in the confident roll of his spine, in happy, unfettered sex in the well-furnished eye of a storm.\n\nToday, Henry goes back to London. Today, Alex goes back to the campaign trail. They have to figure out how to do this for real now, how to love each other in plain sight. Alex thinks they're up for it.\n\n# FIFTEEN\n\nnearly four weeks later\n\n\"Let me just get this hair, love.\"\n\n_\"Mum.\"_\n\n\"Soz, am I embarrassing you?\" Catherine says, her glasses on the tip of her nose as she rearranges Henry's thick hair. \"You'll thank me when you've not got a great cowlick in your official portrait.\"\n\nAlex has to admit, the royal photographer is being exceedingly patient about the whole thing, especially considering they waffled through three different locations\u2014Kensington Gardens, a stuffy Buckingham Palace library, the courtyard of Hampton Court Palace\u2014before they decided to screw it all for a bench in a locked-down Hyde Park.\n\n(\"Like a common vagrant?\" Queen Mary asked.\n\n\"Shut up, Mum,\" Catherine said.)\n\nThere's a certain need for formal portraits now that Alex is officially in \"courtship\" with Henry. He tries not to think too hard about his face on chocolate bars and thongs in Buckingham gift shops. At least it'll be next to Henry's.\n\nSome psychological math always goes into styling photos like these. The White House stylists have Alex in something he'd wear any day\u2014brown leather loafers, slim-fit chinos in a soft tan, a loose-collared Ralph Lauren chambray\u2014but in this context, it reads confident, roguish, decidedly American. Henry's in a Burberry button-down tucked into dark jeans and a navy cardigan that the royal shoppers squabbled over in Harrods for hours. They want a picture of a perfect, dignified, British intellectual, a loved-up boyfriend with a bright future as an academic and philanthropist. They even staged a little pile of books on the bench next to him.\n\nAlex looks over at Henry, who's groaning and rolling his eyes under his mother's preening, and smiles at how much closer this packaging is to the real, messy, complicated Henry. As close as any PR campaign is ever going to get.\n\nThey take about a hundred portraits just sitting on the bench next to each other and smiling, and part of Alex keeps stumbling over the disbelief he's actually here, in the middle of Hyde Park, in front of God and everybody, holding Henry's hand atop his own knee for the camera.\n\n\"If Alex from this time last year could see this,\" Alex says, leaning into Henry's ear.\n\n\"He'd say, 'Oh, I'm in love with Henry? That must be why I'm such a berk to him all the time,'\" Henry suggests.\n\n\"Hey!\" Alex squawks, and Henry's chuckling at his own joke and Alex's indignation, one arm coming up around Alex's shoulders. Alex gives into it and laughs too, full and deep, and that's the last hope for a serious tone for the day gone. The photographer finally calls it, and they're set loose.\n\nCatherine's got a busy day, she says\u2014three meetings before afternoon tea to discuss relocating into a royal residence more centrally located in London, since she's begun taking up more duties than ever. Alex can see the glint in her eye\u2014she'll be gunning for the throne soon. He's choosing not to say anything about it to Henry yet, but he's curious to see how it all plays out. She kisses them both and leaves them with Henry's PPOs.\n\nIt's a short walk over the Long Water back to Kensington, and they meet Bea at the Orangery, where a dozen members of her event-planning team are scurrying around, setting up a stage. She's tromping up and down rows of chairs on the lawn in a ponytail and rain boots, speaking very tersely on the phone about something called \"cullen skink\" and why on earth would she ever request cullen skink and even if she had in fact requested cullen skink in what universe would she ever need twenty bloody liters of cullen skink for anything, ever.\n\n\"What in the hell is a 'cullen skink'?\" Alex asks once she's hung up.\n\n\"Smoked haddock chowder,\" she says. \"Enjoy your first royal dog show, Alex?\"\n\n\"It wasn't too bad,\" Alex says, smirking.\n\n\"Mum is _beyond,_ \" Henry says. \"She offered to _edit my manuscript_ this morning. It's like she's trying to make up for five years of absentee parenting all at once. Which, of course, I love her very much, and I appreciate the effort, but, Christ.\"\n\n\"She's trying, H,\" Bea says. \"She's been on the bench for a while. Let her warm up a bit.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Henry says with a sigh, but his eyes are fond. \"How are things over here?\"\n\n\"Oh, you know,\" she says, waving her phone in the air. \"Just the maiden voyage of my very controversial fund upon which all future endeavors will be judged, so, no pressure at all. I'm only slightly cross with you for not making it a Henry Foundation\u2013Beatrice Fund double feature so I could unload half the stress onto you. All this fund-raising for sobriety is going to drive me to drink.\" She pats Alex on the arm. \"That's drunk humor for you, Alex.\"\n\nBea and Henry both had an October as busy as their mother's. There were a lot of decisions to be made in that first week: Would they ignore the revelations about Bea in the emails (no), would Henry be forced to enlist after all (after days of deliberation, no), and, above all, how could all this be made into a positive? The solution had been one Bea and Henry came up with together, twin philanthropic efforts under their own names. Bea's, a charity fund supporting addiction recovery programs all over the UK, and Henry's, an LGBT rights foundation.\n\nTo their right, the lighting trusses are going up quickly over the stage where Bea will be playing an \u00a38,000-a-ticket concert with a live band and celebrity guests tonight, her first solo fund-raiser.\n\n\"Man, I wish I could stay for the show,\" Alex says.\n\nBea beams. \"It's a shame Henry here was too busy signing papers with Auntie Pezza all week to learn some sheet music or we could have fired our pianist.\"\n\n\"Papers?\" Alex says, cocking an eyebrow.\n\nHenry shoots Bea a silencing glare. \"Bea\u2014\"\n\n\"For the youth shelters,\" she says.\n\n\" _Beatrice,_ \" Henry admonishes. \"It was going to be a _surprise._ \"\n\n\"Oh,\" Bea says, busying herself with her phone. \"Oops.\"\n\nAlex looks at Henry. \"What's going on?\"\n\nHenry sighs. \"Well. We were going to wait to announce it\u2014and to tell you, obviously\u2014until after the election, so as not to step on your moment. But...\" He puts his hands in his pockets, in that way he does when he's feeling proud of something but trying not to act like it. \"Mum and I agreed the foundation shouldn't just be national, that there was work to be done all over the world, and I specifically wanted to focus on homeless queer youth. So, Pez signed all our Okonjo Foundation youth shelters over.\" He bounces on his heels a little, visibly tamping down a broad smile. \"You're looking at the proud father of four worldwide soon-to-be shelters for disenfranchised queer teenagers.\"\n\n\"Oh my God, you _bastard,_ \" Alex practically yells, lunging at Henry and throwing his arms around his neck. \"That's amazing. I _stupid_ love you. _Wow._ \" He yanks back suddenly, stricken. \"Wait, oh my God, this means the one in Brooklyn too? Right?\"\n\n\"Yes, it does.\"\n\n\"Didn't you tell me you wanted to be hands-on with the foundation?\" Alex says, his pulse jumping. \"Don't you think maybe _direct supervision_ might be helpful while it gets off the ground?\"\n\n\"Alex,\" Henry tells him, \"I can't _move_ to New York.\"\n\nBea looks up. \"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because I'm the prince of\u2014\" Henry looks over at her and gestures at the Orangery, at Kensington, sputtering. \" _Here!_ \"\n\nBea shrugs, unmoved. \"And? It doesn't have to be permanent. You spent a month of your gap year talking to yaks in Mongolia, H. It's hardly unprecedented.\"\n\nHenry moves his mouth a couple times, ever the skeptic, and swivels back to Alex. \"Well, I'd still hardly see you, would I?\" he reasons. \"If you're in DC for work all the time, beginning your meteoric rise to the political stratosphere?\"\n\nAnd this, Alex has to admit, is a point. A point that after the year he's had, after everything, after the finally opened and perfectly passable LSAT scores sitting expectantly on his desk back home, feels less and less concrete every day.\n\nHe thinks about opening his mouth to say as much.\n\n\"Hello,\" says a polished voice from behind them, and they all turn to see Philip, starched and well groomed, striding across the lawn.\n\nAlex feels the slight flutter through the air of Henry's spine automatically straightening beside him. Philip came to Kensington two weeks ago to apologize to both Henry and Bea for the years since their father's death, the harsh words, the domineeringness, the intense scrutiny. For basically growing from an uptight people-pleaser into an abusive, self-righteous twat under the pressure of his position and the manipulation of the queen. \"He's fallen out with Gran,\" Henry had told Alex over the phone. \"That's the only reason I actually believe anything he says.\"\n\nYet, there's blood that can't be unshed. Alex wants to throw a punch every time he sees Philip's stupid face, but it's Henry's family, not his, so he doesn't get to make that call.\n\n\"Philip,\" Bea says coolly. \"To what do we owe the pleasure?\"\n\n\"Just had a meeting at Buckingham,\" Philip says. The meaning hangs in the air between them: a meeting with the queen because he's the only one still willing. \"Wanted to come by to see if I could help with anything.\" He looks down at Bea's Wellington boots next to his shiny dress shoes in the grass. \"You know, you don't have to be out here\u2014we've got plenty of staff who can do the grunt work for you.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Bea says haughtily, every inch a princess. \"I want to do it.\"\n\n\"Right,\" Philip says. \"Of course. Well, er. Is there anything I can help with?\"\n\n\"Not really, Philip.\"\n\n\"All right.\" Philip clears his throat. \"Henry, Alex. Portraits go all right?\"\n\nHenry blinks, clearly startled Philip would ask. Alex has enough diplomatic instincts to keep his mouth shut.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Henry says. \"Er, yes. It was all right. A bit awkward, you know, just having to sit there for ages.\"\n\n\"Oh, I remember,\" Philip says. \"When Mazzy and I did our first ones, I had this horrible rash on my arse from some idiotic poison-oak prank one of my uni friends had played on me that week, and it was all I could do to hold still and not rip my trousers off in the middle of Buckingham, much less try to take a nice photo. I thought she was going to murder me. Here's hoping yours turn out better.\"\n\nHe chuckles a little awkwardly, clearly trying to bond with them. Alex scratches his nose.\n\n\"Well, anyway, good luck, Bea.\"\n\nPhilip walks off, hands in his pockets, and all three of them watch his retreating back until it starts to disappear behind the tall hedges.\n\nBea sighs. \"D'you think I should have let him have a go at the cullen skink man for me?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" Henry says. \"Give him another six months. He hasn't earned it yet.\"\n\n* * *\n\nBlue or gray? Gray or blue?\n\nAlex has never been so torn between two equally innocuous blazers in his entire life.\n\n\"This is stupid,\" Nora says. \"They're both boring.\"\n\n\"Will you please just help me pick?\" Alex tells her. He holds up a hanger in each hand, ignoring her judgmental look from where she's perched atop his dresser. The pictures from election night tomorrow, win or lose, will follow him for the rest of his life.\n\n\"Alex, seriously. I hate them both. You need something killer. This could be your fucking _swan song._ \"\n\n\"Okay, let's not\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, okay, you're right, if the projections hold, we're fine,\" she says, hopping down. \"So, do you want to talk about why you're choosing to punt so hard on this particular moment in your career as a risk-taking fashion plate?\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Alex says. He waves the hangers at her. \"Blue or gray?\"\n\n\"Okay, so.\" She's ignoring him. \"I'll say it, then. You're nervous.\"\n\nHe rolls his eyes. \"Of course I'm nervous, Nora, it's a presidential election and the president gave birth to me.\"\n\n\"Try again.\"\n\nShe's giving him that look. The \"I've already analyzed all the data on how much shit you're full of\" look. He releases a hiss of a sigh.\n\n\"Fine,\" he says. \"Fine, yeah, I'm nervous about going back to Texas.\"\n\nHe tosses both the blazers at the bed. Shit.\n\n\"I always felt like Texas claiming me as their son was, you know, kind of conditional.\" He paces, rubbing the back of his neck. \"The whole half-Mexican, all Democrat thing. There's a very loud contingent there that does not like me and does not want me to represent them. And now, it's just. Not being straight. Having a boyfriend. Having a _gay sex scandal_ with a _European prince._ I don't know anymore.\"\n\nHe loves Texas\u2014he _believes_ in Texas. But he doesn't know if Texas still loves him.\n\nHe's paced all the way to the opposite side of the room from her, and she watches him and cocks her head to one side.\n\n\"So... you're afraid of wearing anything too flashy for your first post-coming-out trip home, on account of Texans' delicate hetero sensibilities?\"\n\n\"Basically.\"\n\nShe's looking at him now more like he's a very complex problem set. \"Have you looked at our polling on you in Texas? Since September?\"\n\nAlex swallows.\n\n\"No. I, uh.\" He scrubs his face with one hand. \"The thought, like... stresses me out? Like, I keep meaning to go look at the numbers, and then I just. Shut down.\"\n\nNora's face softens, but she doesn't move closer yet, giving him space. \"Alex. You could have asked me. They're... not bad.\"\n\nHe bites his lip. \"They're not?\"\n\n\"Alex, our base in Texas hasn't shifted on you since September, at all. If anything, they like you more. And a lot of the undecideds are pissed Richards came after a Texas kid. You're really fine.\"\n\n_Oh._\n\nAlex exhales a shaky breath, running one hand through his hair. He starts to pace back, away from the door, which he realizes he's gravitated near as some fight-or-flight reflex.\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\nHe sits down heavily on the bed.\n\nNora sits gingerly next to him, and when he looks at her, she's got that sharpness to her eyes like she does when she's practically reading his mind.\n\n\"Look. You know I'm not good at the whole, like, tactful emotional communication thing, but, uh, June's not here, so. I'm gonna. Fuckin'. Give it a go.\" She presses on. \"I don't think this is just about Texas. You were recently fucking traumatized in a big way, and now you're scared of doing or saying the kind of stuff you actually like and want to because you don't want to draw any more attention to yourself.\"\n\nAlex almost wants to laugh.\n\nNora is like Henry sometimes, in that she can cut right down to the truth of things, but Henry deals in heart and Nora deals in facts. It takes her razor's edge, sometimes, to get him to pull his head out of his ass.\n\n\"Uh, well, yeah. That's. Probably part of it,\" he agrees. \"I know I need to start rehabilitating my image if I want any chance in politics, but part of me is like... really? Right now? Why? It's weird. My whole life, I was hanging on to this imaginary future person I was gonna be. Like, the plan\u2014graduation, campaigns, staffer, Congress. That was it. Straight into the game. I was gonna be the person who could do that... who _wanted_ that. And now here I am, and the person I've become is... not that person.\"\n\nNora nudges their shoulders together. \"But do you like him?\"\n\nAlex thinks; he's different, for sure, maybe a little darker. More neurotic, but more honest. Sharper head, wilder heart. Someone who doesn't always want to be married to work, but who has more reasons to fight than ever.\n\n\"Yeah,\" he says finally. Firmly. \"Yeah, I do.\"\n\n\"Cool,\" she says, and he looks over to see her grinning at him. \"So do I. You're Alex. In all this stupid shit, that's all you ever needed to be.\" She grabs his face in both hands and squishes it, and he groans but doesn't push her off. \"So, like. You want to throw out some contingency plans? You want me to run some projections?\"\n\n\"Actually, uh,\" Alex says, slightly muffled from how Nora's still squishing his face between her hands. \"Did I tell you that I kind of... snuck off and took the LSAT this summer?\"\n\n\"Oh! Oh... _law school,_ \" she says, as simply as she said _dick you down_ all those months ago, the simple answer to where he's been unknowingly headed all along. She releases his face, shoving his shoulders instead, instantly excited. \"That's _it,_ Alex. Wait\u2014yes! I'm about to start applying for my master's; we can do it together!\"\n\n\"Yeah?\" he says. \"You think I can hack it?\"\n\n\"Alex. Yes. Alex.\" She's on her knees on the bed now, bouncing up and down. \"Alex, this is genius. Okay\u2014listen. You go to law school, I go to grad school, June becomes a speechwriter-slash-author Rebecca Traister\u2013Roxane Gay voice of a generation, I become the data scientist who saves the world, and you\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014become a badass civil rights attorney with an illustrious Captain America-esque career of curb-stomping discriminatory laws and fighting for the disenfranchised\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014and you and Henry become the world's favorite geopolitical power couple\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014and by the time I'm Rafael Luna's age\u2014\"\n\n\"\u2014people are going to be _begging_ you to run for Senate,\" she finishes, breathless. \"Yeah. So, like, a lot slower than planned. But.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Alex says, swallowing. \"It sounds good.\"\n\nAnd there it is. He's been teetering on the edge of letting go of this specific dream for months now, terrified of it, but the relief is startling, a mountain off his back.\n\nHe blinks in the face of it, thinks of June's words, and has to laugh. \"Fire under my ass for no good goddamn reason.\"\n\nNora pulls a face. She recognizes the June-ism. \"You are... passionate, to a fault. If June were here, she would say taking your time is going to help you figure out how best to use that. But I'm here, so, I'm gonna say: You are great at hustling, and at policy, and at leading and rallying people. You are so fucking smart that most people want to punch you. Those are all skills that will only improve over time. So, like, you are gonna crush it.\"\n\nShe jumps to her feet and ducks into his closet, and he can hear hangers sliding around. \"Most importantly,\" she goes on, \"you have become an icon of something, which is, like, a very big deal.\"\n\nShe emerges with a hanger in her hand: a jacket he's never worn out before, one she convinced him to buy online for an obscene price the night they got drunk and watched _The West Wing_ in a hotel in New York and let the tabloids think they were screwing. It's fucking _Gucci,_ a midnight-blue bomber jacket with red, white, and blue stripes at the waistband and cuffs.\n\n\"I know it's a lot, but\"\u2014she slaps the jacket against his chest\u2014\"you give people hope. So, get back out there and be Alex.\"\n\nHe takes the jacket from her and tries it on, checks his reflection in the mirror. It's perfect.\n\nThe moment is split with a half scream from the hallway outside of his bedroom, and he and Nora both run to the door.\n\nIt's June, tumbling into Alex's bedroom with her phone in one hand, jumping up and down, her hair bouncing on her shoulders. She's clearly come straight from one of her runs to the newsstand because her other arm is laden with tabloids, but she dumps them unceremoniously on the floor.\n\n\"I got the book deal!\" she shrieks, waving her phone in their faces. \"I was checking my email and\u2014the memoir\u2014 _I got the fucking deal!_ \"\n\nAlex and Nora both scream too, and they haul her into a six-armed hug, whooping and laughing and stomping on one another's feet and not caring. They all end up kicking off their shoes and jumping on the bed, and Nora FaceTimes Bea, who finds Henry and Pez in one of Henry's rooms, and they all celebrate together. It feels complete, the gang, as Cash once called them. They've earned their own media nickname in the wake of everything: The Super Six. Alex doesn't mind it.\n\nHours later, Nora and June fall asleep against Alex's headboard, June's head in Nora's lap and Nora's fingers in her hair, and Alex sneaks off to the en suite to brush his teeth. He nearly slips on something on the way back, and when he looks down, he has to do a double take. It's an issue of _HELLO! US_ from June's abandoned stack of magazines, and the image dominating the cover is one of the shots from his and Henry's portrait session.\n\nHe bends down to pick it up. It's not one of the posed shots\u2014it's one he didn't even realize had been taken, one he definitely didn't think would be released. He should have given the photographer more credit. He managed to capture the moment right when Henry cracked a joke, a candid, genuine photo, completely caught up in each other, Henry's arm around him and his own hand reaching up to grasp for Henry's on his shoulder.\n\nThe way Henry's looking at him in the picture is so affectionate, so openly loving, that seeing it from a third person's perspective almost makes Alex want to look away, like he's staring into the sun. He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn't bright enough.\n\nHe thinks again about Brooklyn, about Henry's youth shelter there. His mom knows someone at NYU Law, right?\n\nHe brushes his teeth and climbs into bed. Tomorrow they find out, win or lose. A year ago\u2014six months ago\u2014it would have meant no sleep tonight. But he's a new kind of icon now, someone who laughs on even footing with his royal boyfriend on the cover of a magazine, someone willing to accept the years stretching ahead of him, to give himself time. He's trying new things.\n\nHe props a pillow up on June's knees, stretches his feet out over Nora's legs, and goes to sleep.\n\n* * *\n\nAlex tugs his bottom lip between his teeth. Scuffs the heel of his boot against the linoleum floor. Looks down at his ballot.\n\n> PRESIDENT and VICE PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES\n> \n> Vote for One\n\nHe picks up the stylus chained to the machine, his heart behind his molars, and selects: _CLAREMONT, ELLEN and HOLLERAN, MICHAEL._\n\nThe machine chirps its approval, and to its gently humming mechanisms, he could be anybody. One of millions, a single tally mark, worth no more or less than any of the others. Just pressing a button.\n\n* * *\n\nIt's a risk, doing election night in their hometown. There's no _rule,_ technically, saying that the sitting president can't host their rally in DC, but it is customary to do it at home. Still, though.\n\n2016 was bittersweet. Austin is blue, deep blue, and Ellen won Travis County by 76 percent, but no amount of fireworks and champagne corks in the streets changed the fact that they lost the state they stood in to make the victory speech. Still, the Lometa Longshot wanted to come home again.\n\nThere's been progress in the past year: a few court victories Alex has kept track of in his trusty binder, registration drives for young voters, the Houston rally, the shifting polls. Alex needed a distraction after the whole tabloid nightmare, so he threw himself into an after-hours committee with a bunch of the campaign's Texas organizers, Skyping in to figure out logistics of a massive election day shuttle service throughout Texas. It's 2020, and Texas is a battleground state for the first time in years.\n\nHis last election night was on the wide-open stretch of Zilker Park, against the backdrop of the Austin skyline. He remembers everything.\n\nHe was eighteen years old in his first custom-made suit, corralled into a hotel around the corner with his family to watch the results while the crowd swelled outside, running with his arms open down the hallway when they called 270. He remembers it felt like his moment, because it was his mom and his family, but also realizing it was, in a way, not his moment at all, when he turned around and saw Zahra's mascara running down her face.\n\nHe stood next to the stage set into the hillside of Zilker and looked into eyes upon eyes upon eyes of women who were old enough to have marched on Congress for the VRA in '65 and girls young enough never to have known a president who was a white man. All of them looking at their first Madam President. And he turned and looked at June at his right side and Nora at his left, and he distinctly remembers pushing them out onto the stage ahead of him, giving them a full thirty seconds of soaking it in before following them into the spotlight.\n\nThe soles of his boots hit brown grass behind the Palmer Events Center like he's coming down from a much greater altitude than the back seat of a limo.\n\n\"It's early,\" Nora is saying, thumbing through her phone as she climbs out behind him in a plunging black jumpsuit and killer heels. \"Like, really early for these exit polls, but I'm pretty sure we have Illinois.\"\n\n\"Cool, that was projected,\" Alex says. \"We're on target so far.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't go that far,\" Nora tells him. \"I don't like how Pennsylvania looks.\"\n\n\"Hey,\" June says. Her own dress is carefully selected, off-the-rack J. Crew, white lace, girl-next-door. Her hair is braided down one shoulder. \"Can't we, like, have _one_ drink before y'all start doing this? I heard there are mojitos.\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah,\" Nora says, but she's still staring down at her phone, brow furrowed.\n\n> HRH Prince Dickhead\n\nNov 3, 2020, 6:37 PM\n\n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> Pilot says we're having visibility problems? May have to reroute and land elsewhere.\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> Landing in Dallas? Is that far?? I've no bloody clue about American geography.\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> Shaan has informed me this is, in fact, far. Landing soon. Will try to take off again once the weather clears.\n> \n> HRH Prince Dickhead  \n> \n> I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. How are things on your end?\n> \n> things are shit\n> \n> please get your ass here asap i'm stressing tf out\n\n> Oliver Westbrook   @BillsBillsBills\n> \n> Any GOPers still backing Richards after his actions toward a member of the First Family\u2014and, now, this week's rumors of sexual predation\u2014are going to have to reckon with their Protestant God tomorrow morning.\n> \n> 7:32 PM \u00b7 3 Nov 2020\n\n> 538 politics   @538politics\n> \n> Our projections had Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all at a 70% or higher chance of going blue, but latest returns have them too close to call. Yeah, we're confused too.\n> \n> 8:04 PM \u00b7 3 Nov 2020\n\n> The New York Times   @nytimes\n> \n> #Election2020 latest: a bruising round of calls for Pres. Claremont brings the electoral tally up to 178 for Sen. Richards. Claremont lags behind at 113.\n> \n> 9:15 PM \u00b7 3 Nov 2020\n\n* * *\n\nThey've partitioned off the smaller exhibit hall for VIPs only\u2014campaign staff, friends and family, congresspeople. On the other side of the event center is the crowd of supporters with their signs, their CLAREMONT 2020 and HISTORY, HUH? T-shirts, overflowing under the architectural canopies and into the surrounding hills. It's supposed to be a party.\n\nAlex has been trying not to stress. He knows how presidential elections go. When he was a kid, this was his Super Bowl. He used to sit in front of the living room TV and color each state in with red and blue magic markers as the night went on, allowed to stay up hours past his bedtime for one blessed night at age ten to watch Obama beat McCain. He watches his dad's jaw in profile now, trying to remember the triumph in the set of it that night.\n\nThere was a magic, then. Now, it's personal.\n\nAnd they're losing.\n\nThe sight of Leo coming in through a side door isn't entirely unexpected, and June rises from her chair and meets them both in a quiet corner of the room on the same instinct. He's holding his phone in one hand.\n\n\"Your mother wants to talk to you,\" Leo says, and Alex automatically reaches out until Leo holds out a hand to stop him. \"No, sorry, Alex, not you. June.\"\n\nJune blinks. \"Oh.\" She steps forward, pushes her hair away from her ear. \"Mom?\"\n\n\"June,\" says the sound of their mother's voice over the little speaker. On the other end, she's in one of the arena's meeting rooms, a makeshift office with her core team. \"Baby. I need you to, uh. I need you to come in here.\"\n\n\"Okay, Mom,\" she says, her voice measured and calm. \"What's going on?\"\n\n\"I just. I need you to help me rewrite this speech for, uh.\" There's a considerable pause. \"Well. Just in case of concession.\"\n\nJune's face goes utterly blank for a second, and suddenly, vividly _furious._\n\n\"No,\" she says, and she grabs Leo by the forearm so she can talk directly into the speaker. \" _No,_ I'm not gonna do that, because you're not gonna lose. Do you hear me? You're not losing. We're gonna fucking do this for four more years, _all of us._ I am not writing you a _goddamn concession speech,_ ever.\"\n\nThere's another pause across the line, and Alex can picture their mother in her little makeshift Situation Room upstairs, glasses on, high heels still in the suitcase, staring at the screens, hoping and trying and praying. President Mom.\n\n\"Okay,\" she says evenly. \"Okay. Alex. Do you think you could get up and say something for the crowd?\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah, sure, Mom,\" he says. He clears his throat, and it comes out as strong as hers the second time. \"Of course.\"\n\nA third pause, then. \"God, I love you both so much.\"\n\nLeo leaves, and he's quickly replaced by Zahra, whose sleek red dress and ever-present coffee thermos are the biggest comfort Alex has seen all night. Her ring flashes at him, and he thinks of Shaan and wishes desperately Henry was _here_ already.\n\n\"Fix your face,\" she says, straightening his collar as she shepherds him and June through to the main exhibit hall and into the back of the stage area. \"Big smiles, high energy, confidence.\"\n\nHe turns helplessly to June. \"What do I say?\"\n\n\"Little bit, ain't no time for me to write you anything,\" she tells him. \"You're a leader. Go lead. You got this.\"\n\nOh God.\n\n_Confidence._ He looks down at the cuffs of his jacket again, the red, white, and blue. _Be Alex,_ Nora said when she handed it to him. _Be Alex._\n\nAlex is\u2014two words that told a few million kids across America they weren't alone. A letterman jacket in APUSH. Secret loose panels in White House windows. Ruining something because you wanted it too badly and still getting back up and trying again. Not a prince. Something bigger, maybe.\n\n\"Zahra,\" he asks. \"Did they call Texas yet?\"\n\n\"No,\" she says. \"Still too close.\"\n\n_\"Still?\"_\n\nHer smile is knowing. \" _Still._ \"\n\nThe spotlight is almost blinding when he walks out, but he knows something. Deep down in his heart. They still haven't called Texas.\n\n\"Hey, y'all,\" he says to the crowd. His hand squeezes the microphone, but it's steady. \"I'm Alex, your First Son.\" The hometown crowd goes wild, and Alex grins and means it, leans into it. When he says what he says next, he intends to believe it.\n\n\"You know what's crazy? Right now, Anderson Cooper is on CNN saying Texas is too close to call. _Too close to call._ Y'all may not know this about me, but I'm kind of a history nerd. So I can tell you, the last time Texas was _too close to call_ was in 1976. In 1976, we went blue. It was Jimmy Carter, in the wake of Watergate. He just barely squeezed out fifty-one percent of our vote, and we helped him beat Gerald Ford for the presidency.\n\n\"Now, I'm standing here, and I'm thinking about it... A reliable, hardworking, honest, Southern Democrat versus corruption, and maliciousness, and hate. And one big state full of honest people, sick as hell of being lied to.\"\n\nThe crowd absolutely loses it, and Alex almost laughs. He raises his voice into the microphone, speaks up over the sound of cheers and applause and boots stomping on the floor of the hall. \"Well, it sounds a little familiar to me, is all. So, what do y'all think, Texas? \u00bfSe repetir\u00e1 la historia? Are we gonna make history repeat itself tonight?\"\n\nThe roar says it all, and Alex yells with them, lets the sound carry him off the stage, lets it wrap around his heart and squeeze back in the blood that's drained out of it all night. The second he steps backstage, there's a hand on his back, the achingly familiar gravity of someone else's body reentering his space before it even touches his, a clean, familiar scent light in the air between.\n\n\"That was _brilliant,_ \" Henry says, smiling, in the flesh, _finally._ He's gorgeous in a navy-blue suit and a tie that, upon closer inspection, is patterned with little yellow roses.\n\n\"Your tie\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" he says, \"yellow rose of Texas, is it? I read that was a thing. Thought it might be good luck.\"\n\nAll at once, Alex is in love all over again. He wraps the tie once around the back of his hand and reels Henry in and kisses him like he never has to stop. Which\u2014he remembers, and laughs into Henry's mouth\u2014he doesn't.\n\nIf he's talking about who he is, he wishes he'd been someone smart enough to have done this last year. He wouldn't have made Henry banish himself to a bunch of frozen shrubbery, and he wouldn't have just stood there while Henry gave him the most important kiss of his life. It would have been like this. He would have taken Henry's face in both hands and kissed him hard and deep and on purpose and said, \"Take anything you want and know you deserve to have it.\"\n\nHe pulls back and says, \"You're late, Your Highness.\"\n\nHenry laughs. \"Actually, I'm just in time for the upswing, it would seem.\"\n\nHe's talking about the latest round of calls, which apparently came in while Alex was onstage. Out in their VIP area, everyone's out of their seat, watching Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer parse the returns on the big screens. Virginia: Claremont. Colorado: Claremont. Michigan: Claremont. Pennsylvania: Claremont. It almost fully makes up the difference in votes, with the West Coast still to go.\n\nShaan is here too, in one corner with Zahra, huddled with Luna and Amy and Cash, and Alex's head almost spins at the thought of how many nations could be brought to their knees by this particular gang. He grabs Henry's hand and pulls him into it all.\n\nThe magic comes in a nervous trickle\u2014Henry's tie, hopeful lilts in voices, a few stray bits of confetti that escape the nets laced through the rafters and get stuck in Nora's hair\u2014and then, all at once.\n\n10:30 brings the big rush: Richards steals Iowa, yes, and sews up Utah and Montana, but the West Coast comes storming in with California's fifty-five fucking electoral votes. \"Big damn heroes,\" Oscar crows when it's called to raucous cheers and nobody's surprise, and he and Luna slap their palms together. _West Side Bastardos._\n\nBy midnight, they've taken the lead, and it does, finally, feel like a party, even if they're not out of the woods yet. Drinks are flowing, voices are loud, the crowd on the other side of the partition is electric. Gloria Estefan wailing through the sound system feels fitting again, not a stabbing, sick irony at a funeral. Across the room, Henry's with June, making a gesture at her hair, and she turns and lets him fix a piece of her braid that came loose earlier in a fit of anxiety.\n\nAlex is so busy watching them, his two favorite people, he doesn't notice another person in his path until he collides with them headfirst, spilling their drink and almost sending them both stumbling into the massive victory cake on the buffet table.\n\n\"Jesus, sorry,\" he says, immediately reaching for a pile of napkins.\n\n\"If you knock over another expensive cake,\" says an extremely familiar whiskey-warm drawl, \"I'm pretty sure your mom is gonna disinherit you.\"\n\nHe turns to see Liam, almost the same as he remembers\u2014tall, broad-shouldered, sweet-faced, scruffy.\n\nHe's so mad he has such a specific type of dude and never even noticed it for so long.\n\n\"Oh my God, you came!\"\n\n\"Of course I did,\" Liam says, grinning. Beside him, there's a cute guy grinning too. \"I mean, it kind of seemed like the Secret Service were gonna come requisition me from my apartment if I didn't come.\"\n\nAlex laughs. \"Look, the presidency hasn't changed me _that_ much. I'm still as aggressive a party instigator as I ever was.\"\n\n\"I'd be disappointed if you weren't, man.\"\n\nThey both grin, and God, on tonight of all nights it's good to see him, good to clear the air, good to stand next to someone outside of family who knew him before all this.\n\nA week after he got outed, Liam texted him: 1. I wish we hadn't been such dumb assholes back then so we both could have helped each other out with stuff. 2. Jsyk, a reporter from some right-wing website called me yesterday to ask me about my history with you. I told him to go fuck himself, but I thought you'd want to know.\n\nSo yeah, of course he got a personal invitation.\n\n\"Listen, I,\" Alex starts, \"I wanted to thank you\u2014\"\n\n\"Do not,\" Liam interrupts him. \"Seriously. Okay? We're cool. We'll always be cool.\" He makes a dismissive gesture with one hand and nudges the cute, dark-eyed guy at his side. \"Anyway, this is Spencer, my boyfriend.\"\n\n\"Alex,\" Alex introduces himself. Spencer's handshake is strong, all farmboy. \"Good to meet you, man.\"\n\n\"It's an honor,\" Spencer says earnestly. \"My mom canvassed for your mom when she ran for Congress back in the day, so like, we go way back. She's the first president I ever voted for.\"\n\n\"Okay, Spence, be cool,\" Liam says, putting an arm around Spencer's shoulders. A beam of pride cuts through Alex; if Spencer's parents were Claremont volunteers, they're definitely more open-minded than he remembers Liam's being. \"This guy shit his pants on the bus on the way back from the aquarium in fourth grade, so like, he's not that big of a deal.\"\n\n\"For the _last time,_ you douchebag,\" Alex huffs, \"that was Adam Villanueva, not me!\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know what I saw,\" Liam says.\n\nAlex is just opening his mouth to argue when someone shouts his name\u2014a photo op or interview or something for _BuzzFeed_. \"Shit. I gotta go, but Liam, we have, like, a shitload to catch up on. Can we hang this weekend? Let's hang this weekend. I'm in town all weekend. Let's hang this weekend.\"\n\nHe's already walking away backward, and Liam is rolling his eyes in an annoyed but fond way, not in a this-is-why-I-stopped-talking-to-you way, so he keeps going. The interview is quick, cut off mid-sentence: Anderson Cooper's face looms on the screen overhead like a disgustingly handsome Hunger Games cannon, announcing they're ready to call Florida.\n\n\"Come on, you backyard-shooting-range motherfuckers,\" Zahra is muttering under her breath beside him when he falls in with his people.\n\n\"Did she just say backyard shooting range?\" Henry asks, leaning into Alex's ear. \"Is that a real thing a person can have?\"\n\n\"You really have a lot to learn about America, mijo,\" Oscar tells him, not unkindly.\n\nThe screen flashes red\u2014 _RICHARDS_ \u2014and a collective groan grinds through the room.\n\n\"Nora, what's the math?\" June says, rounding on her, a slightly frantic look in her eyes. \"I majored in nouns.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Nora says, \"at this point we just need to get over 270 or make it impossible for Richards to get over 270\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes,\" June cuts in impatiently, \"I am familiar with how the electoral college works\u2014\"\n\n\"You asked!\"\n\n\"I didn't mean to remediate me!\"\n\n\"You're kinda hot when you get all indignant.\"\n\n\"Can we _focus_?\" Alex puts in.\n\n\"Okay,\" Nora says. She shakes out her hands. \"So, right now we can get over 270 with Texas or Nevada _and_ Alaska combined. Richards has to get all three of those. So nobody is out of the game yet.\"\n\n\"So, we _have_ to get Texas now?\"\n\n\"Not unless they call Nevada,\" Nora says, \"which never happens this early.\"\n\nShe barely has time to finish before Anderson Cooper is back onscreen with breaking news. Alex wonders briefly what it's going to be like to have future Anderson Cooper stress hallucinations. _NEVADA: RICHARDS._\n\n\"Are you _fucking_ kidding me?\"\n\n\"So, now it's essentially\u2014\"\n\n\"Whoever wins Texas,\" Alex says, \"wins the presidency.\"\n\nThere's a heavy pause, and June says, \"I'm gonna go stress eat the cold pizza the polling people have. Sound good? Cool.\" And she's gone.\n\nBy 12:30, nobody can believe it's down to this.\n\nTexas has never in history gone this long without being called. If it were any other state, Richards probably would have called to concede by now.\n\nLuna is pacing. Alex's dad is sweating through his suit. June is going to smell like pizza for a week. Zahra is on the phone, yelling into someone's voicemail, and when she hangs up, she explains that her sister is having trouble getting into a good daycare and agreed to put Zahra on the job as an outlet for her stress. Ellen, too tense to stay upstairs, is stalking through it all like a hungry lioness.\n\nAnd that's when June comes charging up to them, her hand on the arm of a girl Alex recognizes\u2014her college roommate, his brain supplies. She's got on a poll volunteer shirt and a broad smile.\n\n\"Y'all\u2014\" June says, breathless. \"Molly just\u2014she just came from\u2014fuck, just, tell them!\"\n\nAnd Molly opens her blessed mouth and says, \"We think you have the votes.\"\n\nNora drops her phone. Ellen steps over it to grab Molly's other arm. \"You think or you know?\"\n\n\"I mean, we're pretty sure\u2014\"\n\n\"How sure?\"\n\n\"Well, they just counted another 10,000 ballots from Harris County\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh my God\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait, _look_ \u2014\"\n\nIt's on the projection screen now. They're calling it. _Anderson Cooper, you handsome bastard._\n\nTexas is gray for five more seconds, before flooding beautiful, beautiful, unmistakable Lake LBJ blue.\n\nThirty-eight votes for Claremont, for a grand total of 301. And the presidency.\n\n\" _Four more years!_ \" Alex's mom outright screams, louder than he's heard her scream in _years._\n\nThe cheers come in a hum, in a rumble, and finally, in a storm, pressing from the other side of the partition, from the hills surrounding the arena and the city surrounding the streets, from the country itself. From, maybe, a few sleepy allies in London.\n\nFrom his side, Henry, whose eyes are wet, seizes Alex's face roughly in both hands and kisses him like the end of the movie, whoops, and shoves him at his family.\n\nThe nets are cut loose from the ceiling, and down come the balloons, and Alex staggers into a press of bodies and his father's chest, a delirious hug, into June, who is a crying disaster, and Leo, who is somehow crying _more._ Nora is sandwiched between both beaming, proud parents, screaming at the top of her lungs, and Luna is throwing Claremont campaign pamphlets in the air like a mafioso with hundred dollar bills. He sees Cash, severely testing the weight limits of the venue's chairs by dancing on one, and Amy, waving around her phone so her wife can see it all over FaceTime, and Zahra and Shaan, aggressively making out against a giant stack of CLAREMONT\/HOLLERAN 2020 yard signs. WASPy Hunter hoisting another staffer up on his shoulders, Liam and Spencer raising their beers in a toast, a hundred campaign staffers and volunteers crying and shouting in disbelief and joy. They did it. They _did_ it. The Lometa Longshot and a long-awaited blue Texas.\n\nThe crowd pushes him back into Henry's chest, and after absolutely everything, all the emails and texts and months on the road and secret rendezvous and nights of wanting, the whole accidentally-falling-in-love-with-your-sworn-enemy-at-the-absolute-worst-possible-time thing, they made it. Alex said they would\u2014he _promised._ Henry's smiling so wide and bright that Alex thinks his heart's going to break trying to hold the size of this entire moment, the completeness of it, a thousand years of history swelling inside his rib cage.\n\n\"I need to tell you something,\" Henry says, breathless, when Alex pulls back. \"I bought a brownstone. In Brooklyn.\"\n\nAlex's mouth falls open. \"You _didn't_!\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\nAnd for a fraction of a second, a whole crystallized life flashes into view, a next term and no elections left to win, a schedule packed with classes and Henry smiling from the pillow next to him in the gray light of a Brooklyn morning. It drops right into the well of his chest and spreads, like how hope spreads. It's a good thing everyone else is already crying.\n\n\"Okay, people,\" says Zahra's voice through the rush of blood and love and adrenaline and noise in his ears. Her mascara is streaming, her lipstick smeared across her chin. Beside her, he can hear his mother on the phone with one finger jammed into her ear, taking Richards's concession call. \"Victory speech in fifteen. Places, let's go!\"\n\nAlex finds himself shuffled sideways, through the crowd and over to a little corral near the stage, behind the curtains, and then his mother's on stage, and Leo, and Mike and his wife, and Nora and her parents and June and their dad. Alex strides out after them, waving into the white glow of the spotlight, shouting a jumble of languages into the noise. He's so caught up that he doesn't realize at first Henry isn't at his side, and he turns back to see him hovering in the wings, just behind a curtain. Always hesitant to step on anyone's moment.\n\nThat's not going to fly anymore. He's family. He's part of it all now, headlines and oil paintings and pages in the Library of Congress, etched right alongside. And he's part of _them._ Goddamn forever.\n\n\"Come on!\" Alex yells, waving him over, and Henry spares a second to look panicked before he's tipping his chin up and buttoning his suit jacket and stepping out onto the stage. He gravitates to Alex's side, beaming. Alex throws one arm around him and the other around June. Nora presses in at June's other side.\n\nAnd President Ellen Claremont steps up to the podium.\n\n> EXCERPT: PRESIDENT ELLEN CLAREMONT'S VICTORY ADDRESS FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS, NOVEMBER 3, 2020\n> \n> Four years ago, in 2016, we stood at a precipice as a nation. There were those who would have seen us stumble backward into hatred and vitriol and prejudice, who wanted to reignite old embers of division within our country's very soul. You looked them square in the eye and said, \"No. We won't.\"\n> \n> You voted instead for a woman and a family with Texas dirt under their shoes, who would lead you into four years of progress, of carrying on a legacy of hope and change. And tonight, you did it again. You chose me. And I humbly, humbly thank you.\n> \n> And my family\u2014my family thanks you too. My family, made up of the children of immigrants, of people who love in defiance of expectations or condemnation, of women determined never to back down from what's right, a braid of histories that stands for the future of America. My family. Your First Family. We intend to do everything we can, for the next four years and the years beyond, to continue making you proud.\n\n* * *\n\nThe second round of confetti is still falling when Alex grabs Henry by the hand and says, \"Follow me.\"\n\nEveryone's too busy celebrating or doing interviews to see them slip out the back door. He trades Liam and Spencer the promise of a six-pack for their bikes, and Henry doesn't ask questions, just kicks the stand out and disappears into the night behind him.\n\nAustin feels different somehow, but it hasn't changed, not really. Austin is dried flowers from a homecoming corsage in a bowl by the cordless phone, the washed-out bricks of the rec center where he tutored kids after school, a beer bummed off a stranger on the spill of the Barton Creek Greenbelt. The nopales, the hipster cold brews. It's a weird, singular constant, the hook in his heart that's kept tugging him back to earth his whole life.\n\nMaybe it's just that _he's_ different.\n\nThey cross the bridge into downtown, the gray grids intersecting Lavaca, the bars overflowing with people yelling his mother's name, wearing his own face on their chests, waving Texas flags, American flags, Mexican flags, pride flags. There's music echoing through the streets, loudest when they reach the Capitol, where someone has climbed up the front steps and erected a set of loudspeakers blasting Starship's \"Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now.\" Somewhere above, against the thick clouds: fireworks.\n\nAlex takes his feet off the pedals and glides past the massive, Italian Renaissance Revival fa\u00e7ade of the Capitol, the building where his mom went to work every day when he was a kid. It's taller than the one back in DC. Everything's bigger, after all.\n\nIt takes twenty minutes to reach Pemberton Heights, and Alex leads the Prince of England up onto the high curb of a neighborhood in Old West Austin and shows him where to throw his bike in the yard, spokes still spinning little shadow lines across the grass. The sounds of expensive leather soles on the cracked front steps of the old house on Westover don't sound any stranger than his own boots. Like coming home.\n\nHe steps back and watches Henry take it all in\u2014the butter-yellow siding, the big bay window, the handprints in the sidewalk. Alex hasn't been inside this house since he was twenty. They pay a family friend to look after it, wrap the pipes, run the water. They can't bear to let it go. Nothing's changed inside, just been boxed up.\n\nThere are no fireworks out here, no music, no confetti. Just sleeping, single-family homes, TVs finally switched off. Just a house where Alex grew up, where he saw Henry's picture in a magazine and felt a flicker of something, a start.\n\n\"Hey,\" Alex says. Henry turns back to him, his eyes silver in the wash of the streetlight. \"We _won._ \"\n\nHenry takes his hand, one corner of his mouth tugging gently upward. \"Yeah. We won.\"\n\nAlex reaches down into the front of his dress shirt and finds the chain with his fingers, pulls it out carefully. The ring, the key.\n\nUnder winter clouds, victorious, he unlocks the door.\n\n# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\nI came up with the idea for this book on an I-10 off-ramp in early 2016, and I never imagined what it would turn out to be. I mean, at that point I couldn't imagine what _2016 itself_ would turn out to be. Yikes. For months after November, I gave up on writing this book. Suddenly what was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek parallel universe needed to be escapist, trauma-soothing, alternate-but-realistic reality. Not a perfect world\u2014one still believably fucked up, just a little better, a little more optimistic. I wasn't sure I was up to the task. I hoped I was.\n\nWhat I hoped to do, and what I hope I have done with this book by the time you've finished it, my dear reader, is to be a spark of joy and hope you needed.\n\nI couldn't have done any of this without the help of so many. To my angel of an agent, Sara Megibow, thank you for driving this crazy bus. I went into this whole experience hoping to find one person who felt even half of what I feel for this book, and you matched me from the first moment we spoke. Thank you for being the champion this book needed and the reassurance always at my back. To Vicki Lame, my editor, the Texas girl who fought for this book and always saw in it what it could mean to people. Thank you for giving this your all, for forever being the person in the corner of the ring with the water bottle. You and the team at St. Martin's Griffin have literally made dreams come true. Thank you to my publicity team, DJ DeSmyter and Meghan Harrington, and to everyone else who threw themselves behind this book.\n\nMore thanks: Elizabeth Freeburg, who taught me more than I can ever give back to her, without whom I'd be half the writer I am today. Lena Barsky, who doula'd this entire novel, who was the first to love these characters as much as I do. Sasha Smith, my literary sherpa who believed in me most, without whom I would have been drowning before I was even out of the slip. Shanicka Anderson, the beta reader of my dreams, who loved this book even when it was 40,000 words too long. Lauren Heffker, the person who sat with me in a Taco Bell while I untangled this plot, who never didn't want to hear what I was thinking. Season Vining, who poured my wine and told me that my dream wasn't so unattainable. Leah Romero, my number-one fan and political inspiration, the reader I was always writing to impress. Tiffany Martinez, who read this book with care and love and gave it to me straight. Laura Marquez, who helped with translations. CJSR, who knows it all, whose sleepless nights this book happened in spite of. My FoCo fam, my new home.\n\nTo my family, who have done more for me over the years than any person deserves: You had no idea what you were signing on for when I told you I wrote a book, but y'all still cheered me on. Thank you for loving me as I am. Thank you for letting me be your weirdo baby. To Dad, my original storyteller: I know you always knew I had this in me. Thank you for helping me believe it. Big as the universe, over the clouds, forever. This is my best work to date.\n\nTo the sources that helped me with the mountains of research I did for this: WhiteHouseMuseum.org, the Royal Collection Online, _My Dear Boy_ by Rictor Norton, the V&A's extremely helpful website, countless others. To the country of Norway, literally, for the week that broke me out of the slump and made 110,000 words of the first draft happen. To \"Texas Reznikoff\" by Mitski.\n\nTo every person in search of somewhere to belong who happened to pick up this book, I hope you found a place in here, even if just for a few pages. You are loved. I wrote this for you.\n\nKeep fighting, keep making history, keep looking after one another.\n\nAffectionately yrs. Have a Shiner on me.\n\n# **ABOUT THE AUTHOR**\n\nCASEY MCQUISTON grew up in the swamps of Southern Louisiana, where she cultivated an abiding love for honey butter biscuits and stories with big, beating hearts. She studied journalism and worked in magazine publishing for years before returning to her first love: joyous, offbeat romantic comedies and escapist fiction. She now lives in the mountains of Fort Collins, Colorado, with a collection of caftans and her poodle mix, Pepper. You can sign up for email updates here.\n\n**Thank you for buying this**\n\n**St. Martin's Press ebook.**\n\nTo receive special offers, bonus content,\n\nand info on new releases and other great reads,\n\nsign up for our newsletters.\n\nOr visit us online at\n\nus.macmillan.com\/newslettersignup\n\nFor email updates on the author, click here.\n\n# CONTENTS\n\n  1. Title Page\n  2. Copyright Notice\n  3. Dedication\n  4. Chapter One\n  5. Chapter Two\n  6. Chapter Three\n  7. Chapter Four\n  8. Chapter Five\n  9. Chapter Six\n  10. Chapter Seven\n  11. Chapter Eight\n  12. Chapter Nine\n  13. Chapter Ten\n  14. Chapter Eleven\n  15. Chapter Twelve\n  16. Chapter Thirteen\n  17. Chapter Fourteen\n  18. Chapter Fifteen\n  19. Acknowledgments\n  20. About the Author\n  21. Copyright\n\nThis is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.\n\nRED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE. Copyright \u00a9 2019 by Casey McQuiston. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.\n\nwww.stmartins.com\n\nCover design by Kerri Resnick\n\nCover illustration by Colleen Reinhart\n\nThe Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:\n\nNames: McQuiston, Casey, author.\n\nTitle: Red, white & royal blue: a novel \/ Casey McQuiston.\n\nOther titles: Red, white and royal blue\n\nDescription: First edition. | New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2019.\n\nIdentifiers: LCCN 2018055526 | ISBN 9781250316776 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 9781250316783 (ebook)\n\nClassification: LCC PS3613.C587545 R43 2019 | DDC 813\/.6\u2014dc23\n\nLC record available at <https:\/\/lccn.loc.gov\/2018055526>\n\neISBN 9781250316783\n\nOur ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.\n\nFirst Edition: May 2019\n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Title Page\n  2. Copyright Notice\n  3. Dedication\n  4. Chapter One\n  5. Chapter Two\n  6. Chapter Three\n  7. Chapter Four\n  8. Chapter Five\n  9. Chapter Six\n  10. Chapter Seven\n  11. Chapter Eight\n  12. Chapter Nine\n  13. Chapter Ten\n  14. Chapter Eleven\n  15. Chapter Twelve\n  16. Chapter Thirteen\n  17. Chapter Fourteen\n  18. Chapter Fifteen\n  19. Acknowledgments\n  20. About the Author\n  21. Newsletter Sign-up\n  22. Copyright\n\n## Guide\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n  3. Start of Content\n  4. Acknowledgments\n\n## Pagebreaks of the print version\n\n  1. 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+{"text":" \n_A_ _Persian_ __ _Requiem_ is a powerful and evocative novel. Set in the southern Persian town of Shiraz in the last years of World War II, when the British army occupied the south of Persia, the novel chronicles the life of Zari, a traditional, anxious and superstitious woman whose husband, Yusef, is an idealistic feudal landlord. The occupying army upsets the balance of traditional life and throws the local people into conflict. Yusef is anxious to protect those who depend upon him and will stop at nothing to do so. His brother, on the other hand, thinks nothing of exploiting his kinsmen to further his own political ambitions. Thus a web of political intrigue and hostilities is created, which slowly destroys families. In the background, tribal leaders are in open rebellion against the government, and a picture of a society torn apart by unrest emerges.\n\nIn the midst of this turbulence, normal life carries on in the beautiful courtyard of Zari's house, in the rituals she imposes upon herself and in her attempt to keep the family safe from external events. But the corruption engendered by occupation is pervasive \u2013 some try to profit as much as possible from it, others look towards communism for hope, whilst yet others resort to opium. Finally even Zari's attempts to maintain normal family life are shattered as disaster strikes.\n\nAn immensely moving story, _A_ _Persian_ _Requiem_ is also a powerful indictment of the corrupting effects of colonization.\n\nA _Persian_ _Requiem_ (first published in 1969 in Iran under the title _Savushun),_ was the first novel written by an Iranian woman and, sixteen reprints and half a million copies later, it remains the most widely read Persian novel. In Iran it has helped shape the ideas and attitudes of a generation in its revelation of the factors that contributed to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. \nSimin Daneshvar's _A_ _Persian_ __ _Requiem_... goes a long way towards deepening our understanding of Islam and the events leading up to the 1979 Revolution... The central characters adroitly reflect different Persian attitudes of the time, attitudes that were eventually to harden into support for either the Ayatollah and his Islamic fundamentalism or, alternatively, for the corrupting Westernisation of the Shah. The value of the book lies in its ability to present these emergent struggles in human terms, in the day-to-day realities of small-town life... Complex and delicately crafted, this subtle and ironic book unites reader and writer in the knowledge that human weakness, fanaticism, love and terror are not confined to any one creed.\n\n_The_ _Financial_ _Times_\n\n_A_ _Persian_ _Requiem_ is not just a great Iranian novel, but a world classic.\n\n_The_ _Independent_ _on_ _Sunday_\n\n... it would be no exaggeration to say that all of Iranian life is there.\n\n_Spare_ _Rib_\n\nFor an English reader, there is almost an embarrassment of new settings, themes and ideas... Under the guise of something resembling a family saga \u2013 although the period covered is only a few months \u2013 _A_ _Persian_ __ _Requiem_ teaches many lessons about a society little understood in the West.\n\nRachel Billington, _The_ _Tablet_\n\nThis very human novel avoids ideological cant while revealing complex political insights, particularly in light of the 1979 Iranian revolution.\n\n_Publishers_ _Weekly_\n\n_A_ _Persian_ _Requiem,_ originally published [in Iran] in 1969, was a first novel by Iran's first woman novelist. It has seen sixteen reprints, sold over half a million copies, and achieved the status of a classic, literally shaping the ideas of a generation. Yet when asked about the specific appeal of the novel, most readers are at a loss to pinpoint a single, or even prominent aspect to account for this phenomenal success. Is it the uniquely feminine perspective, allowing the reader to travel freely between the microcosm of the family and the larger framework of society? Is it the actual plot which mimics so presciently the events of the Islamic Revolution? Or does it lie in the deftly woven anecdotes and fragments which add up to a descriptive whole? It is each and all of these, and perhaps more.\n\n_Feminist_ _Review_\n\nDaneshvar offers a fascinating, detailed view of what seems to Western eyes the complicated, rarified world of Iranian culture.\n\n_Belles_ _Lettres_\n\nIn addition to being an important literary document of historical events, [ _A_ _Persian_ __ _Requiem_ ] __ represents a pioneering attempt to probe the multi-faceted aspects of Iranian womanhood in a period of great social and political upheaval.\n\n_San_ _Francisco_ _Review_ _of_ _Books_\n\nDaneshvar combines creative vision with an exceptional talent for conveying atmosphere to give a powerful portrait of the struggles and dilemmas of ordinary individuals caught in the maelstrom of war and occupation.\n\n_Middle_ _East_ _International_\n\nThis is a colourful and accurate portrayal of Persian character and spirit, a beautifully evoked picture of traditional life in times of upheaval. Its popularity in Iran is eloquent of Persian perceptions not only of themselves but also of the role of the British in their country. Roxane Zand is to be thanked for giving the English reader the chance to enjoy this sensitive and important novel.\n\n_British_ _Journal_ _of_ _Middle_ _Eastern_ _Studies_\n\nA powerful portrait of a bygone era of Iranian social history.\n\n_The_ _Jerusalem_ _Post_\n\n\"...a revelation of freshness and vivacity...\"\n\nAnita Desai\n\n\"Not to be missed.\"\n\nShusha Guppy\n\n\"Beautifully translated, and many-layered, _A Persian Requiem_ challenges convention, of east and west.\"\n\nFred Halliday\n\n\"...a great work by a great Persian writer.\"\n\nHan Suyin\n\n# A PERSIAN REQUIEM\n\n_A Novel by_  \nSimin Daneshvar\n\n_Translated by_   \nRoxane Zand\n\n# Contents\n\nPraise\n\nTitle Page\n\nAbout the translator\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nMap\n\nGlossary\n\nAbout the Author\n\nCopyright\n\n# About the translator\n\nRoxane Zand was born in Tehran. She studied Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and Social History at Oxford University. She takes a strong interest in women's issues. \n\n# Acknowledgements\n\nI would like to thank the following for their generous help and involvement with this translation, ever since it was first undertaken, and throughout the many years it collected dust or met with misadventure: Dr. John Gurney, Keyvan Mahjour, Mohsen Ashtiani, the late Dr. Hamid Enayat, Aamer Hussein, Iradj Bagherzade and Ali Gheissari.\n\nA special thanks to Simin Daneshvar whose place in our hearts extends beyond that of artist and humanist to a particular kind of inspiration. My gratitude for her patience and loyal support.\n\nFinally, my love and thanks to Hamid who has journeyed with me through this book, and to my sons, Vahid and Karim.\n\nThis translation is dedicated to the memory of Amou Sarrafi, who first introduced me to it in 1969.\n\nRoxane Zand\n\n# Map\n\n# _1_\n\nIt was the wedding day of the Governor's daughter. The Shirazi bakers had got together to bake an impressive sangak loaf, the likes of which had never been seen before.\n\nGroups of guests filed into the marriage room just to admire the bread. Zari Khanom and Yusef Khan also managed to see it close up. The minute Yusef set eyes on it, he blurted out loud: \"Those fools! Licking the boots that kick them! And to waste so much at a time like this...\"\n\nThe guests nearby who overheard Yusef first edged away and then left the room. Zari, suppressing her admiration, caught Yusef's hand and implored him, \"For God's sake, Yusef, don't talk like that, not tonight.\"\n\nYusef laughed at his wife. He always tried to laugh her off. His full, well-defined lips parted to reveal teeth which had once sparkled, but were now yellow from pipe-smoking. Then he left, but Zari stayed behind to gaze at the bread. Bending over, she lifted the hand-printed calico tablecloth to reveal an improvised table made of two old doors. All around the table were trays of wild rue arranged in flowery patterns and pairs of lovers. And in the centre was the bread, baked the colour of burnished copper. A poppy-seed inscription read: \"Presented by the Bakers' Guild to our honourable Governor\" with \"congratulations\" written all around the edge.\n\n\"Where on earth did they find an oven big enough to bake it?\" Zari wondered silently. \"How much flour did it take? Yusef's right\u2014what a time for all this! A time when a loaf like that would make supper for a whole family, when getting bread from the bakery is a major feat. Only recently there was a rumour in town that the Governor had threatened to throw a baker into his own oven as an example to others because everyone who had eaten his bread had come down with stomach cramps and vomiting. They said the bread was black as ink from all the dirt and scraps mixed in it. But then, as Yusef says, how can you blame the bakers? All the town's provisions\u2014from wheat to onions\u2014have been bought up by the occupying army. And now... how on earth do I cover up for what Yusef has just said?\"\n\nSuddenly a voice broke into her thoughts.\n\n\"Salaam.\"\n\nShe looked up and saw the English missionary doctor, Khanom Hakim, standing in front of her with Captain Singer. They shook hands with her. Both spoke only broken Persian.\n\n\"How are being the twins?\" Khanom Hakim asked, adding to Captain Singer in the same clumsy language, \"All of her three children being delivered by me.\"\n\n\"I did not doubt it,\" replied Captain Singer.\n\nTurning back to Zari, she asked, \"The babies' dummy still being used?\" Struggling through a few more sentences in Persian, she finally tired of it and carried on in English. But Zari was too distracted to understand, even though she had studied at the English school and her late father was considered the best English teacher in town.\n\nIt was really Singer who captured her attention, and although Zari had heard about his transformation, she refused to believe it until she saw him with her own eyes. The present Captain Singer was none other than Mr Singer, the sewing machine salesman who had come to Shiraz seventeen years ago, and who treated anyone buying his sewing machines to ten free sewing lessons delivered by himself in his barely understandable Persian. He would squeeze his enormous bulk behind the sewing machine and teach the girls of Shiraz embroidery, lattice-work and pleating. It was a wonder he didn't laugh at the ridiculous figure he cut. But the girls, including Zari, learned well.\n\nZari had been told that overnight, as soon as war broke out, Mr Singer had donned a military uniform, complete with badges of rank. Now she could see that it really suited him. It must have taken a lot, she thought, to live as an impostor for seventeen years. To have a fake job, fake clothes\u2014to be a fraud in every respect. But what an expert he had been! How cunningly he had persuaded Zari's mother to buy a sewing machine\u2014Zari's mother, whose sole fortune was her husband's modest pension. Mr Singer had told her that all a young woman needed for her dowry was a Singer sewing machine. He had claimed that the owner of a sewing machine could always earn her own living, and had said that all the leading families in town had bought one from him for their daughters' dowry; as proof, he had produced a notebook containing a list of his influential customers.\n\nAt this moment, three Scottish officers, wearing kilts and what seemed like women's knee-length socks, broke Zari's train of thoughts as they came forward to join them. Behind them came McMahon, the Irishman, who was Yusef's friend. McMahon was a war correspondent and always carried a camera. He greeted Zari and asked her to tell him all about the wedding ceremony. Willingly she described all the details of the vase, the candlesticks, the silver mirror, and the reasons for the shawl, the ring wrapped in silk brocade and the symbolic meaning of the bread and cheese, the herbs and the wild rue.\n\nTwo large sugar cones, made at the Marvdasht Sugar Refinery especially for the wedding, were placed one at either end of the ceremonial table. One cone was decorated as a bride and the other as a groom, complete with top hat. In one corner of the room stood a baby's pram lined in pink satin and piled high with coins and sugar-plums. Zari pulled back the silk brocade cloth covering the traditional saddle and explained to McMahon, \"The bride sits on this so she can dominate her husband forever.\"\n\nA few people around them chuckled loudly and McMahon clicked away busily with his camera.\n\nJust then, Zari's glance fell on Gilan Taj, the Governor's younger daughter, who seemed to be beckoning to her. She excused herself and went over to the young girl. Gilan Taj was no more than ten or eleven, the same age as Zari's own son, with honey-coloured eyes and sleek, brown shoulder-length hair. She was wearing ankle socks and a short skirt.\n\n\"Mother says would you please lend her your earrings,\" Gilan Taj asked Zari. \"She wants the bride to wear them just for tonight. They'll be returned to you first thing tomorrow morning. It's Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's fault for bringing a length of green silk for the bride to put around her shoulders. She says it will bring good luck, but my sister isn't wearing anything green to match it.\" The young girl could have been repeating a lesson by heart.\n\nZari was dumb-struck. When had they spotted her emerald earrings,  let alone made plans for getting their clutches on them? In all the bustle, who could have spared the time to fuss over such minor details of the bride's dress? She said to herself, \"I bet it was that woman Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's doing. Those beady eyes of hers constantly keep track of what everyone has.\" Aloud she replied nervously, \"Those were a wedding present\u2014a special gift from Yusef's poor mother.\"\n\nHer mind flashed back to that night in the bridal chamber when Yusef had put the earrings on her himself. He was sweating profusely, and in all the hustle and bustle he had groped nervously under the women's scrutiny to find the small holes in her earlobes.\n\n\"They're playing the wedding tune,\" Gilan Taj prompted. \"Please hurry. Tomorrow morning then...\"\n\nZari took off the earrings.\n\n\"Be very careful,\" she warned, \"make sure the drops don't come off.\" In her heart she knew that the likelihood of ever seeing those earrings again was very remote indeed. Yet how could she refuse?\n\nAt this point the bride entered on Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's arm. \"Yes,\" thought Zari, \"that woman is never slow to become confidante and busybody to every new governor of the town.\" The bride was followed by five little girls each carrying a posy of flowers and wearing frilly dresses, and five boys in suits and ties. The room was now full, and the ladies started to clap. The British officers who were still there quickly followed suit. Clearly all the pomp and formality was for their benefit, but to Zari the wedding march seemed more like a mournful procession out of a Tazieh passion play.\n\nThe bride sat on the saddle, in front of the silver mirror and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh rubbed the sugar cones together over her head to ensure sweetness in the marriage. Then a woman holding a needle and red thread pretended to sew up the tongues of the groom's relatives. This raised a loud guffaw from the British officers. Next, a black nursemaid carrying a brazier of smoking incense suddenly appeared out of nowhere like a genie.\n\n\"All the villains of the Ta'zieh are here,\" Zari mused to herself. \"Marhab, Shemr and Yazid, the farangi, the unwanted Zeynab, the rapacious Hend, Aysheh, and last but not least Fezza!\" And for an instant it occurred to her that she was thinking just like Yusef.\n\nThe crowded room was noisy and stifling. The smell of incense mixed with the strong scent of tuberoses, carnations and gladioli which were displayed in large silver vases around the room but glimpsed only from time to time between the whirl of the ladies' dresses.\n\nZari missed the moment when the bride gave her consent. Suddenly she felt a hand on her arm.\n\n\"Mother is very grateful,\" whispered Gilan Taj; \"they really suit her...\"\n\nThe rest of her sentence was drowned in the commotion and blare of military music which followed the wedding tune. A booming which pulsated like the beating of battle drums...\n\nNow it was Ferdows, the wife of Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's manservant, who came in, threading her way past the guests to give her mistress her handbag. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh took out a pouch full of sugar-plums and coins which she showered over the bride's head. To save the foreign officers the trouble of scrambling for a coin, she handed one to each of them and one to Khanom Hakim. Until that moment Zari had not seen Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's son, Hamid Khan, in the wedding room, but she noticed him now speaking to the British officers.\n\n\"My dear mother has the Midas touch!\" she heard him saying. Turning to her abruptly, he said, \"Zari Khanom, please translate for them.\"\n\nZari ignored him.\n\n\"Not on your life!\" she retorted silently. \"My former suitor! I had more than enough of you and your ways that time when our history teacher took us sixteen-year-old girls to your home on the pretext of visiting an eighteenth-century house. You looked us over with your lecherous eyes, supposedly showing us the baths and the Zurkhaneh, boasting that your ancestor, the famous Sheriff, built the hall of mirrors and that Lutf-Ali Khan had done the painting on the mirrors. And then your mother had the nerve to come to the Shapuri public baths on our usual bath-day and barge her way into our cubicle just so she could size up my naked body. It was lucky Yusef had already asked for my hand, otherwise my mother and brother might well have been taken in by your extravagant life-style.\"\n\nThe ceremony over, celebrations got under way in the garden and on the front verandah. All the cypresses, palms and orange trees had been strung with light bulbs\u2014each tree a different colour. Large bulbs lit the larger trees, while small ones had been used for the smaller, twinkling like so many stars. Water flowed from two directions in a terraced stream into a pool, cascading over the red glow of rose-shaped lamps set inside each step. The main part of the garden had been spread with carpets for dancing. Zari assumed the wiring for the waterfall lights ran under the carpets. Around the edge of the pool they had alternated bowls full of different kinds of fruit, three-branched candlelabra and baskets of flowers. If a gust of wind blew out one of the candles, a servant would instantly relight it with a short-stemmed taper.\n\nThe Governor, a tall, heavy-set man with white hair and a white moustache, was standing by the pool welcoming even more guests. An English Colonel with a squint, walking arm in arm with Zari's former headmistress, was the last to arrive. Behind them came two Indian soldiers carrying a basket of carnations in the shape of a ship. When they reached the Governor, they placed it at his feet. At first the Governor didn't notice the flowers as he was busy kissing the English-woman's hand. But the headmistress must have drawn his attention to them because the Governor shook hands with the Colonel again before extending his hand to the Indian soldiers. They, for their part, merely clicked their heels together, saluted, about-turned, and withdrew.\n\nThen came the hired musicians. One played the zither, while his plump friend accompanied him on the tar and an attractive young boy sang a song. When the song was over, there was a dance followed by another song. The musicians then changed to a rhythmic beat and a group of men and women dressed as Qashqais did a sort of tribal dance. Zari had seen a lot of fake things in her time, but never fake Qashqais!\n\nNow it was the turn of the hired musicians brought over especially from Tehran. The noises sounded confused to Zari; even the sight of all those dishes piled high with sweets and dried fruit and nuts nauseated her. The sweets had probably been sent by the Confectioners' Guild and the fruit and the nuts by the Grocers' Guild, she thought cynically. The five-tiered wedding cake flown in by air had, she knew, been presented by the Supreme Command of the foreign armed forces. They had displayed it on a table on the verandah. On the top tier stood a bride and groom hand in hand, with a British flag behind them, each crafted skilfully out of icing.\n\nTo Zari it felt like watching a film. Especially with the foreign army in full regalia: Scottish officers in kilts, Indian officers in turbans... If she hadn't lost her earrings, thought Zari, it would have been possible to sit back and enjoy the show.\n\nThe bride and groom led the dancing. The bride's long train with its glittering rhinestones, sequins and pearls swept over the carpet like a trail of shooting stars. She was no longer wearing the length of green silk or her bridal veil, but the earrings were still there. The British Colonel had one dance with the bride; so did Captain Singer, in whose large arms the bride skipped about like a grasshopper. He even trod on her toes several times.\n\nThen the foreign officers sought out the other ladies. The Shirazi women in their colourful dresses danced in the arms of strangers while their men, perched on the edge of their seats, kept a nervous eye on them. Some of the men seemed particularly restless and agitated. Was it the light-hearted tempo of the music, or an inner fire kindled at the sight of strangers holding their wives so closely? It was impossible to know. At the end of the dance the officers carefully returned the ladies to their chairs, as if they were incapable of finding their own way back. They clicked their heels and kissed the lady's hand, at which the woman's own escort would nearly jump out of his seat and then settle back to try to compose himself. Not unlike a jack-in-the-box. The only person who didn't dance was McMahon. He took pictures instead.\n\nCaptain Singer came over to Zari. He clicked his heels smartly and said with a bow: \"Shall we dance?\"\n\nShe excused herself. Singer shrugged and moved on to ask Khanom Hakim. Zari looked over at Yusef who was sitting a few chairs away. His eyes were fixed on her, those eyes that seemed to her deeper in colour than the azure of spring skies. He winked at her, and she felt a pang in her heart. A faint teardrop always seemed to lurk in the depths of Yusef's eyes, making them glisten like two moist jewels\u2014like the emeralds of her earrings.\n\nNow the Colonel and Singer, either together or singly, began to accompany some of the men on a brief walk to the bottom of the garden. After a few minutes they would return and head straight for the bar, where they drank each other's health. Zari saw Singer whisper something in Yusef's ear, at which Yusef rose and set off with him down the garden path, with its border of illuminated cypresses and orange trees. But they were back almost immediately. This time they did not visit the bar. Zari saw Captain Singer make a sign to the Colonel, whose expression reflected his annoyance. Yusef came and sat next to Zari, his face flushed and his fair moustache trembling.\n\n\"Let's get up and leave quietly,\" he said.\n\nFlicking her hair forward to cover her bare ears, Zari said: \"As you like.\"\n\nShe was getting up to leave when McMahon appeared, drink in hand, and sat down next to them. He had drunk so much gin he could barely keep his eyes open. He spoke in English:\n\n\"You're at loggerheads with the big tailor again, Yusef?\" he asked. \"I must admit, it's even more difficult for you Persians to deal with the British than it is for us Irish... Did you like my poem that I recited for you earlier tonight? You did, didn't you? Now I'm thinking of composing a poem for your town...\"\n\nPointing to the slice of lime in his drink, he said: \"The lime with its light green delicate peel, its fragrance combining all the perfumes of the plain, and the cypress tree with its strength and restraint\u2014these are the things which grow in this region. People usually resemble the nature surrounding them; in this case, delicate and restrained. They've sent me to ask why you're not delicate and restrained, Yusef. I'm doing well you know, even though I'm blind drunk. Look how easily I've accomplished my mission!\" He turned to Zari. \"Cheers!\" he said, draining his glass and putting it on the table.\n\n\"Let's go and sit on the bench near that ship of flowers,\" he suggested. \"Zari, you come too\u2014the presence of a lovely woman is always inspiring. That warship laden with flowers is a gift from our Supreme Command.\" They moved across to the bench. \"That's better. Where's my glass? Zari, please pour us another drink.\n\n\"We are related, aren't we?\" he carried on, with a faraway look in his eyes. \"Iran and Ireland. Both lands of the Aryans. You the ancestors and we the descendants. O ancient, ancient ancestors, console us! Here am I a Catholic Irishman, a patriarch, a drunkard, bound to end up dying in a ditch one foul, rain-sodden day, or wandering around poor houses looking for some old woman to claim as my mother. I can see her now, knitting woollen socks with little patterns for her son at the front... like the ones I'm wearing. You see, my father was on air-raid duty; he knew that the planes were bombing our area, he knew that at any moment they would wipe out our home, and he knew that mother was there knitting patterned socks for her son at the front. When they pulled her out from underneath the rubble, she was still clutching the knitting needles\u2014and now my father has written me a letter. He has written to me to say he's sorry... he's sorry that...\"\n\nMcMahon's speech was becoming slurred and he broke off for a moment. Then he raised his hand in a grandly drunken gesture:\n\n\"Why did you, you home-loving Catholic family, wrapped in your traditions, with your confession and such nonsense... why did you uproot yourselves and move to London? If you had stayed to help put right and free your own poor, blighted Ireland you wouldn't have had to pay so dearly for that move.\n\n\"Away from home,\" he paused, \"I remember making up tales of Ireland, boasting to others of her countless poets, and sighing for my impoverished land. I remember saying that in our land the youth were innocent, uncorrupted, and people would ask me if I thought they were corrupt in London. We were all fooling ourselves. We'd forgotten Ireland's alcoholics. We'd forgotten the ships which arrived every week and loaded up their cargo\u2014the youth of Ireland\u2014and set sail for America. We ignored the fact that the convicts among them would be sent to the colonies\u2014like our tailor here. That big tailor has surely got it in for you, Yusef. He can't stand the sight of you; nor me, for that matter. I told the Consul yesterday to count you out. But the big tailor won't let him....\"\n\nHe half-drained his glass, then continued:\n\n\"Some people are like rare flowers; others resent their existence. They imagine that such a flower will use up all the earth's strength, all the sunshine and moisture in the air, taking up their space, leaving them no sunlight or oxygen. They envy it and wish it didn't exist. Either be like us, or don't be at all\u2014that's what they say. You Persians have the occasional rare flower among you, but also a lot of oleander to keep mosquitoes away, and then some plain grass which is only good for the sheep. Well,\" he rambled on, smiling, \"there's always a branch on every tree which is taller and leafier than others. And this taller branch has its eyes and ears open and can see everything clearly. But no one likes it that way. So they send the drunken Irish poet, the war correspondent, to mollify you, Yusef, and this reporter carries his father's letter here in his coat pocket; his father who'd written to say he's sorry that... well, if you give in, Yusef, it's all over.\" He took a long gulp. His eyes were barely open. Then he continued sorrowfully:\n\n\"O Ireland, O land of Aryan descent, I have composed a poem for a certain tree which must grow in your soil. The name of this tree is the 'Tree of Independence'. You must nurture it with blood, not with water. Yes, Yusef, you were right. If independence is good for me, it's good for you too. And that story you told me turned out to be so useful when I began to write. You said that in your folklore they talk of a tree whose leaves, when dried and put on the eyes, make you invisible, allowing you to do whatever you want. I wish there was one of these trees in Ireland and one here in your town.\"\n\nMcMahon fell silent. After a while he lit a cigarette and continued:\n\n\"All this mumbo-jumbo was just to keep you listening. When my father's letter arrived with the news... I sat and wrote a story for your Mina\u2014for your twins. Where's my story?\" He searched in his pockets. \"I thought I put it with my father's letter... you see, I want to build an airplane which drops toys for children... or else pretty stories. Ah, here it is!\"\n\nHe took out a notebook and began to read.\n\n\"Once upon a time there was a little girl called Mina. She always cried for the stars when she couldn't see them in the sky. When she was smaller, her mother would pick her up in her arms, show her the sky and say: 'Little little moon, pretty pretty stars, come to Mina' or something like that, which is why Mina fell in love with the stars. Now whenever it's cloudy at night, Mina cries for the stars. If only the maid would sweep the sky\u2014she's slapdash and brushes the dust away here and there, so on the nights she sweeps, at least some of the stars can be seen. But alas, if mother sweeps, she polishes the sky clean and gathers up all the stars and the moon and puts them in a sack. Then she sews up the sack, puts it in the cupboard and locks the door. But Mina found out what to do. She plotted with her sister to steal their mother's keys and now they sleep hugging the keys tightly. If they don't have the keys, they don't sleep a wink. I've never seen a little girl so in love with the stars, and I've never seen a town like yours where you can hide stars in its cupboards...\"\n\nHe took another sip of his drink and said: \"That's the end of Mina's story. Say bravo, Yusef! See what a yarn I've spun from odds and ends you've told me about your twins. You say the people of your town are born poets: well, the Irish are like that too...\"\n\nThen he became silent.\n\nZari was deep in thought when she noticed her brother-in-law, Abol-Ghassem Khan, approaching. McMahon stood up, picked up his glass and left. Abol-Ghassem Khan took his seat.\n\n\"Is that whisky?\" he asked.\n\n\"No, it's gin,\" Zari answered. \"Shall I pour you a glass?\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan said quietly to Yusef: \"Listen brother, you're being as stubborn as a mule. After all they're guests in our country. They won't be staying here forever, you know. And if we don't give them what they want, they'll take it by force. They won't be put off by the locks and bolts on your store-rooms either. Besides, you know they'll pay. I sold the entire contents of my store-rooms in one go... I've already taken a down payment for the wheat before it's even sprouted. After all, they're the bosses.\"\n\n\"I'm all too well aware that they're unwelcome guests,\" Yusef told his brother dryly. \"But the worst thing is the feeling of inferiority that's taken hold of everyone; overnight they've turned all of you into their lackeys, go-betweens, and errand-boys. Why don't you let at least one person stand up to them so they can say to themselves that they've finally come across a man?\"\n\nBefore Abol-Ghassem Khan could reply, dinner was announced. The guests filed inside the house. Zari, her husband and her brother-in-law pretended to be on their way too, but lingered.\n\n\"Sister, say something,\" said Abol-Ghassem Khan, turning to Zari. \"Your husband is downright insulting to his elder brother.\"\n\n\"What can I say?\" Zari challenged.\n\nTurning back to Yusef, Abol-Ghassem Khan said: \"Now listen, brother, you're young and you don't understand. You're gambling with your life with this stubbornness of yours, and creating trouble for all of us as well. These foreigners have to feed a whole army. You know very well an army that big can't be kept hungry.\"\n\n\"But our own people can be!\" Yusef replied sharply. \"The peasants who have been expecting to survive on the provisions from my store-rooms can be kept hungry!\"\n\n\"Listen, last year and the year before you got away with not giving them anything and somehow we covered up for you and made up the amount. But this year it just won't work. Right now provisions and petrol are even more valuable to them than guns and ammunition.\"\n\nThey were still arguing when Gilan Taj came up to them and said: \"Mother says please come in for dinner.\"\n\nAs they walked in, Abol-Ghassem Khan whispered in Zari's ear: \"I hope he doesn't take it into his head not to come to their party tomorrow evening. They've even invited Khosrow. I'll pick you all up myself.\"\n\n\"But tomorrow's Thursday; it's a holy evening and I have a lot to do. You know the vow I made.\"\n\n\"Sister, I'm counting on you!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan pleaded.\n\nWhen they reached home, Zari sat on the bed. She only took off her shoes. Yusef was straightening out his trousers on the bed, ready for the hanger. When he had put on his night-clothes he went into the children's room next door. Zari could see him from where she was sitting, standing by the twins' bed watching them. Then he moved forward out of sight, but Zari knew he would be smoothing out their pillows, taking the keychain which they liked to hold at bedtime. She knew he would be kissing them and murmuring endearments to them. Then she heard a door open, and knew he had gone into their son Khosrow's room. He would be tucking him in, and whispering a few words of prayer for his future.\n\nYusef came back to their bedroom. Zari had not moved from the bed.\n\n\"Aren't you going to sleep?\" Yusef asked, handing her the keychain, adding with a laugh, \"The little twins are so funny!\"\n\nHe sat down next to his wife. \"I suppose you want me to undo your buttons. I'm sorry I didn't remember.\"\n\nWithout turning her back, Zari said: \"McMahon wrote such a pretty story about them.\"\n\n\"Did you understand all of it?\"\n\n\"Yes, I've got used to his Irish accent by now.\"\n\n\"Do you know what Mina told me today when I tossed her in the air and hugged her? She asked, 'Daddy, did mummy give you two stars? I can see them in your eyes'.\"\n\nZari laughed. \"The child is right. There always seem to be stars twinkling in your eyes.\"\n\nYusef began to undo the buttons of his wife's dress.\n\n\"My goodness, what are all these buttons for?\" he said. \"Early this evening I said some things to McMahon, and if ever Singer gets to hear about them I'm done for.\" He undid the buttons and Zari's dress fell around her waist. He began to unhook her bra.\n\n\"I told McMahon that the people of this town were born poets but their poetry has been stifled; their heroes have been castrated. There's no room left for them to fight back, so at least there could be some glory, or the honour of an open challenge. They've made this into a land with no heroes and this town into a graveyard; the liveliest neighbourhood is the Mordestan district.\"\n\nYusef unhooked Zari's bra, and putting his hands over her breasts, said: \"I feel sorry for your breasts; you bind them so tightly.\"\n\nZari felt her breasts responding. Her nipples gradually hardened. Yusef put his lips on his wife's shoulder. His lips were warm.\n\n\"Didn't he ask what the Mordestan district was?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"Yes, he did. I told him it's the neighbourhood where the residents are mainly pathetic women who earn a livelihood from painting up their faces, and whom those Indian soldiers are sent to. The officers are much better off in that respect. I told him, 'You've killed the poetry, but instead the cab-drivers, prostitutes and go-betweens have picked up a few words of English.' McMahon said there was no need to tell him any of this, he was heartily sick of the war himself.\"\n\nYusef reached forward and stroked his wife's hair. He was about to kiss the back of her neck when Zari turned around and, throwing her arms about his neck, began to cry. Yusef asked in surprise: \"Are you crying because of me? You know I can't be like the others. I can't see our people go hungry. Someone has to be man enough to stand up...\"\n\n\"Let them do whatever they want, but please don't let them bring this war into my home. What do I care if the whole town has turned into a red-light district? My town, my country is this household... but they're going to drag this war to my doorstep too.\"\n\nYusef held his wife's face in his hands and kissed away her tears.\n\n\"Go and wash your face,\" he said soothingly. \"It's not the time for this sort of talk. I swear to God, you're a thousand times prettier without make-up. Your face is like one of those they paint on tiles. Come on, my love. I want you tonight.\"\n\nZari undressed, and put out the light. She didn't want Yusef to see the 'geography map' on her stomach, as she called it. Even though Yusef always kissed the scars and said, \"You've suffered this for me.\" It was Khanom Hakim who had disfigured her belly with stitch-marks and puckered scars.\n\nShe climbed into bed, and when Yusef's warm, hairy legs touched her cold ones, and his large hand caressed her breast moving lower and lower down, she forgot everything\u2014the earrings, Captain Singer, Khanom Hakim, the bride, the military music, the drums, and the beady-eyed, squinting, bald wedding guests... she forgot it all. Instead, in her ears was the sound of water flowing gently over red flowers; and before her stood the image of a ship full of flowers, a ship that was not a warship. \n\n# _2_\n\nWhen Zari woke up on Thursday morning it was still half dark. She crept quietly out of the bedroom, and when she had finished washing, she joined her sister-in-law at the breakfast table in the parlour. Ameh Khanom was sitting behind the boiling samovar. The twins, Mina and Marjan, were chattering like two little sparrows as they hung around the breakfast table. It was for their safe delivery, and also in thanks for the birth of their brother Khosrow, that Zari had vowed to take bread and dates to the prisoners and the patients in the asylum.\n\nBecause of her slender build and narrow hips, Zari had had a difficult time at childbirth. With each pregnancy she had hoped for a home birth, making all the necessary arrangements with the best midwife in town, but in the end she found herself resorting to Khanom Hakim and the Missionary Hospital on the one hand, and to vows and prayers on the other. And of course, Khanom Hakim was a great one for the scalpel. She loved to cut and sew. Delirious with pain at the first delivery, Zari had pleaded with God, vowing, as an act of charity, to take home-baked bread and dates every week to the mental patients. Then, when she became pregnant again five years later, she was so frightened, she made a vow in advance to do the same, but this time for prisoners.\n\nAmeh Khanom poured her a glass of tea. \"Well, how was last night?\" she asked.\n\n\"You should have been there! I'm afraid there was yet another quarrel between the two heads of the family.\"\n\n\"I know my brother Abol-Ghassem, I know Yusef too. Abol-Ghassem Khan isn't straightforward. And since he's taken it into his head to become a parliamentary deputy, he's even less so.\"\n\n\"He made me promise faithfully to go to the foreigners' party. I don't know how I'm going to carry out my vow.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about that. I'll ask Haj Mohammad Reza, the dyer, to go to the asylum with Gholam. I'll go to the prison with Hossein Agha, the grocer. Sakineh is here stoking up the oven, and the dough has already risen. I looked in after finishing my prayers. I think the bread is setting. You go to the party, sister. I don't want any more quarrelling between those two.\"\n\nAt that moment Khosrow came into the parlour.\n\n\"Here's Khosrow!\" Mina shouted gleefully, clapping her hands together. \"He'll let me ride his horse, won't you, Khosrow?\" Marjan, who was a quarter of an hour younger, imitated and followed her sister in everything. She clung to Khosrow's leg and said to Mina: \"First you play with him, then me, all right?\"\n\n\"No time to play, I have to go to school now,\" Khosrow said, patting them both on the head hurriedly. Mina pulled at the tablecloth. The samovar tipped and nearly fell over, but Ameh Khanom steadied it just in time.\n\n\"They can really drive you mad with their mischief,\" she said, as she handed them each a sugar lump.\n\nKhosrow reached for the sugar bowl. \"Mother, may I? They're shoeing Sahar this afternoon,\" he said, taking five lumps and putting them in his pocket. Then he took some tea from his aunt, and reached out for two more lumps. As he put them in his pocket, his aunt said, \"Don't you want any sugar in your tea?\"\n\n\"No, I'll be late for school.\"\n\n\"Abol-Ghassem has sent Seyyid Moti-ud-Din, the mullah, a sackful of sugar and twenty packets of tea belonging to his own peasants and workers,\" Ameh added to Zari with a laugh. \"I've heard my dear brother stands right behind the mullah when he leads the prayers in the mosque. Abol-Ghassem, who's never in his life known which way to face when he prays!\"\n\n\"Auntie, I've seen Seyyid Moti-ud-Din, the mullah! I saw him the day we went to the bazaar with Gholam to buy Sahar a saddle,\" Khosrow exclaimed. \"He was riding a white donkey. He brought his hand out from his cloak and held it up like this in the air... like this...\" He waved his hand in imitation of the mullah, sitting astride his chair and rocking himself back and forth as if he were riding a donkey. \"Everyone who passed by kissed his hand; Gholam and I kissed it too. He had to bring it lower down for me because I was shorter.\"\n\nSuddenly there was a knock at the garden gate. Zari's heart leapt. Perhaps they had brought her earrings back from the Governor's house! But so early in the morning? The sun was just rising. She went out to the verandah. There she saw Gholam in his nightshirt, coming out of the stables at the bottom of the garden. As always he was wearing his felt hat to cover his baldness. He opened the gate to let in Abol-Ghassem Khan who walked in with a brisk air. Disappointed, Zari thought to herself, \"What if they send them back so late that Yusef is up and finds out... oh, how silly I am! What earrings? Who on earth is going to remember my earrings!\"\n\nShe returned to the parlour and sat down. When Abol-Ghassem Khan walked in, Ameh said: \"Talk of the devil. I was just singing your praises.\"\n\n\"You must have been saying that with all this running about, I'll finally make it as a deputy,\" he said. \"And I will. I've seen the Colonel and the Consul. The Governor has promised, too. Only the mullah is putting his spoke in my wheel. He flatters me in the mosque one day, and takes it all back the next.\"\n\n\"Maybe the sugar and tea you sent him didn't go down too well!\" Ameh remarked.\n\n\"Sister, what are you talking about? What tea and sugar?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan retorted sharply, throwing a look in Khosrow's direction.\n\n\"I'm the eldest amongst you, and I'm entitled to give you advice,\" Ameh said quietly. \"You have not chosen the right path, brother. And besides, Khosrow is not a stranger.\"\n\n\"So you think the path your precious brother Yusef has chosen is the right one?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan replied angrily. \"Taking sugar and clothing coupons from the government with one hand and passing them on to his peasants with the other? Well, what's the young fool getting out of it for himself? Whenever he goes to his village he takes medicine for the peasants. God alone knows that all the medicine in the world won't cure our peasants.\"\n\nAs Khosrow stood up to say goodbye, Abol-Ghassem Khan asked, \"Where's Yusef now?\"\n\n\"He's getting up,\" Zari replied. \"He'll be here soon.\" She busied herself making fresh tea.\n\n\"Always sleeping, always sleeping!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan complained. \"In his village too, he's either asleep or sitting under the mosquito net, reading a book. My heels are cracked, my face scorched and wrinkled from the sun, but his Lordship keeps himself wrapped up in cotton wool.\" Then he added emphatically: \"Peasants have to be afraid of their landlords. You must stand over them with a whip, like an elephant driver. You have to use the cane and the bastinado. Remember the old saying: peasants must be kept living from hand to mouth.\" He took some tea from Zari before going on.\n\n\"Yusef doesn't know about winter crops or the summer harvest. He can only keep his eyes glued to the sky, watching for rain. And if it doesn't rain he gets really upset; not for himself, of course, but for the peasants and their sheep. And when you try to set him straight, he only comes up with his favourite saying, 'What the peasant reaps belongs to him, even if the land doesn't'.\"\n\nAmeh interrupted, \"It's his way of being charitable. If he can't ensure his lot in this world, he will at least have his salvation hereafter. Besides, brother, why is it any of your business? It's not your money he's giving away.\"\n\nZari could hear Sahar, Khosrow's horse, neighing in the garden. She knew Khosrow must have gone to the stables before leaving for school and set Sahar loose in the garden. When he heard the neighing, Abol-Ghassem Khan stood up and looked out of the parlour window. His eyes followed the colt carefully.\n\n\"What a beauty he's become,\" he said. \"Glitters like gold! Look at him rolling on the cool grass! Now he's standing again. Wide-set eyes, broad forehead, good ears\u2014a perfect creature! Look at that golden mane and arched tail. He holds his head high too, just like his mother.\"\n\nSahar neighed again, revelling in his freedom. Abol-Ghassem Khan returned to his seat.\n\n\"Thank God you approve of one thing in this household,\" Ameh Khanom said with a sigh.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan laughed: \"Everything he does is so fanciful. Who keeps horses nowadays? Apart from my brother, that is, who's got three in his stables...\" Mimicking Yusef, he said, \"I like to go to the village on horseback. I ride the bay mare myself, my steward rides the roan, and the colt belongs to Khosrow.\"\n\nAt that moment Yusef came in. He was wearing a light cloak over his shoulders. He greeted everyone, and looked with surprise from his brother to his sister. Then he threw Zari an enquiring look, but she merely shook her head.\n\n\"Has Khosrow gone?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Where are Mina and Marjan?\"\n\n\"They're watching Sakineh bake bread and probably chattering away as usual,\" Ameh replied.\n\nYusef sat down. \"Has something happened, God forbid?\" he asked his brother.\n\nAbol-Ghassem did not answer. Instead, he took a small book from his pocket and put it solemnly on the table. \"Swear on the holy Quran,\" he said, \"that you'll come tonight and that you won't stir up any trouble with your usual comments. Now, if you don't want to sell the surplus provisions from your village to the foreign army, don't. But you don't have to say so to them in so many words. Stall them somehow, until harvest time. You have to go to the lowlands in a few days anyway\u2014tell them you'll give it to them after the harvest. Who knows what'11 happen tomorrow? Maybe they'll be defeated by then and good riddance to them. They say Hitler is having a bomb made that will wipe out the world... now swear!\"\n\nYusef sighed. \"I never said I wasn't coming this evening,\" he said. \"There's no need for swearing. But as far as fooling them goes, I'm a straightforward person. I won't lie to save my skin.\"\n\n\"For God's sake, swear,\" Abol-Ghassem implored. \"I've never said this before, but now I will. Our father Haj Agha, God rest his soul, spent a great deal of money on your education, but not much on mine. When he was dividing his wealth he gave us equal shares even though I'm the older brother. Did I say anything then? Even when it came to marriage, you were the one who ended up winning the hand of Zari Khanom, Razieh Khanom's attractive daughter. Now that there's an opportunity for me at last, let me make something of my life too.\" He quoted a line from a Hafez poem: \"Of strangers I have no complaints. Alas, what I've suffered has been at the hands of my own kith and kin...\"\n\n\"Brother,\" interrupted Ameh, \"one thing I know for sure is that neither your father nor his father before him ever begged a favour of anyone. Not from the unclean foreigners, nor from our own social climbers. Haj Agha never once took off his mullah's turban. He remained a recluse all his life. In that assembly\u2014I forget the name... who cares what it was called, anyway\u2014he didn't vote for the man they'd all been told to vote for. If Yusef was his favourite, it was because they had a similar temperament and believed in the same things.\"\n\n\"Now I'm getting it from you, too!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan shouted angrily. \"If our Haj Agha had had a brain in his head, we would be rolling in money today. He spent everything he had on that Indian dancer, Soudabeh. My mother died heartbroken in a foreign land because of her. If he had had any brains at all he wouldn't have married you off to that imbecile, Mirza Miyur's son, who got himself killed on purpose, and you wouldn't have ended up as a servant in the house of...\"\n\nZari cut her brother-in-law short. \"Abol-Ghassem Khan, Ameh Khanom is the eldest among us and the most respected. If it weren't for her, I could never manage such a large place by myself. Besides, this house is her home.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know,\" he said. \"She manages well enough for herself, and stirs up trouble for everyone else besides.\" He got up and added in a surprisingly gentle tone: \"I hadn't intended to mention the dead and speak badly of our past first thing in the morning. On such a nice day, too. Well, it just happened. Don't take it to heart, sister. Goodbye.\"\n\nZari accompanied the two brothers to the garden gate. Sahar was grazing, but the moment he smelt a stranger, he stopped and lifted his head. His pink nostrils flared. Abol-Ghassem Khan stopped in front of him. The colt stepped back and neighed. His mother answered from the stable. When Yusef approached, Sahar nuzzled at his cloak and lifted his head, sniffing the familiar odour. Yusef caressed his neck and mane. Later, when husband and wife returned from seeing Abol-Ghassem Khan out, they found Sahar cantering from one side of the garden to the other.\n\n\"Zari, look! He's chasing the butterflies,\" Yusef said.\n\nSahar must have been getting hot, because he rolled over several times on the shaded part of the grass. Then he got up, and all of a sudden charged after a brown and yellow butterfly.\n\nWhen they reached the verandah, Yusef paused and looked at the garden.\n\n\"Your town is looking pretty,\" he said. \"It's a pity that it's summer again, and I won't have so much time for you or your town as I'll be at the village.\"\n\n\"My town?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"Didn't you say last night that this house was your town?\"\n\nZari laughed. \"Oh yes,\" she said dreamily. \"This is my town and I love every inch of it. The hill behind the garden, the verandah all around the house, the two streams on either side of the footpath, the two elms, the orange trees you planted with your own hands. That fruit tree to which you grafted a new fruit each year, the scent distillery next door, with its mounds of flowers and herbs in season, flowers and herbs whose very names make you happy... citron, willow, eglantine; and more than anything the orange blossoms and the scents which waft into our garden from over the wall. The sparrows and starlings and the crows, too, have made this their home. But the sparrows make me cross, you know. They build their nests above the windows, or in the trees, and their eggs are always falling and breaking all over the place. They're so careless, those birds.\"\n\n\"Your voice is as soft as velvet,\" Yusef said with a smile. \"Like a lullaby. Go on.\"\n\n\"What shall I talk about?\" Zari said. \"About the people in my town? About you? About the children and Ameh and our neighbours?\"\n\n\"About Haj Mohammad Reza, the dyer...\" Yusef added with a laugh.\n\n\"About Haj Mohammad the dyer, with the colourful fabrics he ties on sticks, and leaves in the street to dry in the sun; with his arms dyed purple up to the elbows. About Gholam and Hossein Agha the grocer around the corner, and Hassan Agha the corn chandler... about Khadijeh... that's enough now! You're not letting me get on with my work.\"\n\nShe was interrupted by the sound of tinkling bells. She knew it would be the donkeys arriving at the neighbour's.\n\n\"They've bought orange-flower blossoms next door. What a scent!\" Yusef exclaimed.\n\nZari couldn't tear herself away. She waited until the donkeys entered the neighbour's garden and unloaded their perfumed bundles. Only yesterday morning she had taken the twins to see the pile of orange-blossoms. Mina had clapped and said, \"Oh look how many stars there are!\"\n\nAnd Marjan had laid her head on the heap of flowers and said, \"I want to sleep right here.\"\n\nZari meanwhile had been engrossed in the actions of the old distiller and his three sons. The old man had knelt before the orange-blossoms and piled them into baskets that the boys put on their heads to carry into the store-room. The old man had nicknamed Marjan 'Nargessi', and Mina 'Narengi'. Zari had no idea why. And when his work was finished, he made Nargessi and Narengi a toy water-mill from an apple and four pieces of thin wood. He put the water-mill in the stream so that the running water turned it. The children were so happy\u2014as if they owned the greatest water-mill in the world. And Zari kept on wondering why the old man hadn't married his sons off. It was high time they were married.\n\nThen she thought to herself: \"Why should people who live with so many beautiful flowers need to get married anyway...\" \n\n# _3_\n\nWhen they had cleared the table, Zari brought the hookah for her husband. Khosrow had been restless at lunch and became more so as time passed. It even looked as though there were tears in his eyes which he was fighting back. Zari put the twins to bed for their afternoon rest and then returned to the parlour to take the pipe away. Khosrow was pacing around the room. His father's eyes followed his movements.\n\n\"Tell me, why have we gone through all these preparations?\" he asked his son.\n\n\"So he wouldn't be afraid,\" Khosrow answered sadly.\n\n\"It wasn't only for that,\" Yusef added.\n\nKhosrow sat down next to his father. \"Every time the blacksmith comes, I lift Sahar's foot myself,\" he said. \"In the beginning he was very frightened and he shied, especially when the smith put the nails in. Of course, he hammered very lightly at first but yesterday he hit very hard.\"\n\n\"Well,\" reassured Yusef, \"he did it so that when Sahar is being shod, he won't be frightened or pull away which might cause a nail to go into his foot. Now today, I'll hold up his foot myself, just as I once helped to deliver him.\" He turned to Zari who had come to sit by them. \"You've put the hookah in front of you, as if you wanted to smoke it yourself,\" he said.\n\nZari took a puff but gave up the moment she began to cough.\n\n\"Father, may I come and watch?\" Khosrow asked.\n\n\"Of course. Weren't you there when he was born?\"\n\n\"Yes! Do I remember! Sahar stood up right away. The mare chewed off the cord and began to lick and smell him. You threw your cloak on him so he wouldn't catch cold and you rubbed his body to keep him warm while Gholam fetched a blanket... But he's really naughty now, isn't he?\" he added laughingly. \"He bites his mother, then he changes his mind and licks her.\" Khosrow paused, then said, \"Father, why do I love Sahar so much? I want to talk about him all the time. When I'm sitting in class I keep praying for the bell to ring so I can rush home and play with him.\"\n\n\"There's nothing wrong with loving, my son. Loving lightens the heart, just as malice and hatred darken it. Learn to love now, and then when you grow up you'll be ready to love what's good and beautiful in the world. The heart is like a garden full of flowers in bud. If you water them, they'll open; if you feed them with hatred, they'll wither. Remember that malice and hatred are not for the beautiful and good but for the ugly, the dishonourable and the unjust. A hatred of these things means a love of justice and honour.\"\n\n\"Father, you're talking above my head again,\" Khosrow complained.\n\n\"Didn't you understand what I said?\"\n\n\"I think I understood. You said that there is nothing wrong in loving Sahar. Then you said I must water the flowers...\"\n\n\"We must have been miles away while father was lecturing!\" laughed Zari. \"If you ask me, you should go to your uncle's and visit your cousin Hormoz, and come back when they've finished with Sahar.\"\n\n\"No Zari,\" Yusef said. \"Khosrow has to learn that if Sahar is to be shod, he must put up with a few nails. He has got to realize that there's pain and suffering in this world.\"\n\n\"Father, will it hurt him very much?\"\n\n\"No. The important thing is to learn to endure things. We've trained him to stop playing around for a few minutes, long enough to put up with the shoeing. Whereas other horses...\"\n\n\"But father, that herd of wild horses you told me a story about,\" Khosrow interrupted, \"they didn't have bridles or shoes.\"\n\n\"What was the story?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"I don't remember it myself,\" Yusef said.\n\nKhosrow sprang up, exclaiming: \"Don't you remember? You told me the story the night Sahar was born. Afterwards, Gholam and I talked a lot about the herd of horses. Gholam said you made it all up so I'd stop crying.\"\n\nStifling a laugh, Zari asked, \"What was the story?\"\n\n\"Father, let me tell it... It was when father was invited to stay with the Qashqai tribe. One night when there was a moon and the air was as clear as can be, with the sky full of stars, they went hunting. Suddenly, in the middle of a very, very big plain, they saw a herd of wild horses. The stallions were standing in a really wide circle facing outwards, their backs to the centre, where a mare was giving birth. The stallions were too embarrassed to look, because a baby comes out from a very bad place. Father and the others didn't go any closer because the horses would have charged on them... well, I mean the stallions were standing like that to reassure the mare, otherwise she would have been scared. After all, some wild animal could have attacked the foal. And, oh yes, I forgot to say that an older mare stood by as a kind of midwife.\"\n\n\"Did I say the baby comes out from a very bad place?\" Yusef asked.\n\n\"No, father, Gholam said that.\"\n\nAt that moment Gholam came in, wearing his faithful old felt hat.\n\n\"Is the blacksmith here?\" Khosrow asked.\n\n\"His wife is here. She says he's got a fever,\" he replied, and turning to Yusef, \"he won't be coming.\"\n\nThat evening Gholam came back with two porters who could carry loads on their heads. Two copper trays, piled high with bread and dates covered with a calico table-cloth, had been put out by the pool in front of the house, ready for collection. Ameh, wearing her veil, was sitting next to one of the trays. Haj Mohammad Reza, the dyer, was pacing up and down outside the gate. But Hossein Agha, the grocer, had come inside and was admiring the orange blossoms in the grove.\n\nZari herself went to the prison and asylum on alternate weeks. But there was always someone who could help her out with her vow and go to the place she wasn't visiting that week. And when there was no volunteer, there were Hossein Agha and Haj Mohammad Reza to turn to\u2014they were good neighbours who would never leave a friend in the lurch.\n\nZari, Ameh and Khadijeh the maid had been busy all afternoon putting dates between pieces of bread. Now Zari stood in front of her dressing-table, applying a touch of make-up. From her bedroom window she could see the garden and listen to what was going on. She could hear Ameh asking one of the porters, \"Well, how much do you charge?\"\n\n\"Where do I have to go?\" he asked.\n\n\"The Karim Khan prison\u2014the dungeon,\" Ameh told him, to which the man replied, \"God bless you; I don't want any money. Give me some home-made bread instead.\"\n\n\"Where do I go?\" the other porter asked.\n\n\"You go to the mental asylum,\" Ameh told him.\n\n\"Pay me in bread too,\" he said.\n\nZari patted her face, smoothing out the powder. Then she walked on to the verandah.\n\n\"Sister, they're asking for bread instead of money,\" Ameh explained to her.\n\n\"All right,\" Zari replied. Turning to Gholam she said, \"Give them each ten loaves.\"\n\n\"I have further to go, but it doesn't matter,\" the first porter said. \"This fellow's child is ill. It's this disease they say the foreign army has brought with them. I've heard that the water in the Vakil reservoir has been contaminated.\"\n\n\"God protect us!\" Ameh exclaimed.\n\n\"As if their presence alone wasn't enough, they had to bring their diseases as well,\" Hossein Agha complained.\n\n\"You're giving charity to prisoners and madmen on the holy eve of Friday,\" the first porter said, \"but no one remembers the needy standing right in front of them.\"\n\n\"May God repay them for their charity anyway,\" said the second porter. \"Our God is generous too.\"\n\nGholam arrived with the bread. Both porters unwound the cloths they usually twisted into a tight coil to use as padding for their heads while carrying the trays. Then they carefully wrapped the bread inside these cloths and tied the bundles around their waists, bulging out in front like a pair of pregnant women.\n\n\"What will you carry on your head, then?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"If we don't do this,\" the first porter explained, \"someone may snatch the bread from us. Especially this home-made bread, so fresh and delicate. Just the smell of it makes your stomach growl! It's a good thing you've covered the trays with tablecloths.\"\n\n\"But you're taking a droshke. No-one is going to snatch the bread from you in the little way you'll need to walk.\"\n\n\"It looks like the lady isn't a native of this town!\"\n\n\"Gholam, go and get the master's and Khosrow's waistcloths from Khadijeh,\" Zari said, \"and coil them into pads. These men can't carry the trays on their bare heads.\"\n\nAs Gholam ran back inside, a car drew up at the garden gate, and sounded its horn. Zari saw Abol-Ghassem Khan and his son Hormoz come in. She thought, \"Oh my God! I'm not ready yet,\" and dashed inside. There, she quickly took off her house-dress, pulled on a woollen sweater and a skirt, and started looking for her shoes.\n\n\"Hello, everybody!\" she heard Abol-Ghassem say. \"Will you be long?\"\n\n\"Now don't rush her,\" Ameh's voice rose in reply. \"This is the first time she isn't carrying out her vow herself, and all for your sake.\"\n\n\"It's a long way and we must be there at five o'clock sharp,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan insisted.\n\n\"Isn't it near Seyyid Abol Vafa's shrine?\"\n\n\"No, sister, it's about four miles further on.\"\n\n\"Now why don't you do a good deed for a change and help these poor porters. While the others get ready for the party you can give the porter and me a lift in your car.\"\n\n\"What's the hurry? Will you be late for your opium?\"\n\nAs Zari quickly combed her hair, she prayed that the two of them would not start a quarrel again. She could hear Hormoz trying to patch things up. \"Auntie,\" he offered, \"if you like I can go. I like talking to the prisoners. I've been there three times with Hossein Agha. Isn't that so, Hossein Agha?\"\n\n\"What nonsense is this again?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan turned on him angrily. Then he walked up to the edge of the verandah and called out jokingly to Zari, \"Sister, how many hours have you been spending in front of the mirror? Where's my brother; where's Khosrow?\"\n\nZari didn't answer; she was listening to Ameh who was saying: \"Let's go. Hossein Agha, help him lift the tray to his head.\"\n\nAs he heaved the tray up, one of the porters said: \"God give me strength!\"\n\nWhen they arrived at the open-air party, Captain Singer was there to greet them in person. Together they walked past the fields of summer crops to where the marquees had been set up. Zari was feeling hot, but she knew it would be cooler in the evening. She was walking ahead with Abol-Ghassem Khan while Yusef and Singer followed behind, and Khosrow and Hormoz brought up the rear.\n\nThey passed a field of lettuces, caked with dust and sand, standing in rows like soldiers on parade. As they walked on, they passed other fields where the entire crop of cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes and melons\u2014ripe and unripe\u2014lay exposed to the relentless sun.\n\n\"They need watering,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan observed.\n\nTo the left of the fields large tents had been pitched, in which soldiers and officers were sitting or standing. Their army vehicles were parked nearby. Zari heard Yusef recite a familiar yet very apt line of verse: \"Will this wine ever suffice to quench our thirst?\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\" Captain Singer challenged him.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan stopped abruptly and turned to face them. Zari also stopped. Abol-Ghassem Khan blinked, and said to Captain Singer, \"To be quite frank, your honour, what my brother means is that a glass of whisky wouldn't go amiss right now; even though a person can't get drunk on only one glass.\" After that he made a careful manoeuvre, changing places with Yusef, and falling into step with Singer.\n\nThe guests were ushered into the Supreme Command's huge marquee. Abol-Ghassem Khan had rushed them so much that they were now too early. They greeted Khanom Hakim and a Scottish officer. A map of Iran had been spread out on a table near the entrance. Khanom Hakim was pacing around the marquee looking as though she were trying to memorize something from a piece of paper in her hand. Zari glanced at the map; there were enough multi-coloured markers stuck on it to confuse even the expert. Yusef headed for the map with an agitated Abol-Ghassem at his heels.\n\nStaring at the familiar outline of his country, Yusef murmured, \"How they've disembowelled her!\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan placed a hand on his brother's arm.\n\nAt that moment, Singer directed an Indian soldier who had just entered the marquee, carrying a tray of sherbets and various soft drinks, to the table where the map was displayed. Turning to Yusef, he said: \"Let's have something to drink.\"\n\nThe three men each took a drink. Then Singer, raising his glass in a toast, proclaimed in his usual broken Persian: \"To Iran, so much bigger than France; and to Tehran, bigger than... than Vichy!\"\n\nYusef raised his head from the map and looked straight at Singer.\n\n\"But unfortunately we didn't get a chance to fight!\" he said.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan mumbled nervously: \"Actually, Vichy mineral water does wonders for indigestion...\"\n\n\"Why say you unfortunately?\" Singer asked, cutting him short and staring at Yusef.\n\n\"Because we're suffering the consequences anyway, without ever having tasted victory or even an honourable defeat,\" Yusef replied.\n\n\"Then why did you not fight, if you were able?\" Singer demanded. \"How to find right word? Straw? Yes, that's it, straw. We only found stuffed dummy when we come here. When we ripped him apart, there was no blood, only straw... stuffed with straw.\"\n\nYusef gave a hollow laugh and put his hand on Singer's shoulder.\n\n\"My dear Singer, you knew yourself what the score was, and that's what makes all of this even more ugly and despicable. We were deprived the chance of an honourable defeat...\n\nSinger raised a hand to stop him. \"A-a-a-a... slow now, slow, so that I can follow what you say...\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan, with an attack of his nervous blink, tried to mediate: \"That's all water under the bridge...\"\n\n\"You talk in proverbs and confuse me,\" Singer said irritably.\n\nA number of other officers, English, Scottish and Indian, and McMahon the Irishman, entered the marquee. Hormoz, who had been following the conversation, whispered in Zari's ear, \"If Mr Fotouhi, our teacher, were here, he would shake uncle's hand, and call him a real man. Mr Fotouhi's always bragging about his own background. If only he could see my uncle now!\"\n\nBut Zari's attention was fixed on Singer who had taken Abol-Ghassem Khan's arm and was saying, in his stilted Persian: \"Give your brother some good advice. God has given you so much resources in this country. Give some to us. It belongs to everyone, to all mankind. It is too much just for you. You don't need all.\"\n\n\"Just what British Petroleum is doing!\" Yusef said with a laugh.\n\nSinger looked taken aback. His face and neck reddened noticeably. He placed his drink on the map and blurted out, \"You didn't know how! We don't need you. We can take it out ourselves and give to those who need...\" And suddenly he became amiable again. Lifting his glass, he said, \"Cheers!\"\n\nThe Governor, the Colonel and the newly married couple with Gilan Taj in tow, now made their entry. The officers stood to attention while the Governor nodded to all of them. The army commander, the town's newspaper owners and the heads of various civic departments, all began to drift in with their wives. The marquee was soon crammed full of people, and the sickly smell of feet, sweat, perfume and alcohol filled the air. Three Indian soldiers were busy serving drinks.\n\nZari signalled to Hormoz and Khosrow, and together they went over to Gilan Taj. Zari had decided to summon up courage to slip in a reminder about her earrings. First she introduced Khosrow and Hormoz. The girl extended a hand, and flashed a dimpled smile. Then the bride, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and green sunglasses, came up to them.\n\n\"Zari, darling,\" she cooed. \"Thank you so much for your gift. I'll always treasure them, and when I wear them I'll think of you.\"\n\nZari looked at her in astonishment. Since when had she and the Governor's daughter become so intimate? In the three years since the Governor's posting to Shiraz, she had not seen the girl more than three times. Well, maybe four or five times, counting the wedding. Zari opened her mouth to say: \"What gift? I only lent them, as your sister here knows full well!\" But no sound escaped her lips. She cursed herself inwardly for her own ineptitude and cowardice. \"Spineless women like me deserve no better!\" she thought to herself.\n\nThe bride looked at Hormoz and Khosrow.\n\n\"Zari dear,\" she said, \"I never knew you had such grown-up sons. You, so young and pretty! Tell everyone they're your brothers, not sons.\"\n\nKhosrow was quick to chip in. \"Four-eyed Hormoz here is my cousin,\" he announced.\n\nHormoz blushed and removed his glasses. But Zari knew he wouldn't be able to see a thing without them. She felt like scolding Khosrow there and then. Four-eyed Hormoz indeed! Talking like that to an older cousin, and in front of such uppity people as the Governor's daughter! But the bride was too quick for her.\n\n\"Master Hormoz, aren't you Mirza Abol-Ghassem Khan's son?\" she asked. \"I have a great deal of respect for him. How kind he's been! What a sweet man he is, and so amusing! Please don't be shy, put on your glasses by all means. I wear glasses myself; even my sunglasses have prescription lenses. Last night I had a frightful time without them.\"\n\nA sudden flurry of trumpets and drums announced that it was time to leave the marquee for other events of the evening. The Colonel and the Governor led the way, followed by the guests, and Zari felt as if she were being taken to an execution. They reached a vast, open space, where chairs had been arranged in a horse-shoe. Already thousands of soldiers, mostly Indian, were seated.\n\nThe officer behind the Colonel gave an order and at once, as all the soldiers rose to attention, there was a deafening scraping of chairs. Around a platform which had been made out of a couple of old boards and covered with a carpet, five flags waved of which Zari recognized only one\u2014that of Great Britain. Khanom Hakim made her way across the creaking platform to the microphone. A hush ensued. Reading from the piece of paper in her hand, she greeted the guests in Persian. Her voice was a little unsteady at first until she gained confidence and warmed to her speech. In the light of the setting sun, her dull teeth looked decidedly yellow.\n\nFrom what Zari could gather, the gist of her speech was that in order to amuse the fighting boys of Great Britain now on leave in Shiraz, that sweet city of birds and flowers\u2014they had arranged some entertainment. This was to enable the soldiers to fight the monster Fascism with greater strength of spirit, sending that devil Hitler back to hell in the shortest time possible. She thanked the Iranians for their hospitality, for they had made the war against Satan\u2014meaning Hitler\u2014easier to bear. Then she finished by declaring that Hitler was like a virus, a cancer, which had to be torn out.\n\nNow Khanom Hakim was not only a midwife, but also a surgeon quite keen on using the knife. And in addition to these talents, as she said herself, she \"brought glad tidings and led the people to Christ\". Every night, as Zari remembered, she had the pregnant women, and the ones she had already cut up, as well as their relatives, queuing up to watch a film. A silent film, of course. She would hold a long stick in her hand, and point out the characters in the film, explaining in broken Persian:\n\n\"This be Jesus Christ... this be Mary Magdalen... this be Judas Escariot...\" Afterwards, in that same irritating patois, she would preach a sermon about Satan and hell-fire.\n\n\"Why should a midwife, surgeon and missionary all rolled into one, suddenly appear in a place like Shiraz?\" Zari thought to herself, as she continued to muse about Khanom Hakim. \"Maybe her Satan has some connection with the 'Satan' the fighting boys are trying to send back to hell? The boys are mostly Indian, anyway. And, to use Abol-Ghassem Khan's phrase, 'they manage well enough themselves, and stir up trouble for everyone else besides.' Yet our people have started to call this devil 'the Messiah'. I've heard it many times myself.\"\n\nMcMahon took over from Khanom Hakim on the stage, his presence adding a note of gaiety. He had thrown a red cloak over his shoulders, and was wearing a pair of black boots. It made him look like a famous film star, though Zari could not for the life of her remember the name. It was a pity he was fat. He spoke in English, and Zari didn't understand all of his jokes, but after two or three sentences, the sound of the soldiers' laughter filled the air. Even the Governor and the army commander laughed occasionally, but it was one of the newspaper owners who laughed the loudest of all. Could all this laughter be out of politeness, Zari wondered, since despite her own good English, she hardly understood any of it.\n\nThen, with all the appropriate gestures, McMahon told a story about a soldier serving abroad who seduced a girl, exploiting her for what he could get out of her. He wanted new shoes and a hat; he wanted this and that, until one day the girl said she was pregnant and he must marry her. He confessed then that he already had a wife and children back home. McMahon rocked an imaginary cradle, put his arms around an imaginary wife, and said, \"I have a wife and little ones\" in Persian. This time the audience laughed a little less heartily.\n\nAfter the story, he recited one of his poems\u2014the one about the Tree of Independence. It told of a strange tree nourished by blood and by the earth on which it stood, tended by a prophet-like gardener who loved his tree above all others. When it needed water, the gardener would call for blood and people would surge to open the veins on their arms, eager to nurture the tree beneath whose cool, shady branches they sat and unburdened their sorrows. If its leaves were crushed and powdered, and then rubbed on the eyes, it would endow the bearer with pride, hope and confidence, triumphing over cowardice and treachery to create a people of strength and courage.\n\nThen the show began. A bearded Indian, wearing a turban and dressed from head to toe in white, came and knelt on the platform. He lowered the microphone and began to play a pipe. From a hole in front of him, which Zari had not noticed before, a dark-skinned woman with a red dot between her eyebrows bobbed up her head several times. Finally, the woman emerged completely, all the while moving to the music and slowly approaching the man. She was wearing a yellow sari with a gold embroidered border. When she started to sing in her shrill, high-pitched voice, she could hardly be heard above the din of the Indian soldiers who were whistling and shouting to the music. Her bracelets jangled as she moved her arms.\n\nAt one stage of the dance, it suddenly seemed as though the woman had unlocked the muscles of her neck. Her head fell effortlessly on to her shoulders, and she kept rotating it to the left and right just like a snake. She also lifted her eyebrows one at a time, to the rhythm of the music. Zari was amazed to see the amount of kohl the woman had used to outline her eyes.\n\nGradually the dancer moved back to the hole from which she had emerged. Then, as the snake-charmer quickened his pace, a rubber hose with a snake's head glued on to it rose out of the hole, stiff as a rod. The woman reached down, and pulled out the rest of the hose. Then she coiled it like a long snake, in a corner of the platform.\n\nAt this point a thin man with bushy eyebrows and a mottled moustache, wearing top hat and tails and carrying an umbrella, stepped up on to the stage. The fluteplayer kept on playing. The woman reached into the hole and brought out some odds and ends\u2014boards, sticks, McMahon's red cloak, a conical hat, a box, a hammer and an air-pump. Then she helped the bushy-eyebrowed man to make a dummy out of the sticks. Taking the rubber hose, the man wrapped it around the frame. After securing a kind of snake's head in place, he threw a cloak over the dummy's body. Next, he placed the conical hat on the serpent-head, glued on a long moustache and, taking a swastika from the dancer, pinned it on to the cloak. Then he went to the air-pump, attached the nozzle to the scarecrow's foot and, to the beat of the music, began to pump it up. Zari watched as it grew bigger and bigger. Its head, body, hands and feet became inflated, swelling to an unbelievable size. It took up so much of the main part of the stage that the turbaned man had to step aside. A voice behind Zari murmured: \"It's Hitler!\"\n\nSuddenly drums began to roll. A fat man, with a cigar in the corner of his mouth, rushed on to the stage, followed by another dressed as 'Uncle Sam'. Then various officers, some in kilts, some with hammer and sickle armbands, one and all invaded the stage. Armed with bows and arrows, they first began to tease the scarecrow. One of their number kept holding them back saying: \"Nyet! Nyet!\" Finally he too gave in, and yelled: \"Good! Good!\"\n\nThe drumming reached a crescendo. Arrows flew at the scarecrow from all directions. Slowly it began to deflate until it sank to the ground with a loud hiss. The crowd cheered and applauded. And then there were other shows... \n\n# _4_\n\nOn Saturday afternoon, Sahar was shod by a new blacksmith. Khosrow was at school so he wasn't there to witness it. When he came home, he looked reproachfully at his father, who said, \"I had to do it, otherwise it would have been too late.\"\n\nThey then began talking of hunting and Yusef promised to take both Khosrow and Sahar along. From that moment until Thursday afternoon, when the riders actually set off, Khosrow's entire concentration was focused on hunting and whether or not Sahar would be able to manage it.\n\nThey had not been gone twenty-four hours when Zari began to miss them. She couldn't help worrying, thinking of all the things that might go wrong. Ameh finally scolded her: \"They're probably thoroughly enjoying their ride, in spite of the fact that you keep imagining the worst.\"\n\nZari instructed Gholam to sprinkle water over the brick paving in front of the house, and to put out the cane chairs around the pool. She was sure they would be back before sunset on Friday. Mina and Marjan, meanwhile, played around the pool, dipping their hands in the water the moment Zari's back was turned.\n\nSuddenly there was a knocking at the garden gate. Zari, certain it was the huntsmen, ran out to greet them. By the time she reached the gates, Gholam had opened them wide. A horse-drawn cab pulled in. Zari was taken aback; they had left on horseback! When the droshke reached Zari, it came to a halt. Two women stepped down. They were wearing heavy veils, drawn tightly over their faces. But what strapping women! They were wearing thick woven summer shoes, and their feet looked very large. They also seemed unusually tall and broad-shouldered beneath their veils. The women bowed their heads at Zari's greeting, and one of them extended a coarse, thickly-veined hand to pay the driver. Zari noticed she was wearing a man's watch on her wrist. Zari racked her brains to remember where she had seen them before. Maybe they were friends of Ameh Khanom, who at that moment was smoking opium on the verandah. \"Could they just be masculine-looking women, or are they gypsies?\" Zari wondered.\n\nHer attention was suddenly drawn to Mina and Marjan, who had plunged their arms up to the elbow in the water. \"Get away from there!\" she scolded.\n\nIndicating the chairs by the pool, she offered the strangers a seat. But they took no notice and walked towards the house. The shorter one was obviously laughing because her shoulders were shaking underneath the veil. Ameh, glancing at the women as she puffed away at her pipe, said: \"I don't recall having had the pleasure...\"\n\nThe women, ignoring her remark, crossed the verandah, opened the parlour door and walked in. Zari was totally bewildered. They were certainly not inmates of the asylum where she usually took bread and dates. But neither was it normal behaviour to arrive at someone's house, walk right in without a by your leave and make yourself at home.\n\nShe followed the women to the parlour.\n\n\"Please take a seat,\" she said, \"although, quite frankly, I can't remember having made your acquaintance.\"\n\n\"Where is Yusef Khan?\" one of them asked in a husky voice.\n\n\"He's gone hunting with Khosrow,\" Zari replied.\n\nIt was a man's voice and a familiar one at that. Someone was playing a practical joke. At that moment, the two 'women' simultaneously pushed their veils aside. Thick eyebrows, dark eyes, long eyelashes and a hooked nose set in a longish sallow face\u2014the spitting image of each other, except that one was younger, and the older one wore a moustache.\n\n\"Malek Rostam Khan!\" Zari exclaimed in astonishment. \"What kind of get-up is this? You half scared me to death!\"\n\nMalek Rostam put a finger to his lips: \"Hush! Be quiet. I'll sit here and wait for Yusef,\" he whispered.\n\nZari went out on to the verandah. There was no one but the twins watching Ameh smoke her pipe. She returned to the parlour with straw fans for Malek Rostam and his brother Malek Sohrab.\n\n\"You really had me fooled, you know,\" she said laughingly. \"Turning up like this after all these years.\"\n\n\"When is he returning from his trip?\" Malek Rostam asked her anxiously. \"Is there a chance he won't be back today?\"\n\n\"I'm expecting him any minute now. But why?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"I hear he's going to the village\u2014to the lowlands tomorrow... Why isn't he back yet?\" Malek Rostam asked again.\n\nZari brought sherbet drinks for the guests, and then fruit and some nuts. She opened the parlour door for more air. But they wouldn't let her put on the lights. She sat facing them.\n\n\"Well, how is it that you've finally come to visit us?\"\n\n\"Oh, Sohrab has come on behalf of my uncle,\" Malek Rostam answered, playing with his moustache. \"I came because I missed you both.\"\n\n\"I bet it was Sohrab Khan's idea to wear the veils,\" Zari said. \"He's still the same mischievous child at heart. Do you remember, Sohrab Khan, what antics you were always up to?\"\n\n\"How could I forget!\" he said with a laugh. \"But we wore the veils so we wouldn't be recognized. If they catch us they will tear us to bits.\"\n\n\"Gone are the good old days when nothing used to worry us!\" Zari sighed.\n\nHer mind went back to one such day; a day in the first year of her marriage. In that same year the government had captured the head of the Qashqai tribe and taken him to Tehran. The tribe itself was breaking camp to move on. When Zari and Yusef arrived, a group of them came out to greet them. They even cheered for them, but it was an empty cheer, as Yusef said. They were dusty and depressed, and clearly not their usual selves. By the time Yusef and Zari reached the chieftain's large tent, most of them had scattered. Malek Sohrab was sitting in the tribal chieftain's place. When he saw them, he declared, \"Welcome to this, our mobile capital!\"\n\nZari had never seen a more beautiful tent in her life than that wandering capital. What carpets and rugs! The inside was painted with designs of legendary Shahnameh heroes such as Rostam, Ashkabus, Esfandiar, Sohrab and other characters whom Zari didn't recognize. It was funny; Malek Sohrab had seemed both childish and mature at the same time. He had got up, showing Zari the picture of Sohrab, and said, \"This is me!\"\n\n\"God forbid! \"Zari had replied, because Sohrab was depicted with a dagger deep in his side. Then he had pointed to the picture of Rostam and said, \"This is Malek Rostam, the elder brother of our chief.\"\n\nZari had glanced at Malek Rostam who was busy whispering to Yusef. There was a wistful smile on his face. Then Malek Sohrab had pointed to the image of a severed head lying in a large basin full of blood. A black horse stood at the basin, smelling the tulips which grew all around it. Malek Sohrab had said, \"This is my own little brother to whom my mother, Bibi, hasn't yet given birth!\"\n\n\"You can't fool me,\" Zari had replied. \"I bet you anything it's John the Baptist.\"\n\nMalek Sohrab had laughed and said, \"All right, let's have a bet.\"\n\n\"What do you bet?\"\n\n\"A Brno rifle.\" Malek Sohrab called Yusef over and showed him the drawing.\n\n\"Your wife says this is John the Baptist.\"\n\n\"Please forgive her,\" Yusef had smiled. \"My wife married straight from the classroom. Her head's still full of the Gospel stories she was forced to read every morning at the Missionary school.\"\n\n\"I know!\" Zari had rushed to correct herself. \"It's the beheaded martyr, Imam Hossein... and that horse...\" But Yusef stopped her.\n\n\"My dear, don't embarrass me any more. That's Siavush.\"\n\nReturning to the chieftain's seat, Malek Sohrab had said, \"We number six thousand in this camp. Let them kill a hundred and fifty sheep a day... And you, Zari Khanom,\" he said after a pause, \"I hear you've brought your own bridal carpet as an offering to our chieftain. We cannot accept it. The very fibres of this carpet were a labour of love.\" And he asked eagerly: \"Did you see the layout of the tents? Did you see the gunmen standing ready? Do you hear the horns and drums? This military march is being played in your honour.\"\n\nThe words had hardly left his lips when Bibi Hamdam, their mother, came in. After the usual greetings, she turned to Malek Sohrab and said, \"Get up from that seat, child! Are you talking nonsense again? They've caught two hens. Run out and cut their throats before the sun goes down.\"\n\nAngrily, Malek Sohrab stood up, made a face at Bibi, and stalked out of the room. When he returned, he threw the dead hens into his mother's lap.\n\nZari remembered it all as if it were yesterday.\n\n\"Zari Khanom, you're deep in thought,\" Malek Rostam observed, breaking the train of Zari's reminiscences. \"Are we disturbing you?\"\n\n\"Oh goodness, no!\" Zari replied with a laugh. \"I was only thinking back to the first time I came to your chieftain's tent. It was the first year of our marriage.\" Turning to Malek Sohrab she said, \"Do you remember what you did to your poor mother in front of me, a newly-wed bride?\"\n\n\"I remember it well,\" he replied.\n\n\"You were a child, then,\" Zari said.\n\n\"I was not a child. I was stubborn and rebellious,\" Malek Sohrab replied.\n\n\"I remember Bibi Hamdam had to change her skirts,\" said Zari. \"I counted, she had eight of them on. Bibi had caught a cold... and you, Malek Sohrab, kept saying that a hardy tribal woman should never get sick.\"\n\n\"I remember very well. That same night I won a Brno rifle from you... and I'm still waiting for it,\" he added jokingly.\n\nAt that moment Khadijeh came in and took the keychain from Zari to give the twins so that they could go to sleep. She looked in amazement at the veiled men.\n\n\"You're sitting in the dark!\" she exclaimed. \"Shall I put the light on?\"\n\n\"No,\" came the reply.\n\n\"I remember,\" Malek Rostam said, joining in the reminiscing. \"It was the year I caught malaria and came to you for refuge. I was in bed for three months in your house, at a time when nobody even dared say hello to us in the street. A friend of a Qashqai was an enemy of the Shah. Yet you nursed me like a sister. I'll never forget. Once the washerwoman didn't come and you washed my clothes with your own delicate hands. Yusef even helped me with the bed-pan himself.\" Turning to Sohrab, he said, \"Sohrab, I'm going. I shouldn't have come here.\"\n\nSohrab answered him in Turkish, and for a while the two brothers spoke together in their native dialect. Since Zari couldn't understand a word, she started to think, and that led her to worry about Khosrow again.\n\nAt the sound of hooves on the gravel, Zari once again rushed outside. The lights were on in the garden. They had shot two deer, and a live fawn was tied to the saddle of the chestnut horse which their steward, Seyyid Mohammad, was riding. The riders dismounted.\n\n\"A good day's work!\" exclaimed Ameh Khanom, who had also come out to greet them.\n\nKhosrow couldn't tell his mother fast enough what had happened on the trip.\n\n\"Mother,\" he babbled, \"Sahar has been really naughty. He chased after the fawn and bit it on the back. Of course he fell down himself. He's hurt his knee and now I have to treat it with burnt hazelnut oil. Mother, do you have any hazelnuts?\"\n\n\"There's some on the table in the parlour,\" Zari said, adding quickly: \"but don't go in there now. We have some important guests.\"\n\nYusef, meanwhile, had gone over to the wooden bed on the other side of the pool. The twins were sleeping there under a mosquito net.\n\nAs they went into the parlour, Zari quickly warned Yusef about their unexpected visitors. He switched on the lights.\n\n\"I was expecting you,\" he said to Malek Rostam, \"but not today. Your visit is not only too late, it's badly timed as well. Today, I can't even say I'm pleased to see you. Why you of all people? Why should you have agreed to such things? After all those discussions we had...\"\n\nHe sat on the sofa and Zari knelt in front of him to remove his boots. Malek Rostam bent his head and chewed his moustache. Sohrab rolled up his veil, threw it in a corner, and sat bolt upright. Yusef continued:\n\n\"You've taken out your rusty, broken guns from the cracks and crevices in the mountain-side, oiled them and taken to looting and killing your fellow-men again. What more can you and I have to say to each other?\"\n\n\"Zari Khanom isn't a stranger,\" Sohrab said, \"and I'm not afraid of saying in front of her that we had to take our revenge. How long can we take it from the government? With that general pardon of theirs, which they later broke\u2014and how! What they promised us on the one hand, they took away with the other. There was only bribery, excuses, hatred, and executions. Their forced settlements turned out to be a total waste of money. They built a couple of mud-huts in dried-up areas, and told us to go and live in them. Instead of books, teachers, doctors, medicine and health care, they sent us soldiers armed with bayonets, guns and hostility. It's only natural that we've gone back to our old trade and taken revenge on them.\"\n\nWhile Sohrab was talking, Khadijeh brought a hookah and placed it in front of Yusef. Zari whispered to her, \"Take the boots and give them to Gholam for cleaning. Bring some tea, too.\"\n\nDrawing on the pipe, Yusef said, \"What can I say, Sohrab my friend; you've put your finger on it yourself. You say you've gone back to your 'trade'. In other words the tribe has become a kind of business for you. You use it to make deals.\"\n\n\"Believe me,\" Malek Rostam protested, \"they acted entirely without provocation at the beginning. I'm personally in favour of the idea of settlements. You know that yourself. But it's as if they themselves don't want us to prosper. Certain forces are at work against us. They want us either to rot away from the inside and ultimately destroy ourselves, or else to stay in our present state.\"\n\nYusef lifted the pipe to his lips again. \"You yourselves prefer this present state of affairs,\" he said. \"If you had been more willing, the settlements might have worked. But my friend, you tribal chiefs have become too accustomed to exploiting your tribesmen. For you they aren't human beings; they're no different from your sheep\u2014you sell them both in one go.\"\n\n\"Don't speak to me like that, Yusef,\" Malek Rostam retorted angrily. \"You're a close friend, we've been classmates and we've shared each other's hospitality many times, but...\"\n\n\"I don't know how to say what I have to say any other way,\" Yusef interrupted. \"You know me well enough. I don't stand on ceremony with anyone\u2014especially not with my closest friends.\"\n\nMalek Rostam replied quietly, \"I know, better than anyone, that tribal life with all its excitement and adventure is not the right way to live. You know that I would prefer to be a settled Qashqai rather than a nomadic one. I know it's not right for thousands of men, women and children to be led by their herds, wandering from the top of the Gulf to the other side of the mountains in search of grass and water. I realize that the lives of so many people should not be tied to cows, sheep and grazing land. But do you think it's up to me alone? Am I the chief? What can one person do?\"\n\nYusef put his pipe aside. \"If that one person really wants to,\" he said quietly, \"he can easily sway others. There are a great many people who are capable of understanding what's right and fair, and recognizing it when they hear it. But these people are scattered and you must join forces with them... Even if you don't do it yourself, your children and the children of others will do it in their time. They will pass through towns and villages, they'll see schools, mosques, public baths and hospitals. They'll grow to understand and want these things and finally do something about their lot.\"\n\n\"You know it's too late for that,\" Malek Rostam replied wearily.\n\nThere was a pause when Khosrow came in to take hazelnuts for Sahar. After he left, Yusef asked, \"What was all that about the Malek Abad Pass? I've heard a few things, but I want to hear about it from you.\"\n\n\"I swear to you, it wasn't anything much,\" replied Malek Rostam. \"The Ezhdehakosh clan disarmed a group of soldiers, chopped off a few heads, took a dozen rifles or so, some ammunition and about twenty horses\u2014that's all. And what's more, they did it without permission. The Farsi Madan clan brought it to my uncle's attention. My uncle doesn't agree with this kind of pilfering.\"\n\nMalek Sohrab, who had been silent for a while, spoke up: \"Brother, tell Yusef about the incident with the captain's pups.\"\n\nWhen Malek Rostam remained silent, Sohrab began to tell the story himself.\n\n\"The dog belonging to the captain in charge of the tribal settlement had just whelped,\" he began. \"A couple of mischievous kids from the Ezhdehakosh clan threw stones at it\u2014a purebred wolfhound, no less. Anyway, afraid that they would be found out, they stole the dog and got rid of it. Again the tell-tale Farsi Madans gave them away, and the captain forced three women from the Ezhdehakosh to breast-feed the puppies.\"\n\nZari felt sick, but Yusef merely smiled and said, \"My dear Sohrab, that story must be at least ten, twelve years old. And it's the third time you've told it to me.\"\n\n\"Then why let me tell it a fourth time?\" Malek Sohrab countered indignantly.\n\n\"I didn't recognize it at first, but it came back to me as you went on. Anyway, what do you think I am, some sort of saint? I'm a human being, like everyone else.\" Turning to Rostam, Yusef continued, \"Well, what do you want from me? We've been talking about this and that; let's get to the point.\"\n\n\"Please believe that I don't agree with everything my uncle does,\" Malek Rostam said. \"I was even against his sending me to you. I don't want to ruin our friendship. But in these sensitive times, I can't turn my back on him.\"\n\nZari could have sworn Malek Rostam had told her it was Malek Sohrab who was there on behalf of their uncle, and he himself had just come along for the visit.\n\n\"You still haven't said what you want of me,\" Yusef reminded him.\n\nMalek Rostam lowered his head, seemingly lost in thought. But Malek Sohrab stepped in.\n\n\"Help,\" he said, after a moment's silence.\n\n\"What sort of help?\"\n\n\"Sell us whatever provisions you have. We'll even buy the unharvested crop. You just name the price.\"\n\n\"Who has put you up to this?\" Yusef asked suspiciously. \"Singer? Up to now there's only been talk of surplus crops. Now it's the whole lot!\"\n\nThe two brothers exchanged a glance. Suddenly Yusef raised his voice: \"You want the provisions to sell to the foreign army in exchange for arms, so you can go on fighting and looting your fellow-countrymen and brothers! Don't you realize that if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile? Haven't you any brains? Those 'mysterious government forces' which you claim have prevented you from prospering in the settlement could've been used to your advantage at a time like this... So where's that spirit of adventure, that fight and dignity now?\" Yusef's moustache trembled in anger.\n\n\"Do you know government men stopped the tribe in Kam Firouz?\" Malek Sohrab pleaded. \"Do you realize they refused permission to migrate this summer? All around us we face the guns and bullets of our own countrymen. The green grass on the slopes of the mountains is drying up untouched, and our sheep are starving and dying of thirst.\"\n\n\"Now look here, Sohrab,\" Yusef retorted angrily, \"don't give me this nonsense, you young fool. You sold most of your sheep to the foreigners. They're frozen now, and being dutifully guarded in the cold-storage of the Ahwaz-Bandar Shah railway.\"\n\nRostam's eyes were glued to the designs on the carpet.\n\n\"If we hadn't sold them,\" his brother answered, \"they would have died on us. Believe me, our sheep couldn't even walk at the end. They had to be carried away in trucks.\"\n\n\"What did you do with the money\u2014buy weapons? Golden pitchers? Golden jars? Did you sew royal crowns on to your hats, and get a thrill when they started calling your uncle 'His Highness'?\" Yusef snapped.\n\nMalek Sohrab, unable to contain himself any longer, jumped to his feet.\n\n\"Yusef Khan, our friendship is all very fine, but everything has a limit!\" he shouted. \"What right have you to call me a young fool? To say that we have no brains? You are the one with no brains, because right now you should be the deputy, not your brother...\"\n\n\"Deputy for whom\u2014Singer? I spit on the deputation for which you, Malek Sohrab, have to act as go-between!\" Yusef said, his voice shaking with anger.\n\n\"What on earth are you talking about!\" Malek Sohrab shouted even more angrily. \"You say whatever comes to your mind without pausing to think that you may be the one who's wrong. Who uses me as a go-between? Why are you so self-righteous? Who on earth do you think you are? And besides, what mistakes? What do golden pitchers have to do with us? Why do you blame us for what Davoud Khan may have done? Why? What right have you got?\"\n\n\"You're all the same,\" Yusef sighed wearily.\n\nMalek Rostam turned to Sohrab, trying to calm him down. \"Sit down, boy,\" he said. \"I made you promise you wouldn't insult my friend.\" Then the two brothers started talking in Turkish. Rostam's voice gradually became harsher as Sohrab's tone softened, until he finally sat and apologized. Yusef pulled the hookah towards him.\n\n\"The charcoal has gone out, let me go and light it again,\" Zari said.\n\n\"There's enough fire within me,\" Yusef sighed, as he drew on the pipe.\n\n\"I didn't mean to offend you; I apologize again,\" Sohrab said, forcing a smile.\n\n\"My dear Sohrab, for once you've discovered my weakness and see what a fuss you made! But I like that, you have guts. Only you still don't see very far.\" He put the pipe aside and continued, \"You know, I was never happy about your playing around with the Germans, nor am I happy now that you've made a deal with their enemies. You're the ones who've turned Hitler into a 'Messiah' among our people. These tricks don't really work with us, and your political flirtations only gave these foreigners an added excuse to come here.\"\n\n\"Well brother, after all it's a war,\" Malek Sohrab said gently. \"They don't give out sweets in a war. These people have to stay around to protect the oil and the access to the Gulf. They would have come in any case, even if we weren't here. And anyhow, they only come to the town on sick leave or on holiday. The main camp is at Khorramshahr... they have no other alternative.\"\n\n\"Now you're defending them too, my friend?\" Yusef asked in a fatherly tone. \"Their war is their affair. What does it have to do with us? Hitler is from their continent. They created him themselves. Let them pay for that. Let them pay for everything, even the unhappiness they've brought on the ones who, according to Singer, 'have resources they don't know how to use'. The English never ask who's to blame for this ignorance.\"\n\nMalek Sohrab glanced at his watch. \"It's getting late,\" he said. \"I've got a headache. Do you have any aspirin? Make sure it's Bayer.\"\n\nZari got up and took away the hookah. When she returned with the Bayer aspirin and a glass of water, Yusef was saying, \"I assure you that it's so. In order to discourage their ally from the plan I just mentioned, they'll arrange a few skirmishes and manoeuvres with your aid, and quite a number of our people will be slaughtered at your hands. The British never say no to an ally. They simply confront him with a fait accompli so that he abandons his original plan himself. Mark my words: they will stain your hands with blood, while they themselves just sit and watch. A real massacre will take place amongst us.\"\n\n\"We must be going soon,\" Malek Sohrab pointed out anxiously, \"so let's get back to the point. You still haven't told us whether you'll sell the provisions or not.\"\n\n\"He hasn't said? Must he spell it out for you? He went to such lengths...\" Malek Rostam laughed, but still Malek Sohrab bargained: \"Please believe that we don't want to sell all of it. Our men are hungry; they're falling like flies from sickness and hunger.\"\n\n\"I'll take Rostam's word of honour,\" Yusef answered. \"If he promises to buy just enough for your own men, and to use my provisions for your people only, then I will agree. Tomorrow I'm going to Kavar... I know you've been stopped there too. Bring camels to load the provisions. But, remember, only for the tribe's use. Band Bahman is just a kilometre further away, and there you'll find water. I'll also provide the pasture for free.\"\n\n\"I can't cheat you,\" Malek Rostam said dejectedly.\n\n\"I know you can't.\" Yusef paused, then said with feeling, \"Rostam, try to turn away from this path you've chosen for yourself. Why don't you try, at least, to create a spark of faith somehow, somewhere. Teach your people skills. How many times have I told you! My unused lands are there just waiting for houses, schools, public baths, hospitals, mosques, pastures...\"\n\nMalek Sohrab cut Yusef short. \"These things you talk about are not in our nature,\" he said. \"We've lived free. Nature has always been within our reach. We've ridden horses in the mountains, rested on the plains, camped under the skies. We can't be imprisoned in houses.\"\n\n\"But it seems it can be done to us Khans,\" Yusef said bitterly. \"We used to have the best gardens in town, the best houses... and where are they now? At the disposal of the Supreme Command, that's where!\"\n\nMalek Sohrab, knowing what Yusef was about to say, stopped him gently. \"I promise you our people love the kind of life they lead. If they settle down their spirit will be broken.\"\n\n\"Because it's the only life they've ever known,\" Yusef argued. \"But Sohrab, my friend, when a man cultivates a piece of land, labours over its soil and reaps its harvest, he becomes attached to that land. In a village, nature is still within reach. When you're settled...\"\n\nSohrab finished the sentence for him: \"You become stupid, helpless, petty and cowardly.\" Then, as if to change the subject, he said, \"May I ask you a question? What will you do with all your corn and grain and dates? It's harvest time now in the lowlands. What will you do after the harvest? Will you hoard everything?\"\n\n\"I'll give my villagers their share to the last grain,\" Yusef replied. \"The rest I'll bring to town. Unlike those traitors who sold both their villagers' share and the food for the town to the foreign army. There are five of us who'll do this, and we're landowners of considerable means. Two of us are on the city council, and we've all sworn to take control of the town's provisions. We have the mayor on our side. I know you're not the sort to reveal this to anyone. I also want you to know that it's not in my nature to hoard. The hoarders have sent their own people's provisions to North Africa and...\"\n\nMalek Rostam interrupted him. \"Majid is probably with you too,\" he said sadly. \"God willing, I hope you manage to accomplish something.\"\n\n\"What will you do about the Governor?\" Malek Sohrab asked.\n\n\"The Governor is a human being,\" Yusef replied. \"He'll agree to end the food shortage in order to have this part of the country quieten down.\"\n\n\"I think the outlook is bleak,\" Malek Sohrab commented. \"It's a dangerous plan. So long as you only talk about it, they'll leave you alone. But the minute you put your words into action, they'll stop you by whatever means they can.\" He stood up and put on his veil.\n\n\"We'll do our utmost,\" Yusef assured him, adding: \"Stay for dinner.\"\n\n\"No, we'd better go,\" Malek Sohrab replied. \"They'll be worried about us; they may think we've been caught. Please ask someone to get us a droshke.\"\n\nMalek Rostam got up then and put on his veil, inside out. Zari laughed.\n\n\"You have it on the wrong way round,\" she said. \"The seams are showing.\"\n\n\"You stay,\" Yusef said, turning to Rostam. \"I'll take you back myself tomorrow morning before sunrise.\"\n\n\"All right,\" he agreed.\n\nThey went into the garden together, and sat on the cane chairs to wait for Sohrab's cab. The verandah lights were on. Zari, standing at the edge of the verandah, saw Khosrow squatting by Ameh's opium brazier. He was roasting hazelnuts in the frying pan while she ground more nuts on a flat stone. Sahar was on the verandah, with his bridle tied to a door handle. Zari heard Yusef say, \"Why didn't you take the bridle off the poor creature? Why did you bring him on to the verandah? Child, the animal is tired. Take him to the stables and leave your treatments till the morning.\"\n\nKhosrow got up. \"Father, please let me. The hazelnut oil is ready now. I'll rub it on his knee-cap and then I'll take him to the stables. I brought him to the verandah because he was playing around. He was chasing the fawn, who kept waking with a start and throwing himself against the branches and bushes out of fright. So I brought Sahar here with me.\"\n\nAmeh burned herself taking the hot hazelnuts out of the frying pan. Dropping the nuts, and blowing on her fingers, she said:\n\n\"Brother, tell Gholam to kill the fawn tomorrow. First of all, not everyone managed to get meat from the hunt and they're grumbling. Secondly, keeping deer brings bad luck. Come to think of it, I wish the men in this family would put hunting out of their minds once and for all. Only last year you shot a pregnant deer. The minute they opened her up and I saw that little one sleeping there in her mother's womb, I beat myself on the head. I knew it was a bad omen...\"\n\n\"Put your veil on. Those women in the garden are really men,\" Zari informed her sister-in-law quietly.\n\n\"God protect us!\" Ameh said, jumping up in astonishment. \"Heaven have mercy!\" Frenziedly she covered herself with her veil.\n\nWhen the droshke arrived, Malek Rostam stood up too.\n\n\"Allow me to leave also,\" he said to Yusef. \"I have to reach my uncle as soon as possible. I think you're right. My uncle has blindly worked himself into a tight corner.\"\n\nYusef only asked, \"Blindly?\"\n\n# _5_\n\nIt was ten days now since Yusef had left for the lowlands. Zari wandered about the garden with her gardening scissors, looking unsuccessfully for flowers to cut. To her, the heat there felt every bit as oppressive as in the lowlands. Summer always seemed to rush upon them in this way, brushing away the last signs of spring. Mina and Marjan followed their mother around from one rose-bush to another, chattering and giggling, while Gholam watered the brick paving in front of the house to cool off the garden. Along one border of the stream that ran by the brick paving were some tired-looking amaranthus, while along the other side a variety of snapdragons stooped under layers of dust, side by side with the humble-plants sleepily closing their petals to the approaching dusk. Zari's only hope lay in the tuberoses that Gholam had said would bloom with the full moon. The orange blossoms were scattered now, brown and withered like so many burnt stars beneath the trees. At least in winter the narcissi bloomed gaily by the small stream, surrendering their image to the water only to be carried away, unseen and lost forever, as the water tumbled into the pool. Even spring brought with it white and purple violets that coyly greeted the passing stream, nodding cheerfully at their own reflection. But nothing seemed able to resist the heat of the summer.\n\n\"When is father coming to throw me up in the air?\" Mina asked her mother. \"You never do that to me!\"\n\nMarjan pouted. Her lips were like little buds that seemed to Zari more beautiful than all the flowers in the world. \"We won't ever talk to you again,\" she said, adding her voice to her sister's. \"So there!\" And she pleaded, \"Now why don't you throw us in the air, just once?\"\n\nZari picked Mina up and tried to throw her into the air.\n\n\"You're too heavy\u2014I can't do it,\" she complained, slapping the child's chubby thigh.\n\n\"Father's hands are big and he can do it. Your hands are too small, so you can't. We'll wait till your hands grow up,\" Mina told her mother.\n\nAt that moment, Ameh came through the garden gate. She had been to the public baths and was holding a paper bag dripping with water. Mina and Marjan ran towards her, shouting: \"Auntie, what have you brought us?\"\n\n\"Fresh walnuts.\"\n\n\"Give us some then.\"\n\n\"I hope you enjoyed your bath,\" Zari greeted Ameh, taking the paper bag over the children's heads, so that she could go and wash the walnuts. When she returned, Khadijeh had brought in the bag that Ameh used for her trips to the public baths, and put it down on one of the cane chairs. Ameh took out her towels and hung them on the line. Mina was dashing about chasing Marjan, but when Zari put the plate of walnuts on the table, the children rushed over excitedly.\n\n\"Well, talk about having your prayers answered!\" Zari smiled.\n\n\"This town has turned into a zoo,\" Ameh complained. \"Everywhere you go, those dark little Indian men follow you about saying, 'Need woman, need woman!'\" She dipped her hand in the pool as if to wash away the obscenity of their suggestion. Holding out her wet hand, she sat on a chair and continued:\n\n\"The children in the street tried to chase away the pathetic Indian who followed me; they were teasing, and singing some nonsense at him. Then suddenly the man brings out this chain he had with him, swings it around in the air, stamps his foot, and shoos them all away in no time.\"\n\nKhadijeh appeared then, carrying Ameh's opium brazier with all the accessories, as well as some fresh tea. As Zari and the twins joined her on the verandah, Mina asked: \"Auntie, did the Indian cut the children's heads off?\"\n\n\"Oh yes! He put them over his knee and sawed their heads off, didn't he?\" Marjan said with rounded eyes.\n\n\"Our Khosrow's late,\" Ameh commented. \"Perhaps that difficult final exam didn't go too well, and that's why he's not home yet. I think we should send Gholam to fetch him, sister.\"\n\nBefore Zari could answer, they spotted Abol-Ghassem Khan coming up the garden path towards the verandah. He was muttering to himself and gesturing with his hands. Zari's heart sank at the sight of him. Lately she had begun to feel as though she were facing the prophet of doom every time she saw him. And each time he blinked, she imagined he would blink her whole life away. As he reached the edge of the verandah, Zari stood up.\n\n\"Please come in,\" she invited.\n\n\"No, I'll just stay here.\"\n\n\"Greetings!\" said Ameh Khanom, between two puffs on her opium pipe.\n\nShe put the pipe down next to the brazier and poured some tea, which she handed to her brother. Zari's eyes were on Abol-Ghassem Khan who put a lump of sugar in his mouth, then poured some tea into the saucer to cool it.\n\n\"Has something happened?\" she asked.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan put the saucer down on the edge of the verandah and asked: \"Any news of my brother?\"\n\n\"No, not yet.\"\n\n\"I don't really know how to tell you this,\" he said. Zari suddenly felt dizzy. She sat down and said faintly, \"God forbid, has something happened to Yusef?\"\n\n\"Out with it, let's hear the worst!\" Ameh cried out.\n\n\"This morning they called from the Governor's house,\" said Abol-Ghassem Khan. \"They told me: 'Miss Gilan Taj has heard a great deal about Khosrow's colt, and she's decided she would like it, so we're offering to buy. Send us the colt and we'll gladly pay any price you like.' God knows I've been in a state since this morning; I'm so distracted, I can hardly think.\"\n\nZari's eyes filled with tears. She looked at Ameh, with her braided hair and red scarf, flushed and tearful by now, hardly able to fix the piece of opium on her pipe for the trembling of her hand. Sure enough, the opium slipped from her grasp into the blazing brazier, raising a lot of smoke.\n\n\"A curse upon their household!\" she said. \"I'm so furious I could take this brazier with its burning charcoal and smash it over my own head! You didn't happen to mention, I suppose, that the boy's whole existence revolves around his horse? They cut off your tongue, did they?\"\n\nMina sidled up to Ameh and tried to offer her the one remaining walnut which she had held tightly in her little fist.\n\n\"Have it, auntie,\" she urged, as if to comfort her. \"I was saving it for Khosrow.\"\n\n\"Khadijeh!\" Zari called out. \"Come and take the children to Haj Mohammad Reza's house and show them the snake he caught yesterday.\"\n\n\"Has he taken the teeth out?\" Marjan asked. \"Has he?\"\n\n\"Yes, dear, don't be afraid,\" Zari reassured her.\n\nMina took Marjan's hand, saying: \"You play with him for a minute, and then I'll play with him for a minute, all right?\"\n\n\"They play with snakes?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan asked incredulously.\n\n\"No, she won't let the children touch the snake...\" Zari replied distractedly.\n\n\"Seeing that everything is done backwards in this house, I thought perhaps...\" Abol-Ghassem Khan began with a laugh, but he never finished his sentence. Instead, he asked gently: \"Did you find the snake here, in this house?\"\n\nZari, distraught at the thought of Khosrow parting with Sahar, felt the more she talked about the snake the better.\n\n\"Yes,\" she answered. \"Yesterday as we were sitting on the verandah, a female snake fell from the windowsill on to the paving in front of the house. Gholam happened to be watering at the time and he smashed the snake over the head with his watering-can. But it kept moving so Gholam had to finish it off with the shovel. He told us that the male snake would eventually come after its mate. So he called in Haj Mohammad the dyer who went to the roof, found the nest, and caught the male snake.\"\n\n\"Now I've dropped all my precious opium in the fire!\" Ameh complained.\n\nIn the end, it was Abol-Ghassem Khan who returned to the main issue.\n\n\"Please don't imagine that I want to hurt Khosrow,\" he said. \"I swear on my son Hormoz's life that Khosrow is very dear to me. I told the Governor's secretary over the telephone: 'This child is very attached to his horse; he doesn't leave its side for a minute. I'm prepared to go to the village and bring my best horses for the Governor's daughter,' I forget her name\u2014Gilan Taj, Milan Taj, or whatever. She said, 'Well, Miss Gilan Taj has had typhus... she's just recovering... and she's been hankering after your nephew's horse.'\"\n\nAmeh Khanom prepared her opium pipe again. She drew on it long and hard.\n\n\"Didn't you tell them his father had gone to the lowlands and to wait until he returned next week for his permission?\" she said. \"Don't you know that my sister-in-law doesn't move without Yusef's permission?\"\n\n\"As God is my witness, I did. The Governor's secretary said: 'Your brother's wife would refuse you a worthless horse? They'll pay for it, they don't want it for free, you know.'\"\n\nPutting the opium aside, Ameh poured tea for Zari and herself.\n\n\"I know this mess is all your doing,\" she said to her brother. \"To become deputy, you'll stoop to anything. How did that little minx find out that Khosrow has a horse? You've engineered this whole thing. And now you're stuck with it.\"\n\n\"By God Almighty and all the holy prophets!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan protested. \"I swear on the Holy Quran that I never mentioned the horse. Don't you know about Ezzat-ud-Dowleh? She's at their house from morning to evening, plotting and scheming behind everyone's back\u2014a right old busybody... Anyway, I tried to ignore the whole thing, but just before I left, the Governor himself called me to ask about the horse. I said: 'Your honour, my brother is away in the lowlands.' He said: 'Come, come, my daughter has just recovered from an illness. Send the horse over for a few days. When she gets tired of it, we'll send it back.'\"\n\nZari thought that maybe he was telling the truth. She looked at Ameh, who was poking the ashes with the tongs. There were tears in her eyes. \"This town has gone mad,\" Ameh said. \"I'm getting out of this place. I'll go and live in Karbala, the holy city, as my poor mother did.\"\n\n\"What will you do for a passport?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan shouted, his temper rising. \"And what about an exit permit? No wonder they say women are bird-brained! And all of this with a war going on... You think it's going to be easy to leave?\" Turning to Zari, he said: \"Tomorrow morning they're sending for Sahar.\"\n\n\"When you've given in once, they expect you to give in every time,\" Zari said, remembering the earrings. \"It's my fault, I've been too weak. But this time I'll stand up to them.\" Suddenly she felt something awaken in her. \"I'll go to the Governor myself,\" she declared. \"I'll tell him there's a limit to everything. Is his daughter the only one who's allowed to hanker after a horse? Can't he bear to see anyone else in this town with something precious? Mine, mine, mine, everything always mine!'\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan couldn't believe his ears.\n\n\"Sister!\" he exploded. \"I would never have thought it of you! Now you're sounding like Yusef!\"\n\n\"If only more people were like Yusef, things would be very different,\" Zari said. \"Our men must learn to stand up for themselves. And if they're away, their wives should do it in their place. If more of our people had the courage to stand up for their rights, maybe one day we could achieve something.\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan put his head between his hands.\n\n\"I swear to God, you've all gone mad!\" he moaned. \"That one says she's going to up and leave... this one says she going to stand up to them. See what kind of a corner they've worked me into! And all for a miserable horse...\"\n\nAt that moment Khosrow came out of the stables with Sahar. Zari watched as he let the colt loose in the garden, then walked on towards the verandah. His eyes travelled from his uncle to his mother; then from his mother to his aunt.\n\n\"What's happened?\" he asked, seeing their sullen expressions.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan laughed. \"I'm going hunting, and I'm taking you with me. Don't listen to what women say. They're all cowards.\"\n\n\"How did your exam go?\" his aunt asked.\n\n\"It went very well, auntie. I think I'll get top marks,\" Khosrow replied. Turning to his uncle, he asked, \"Can I take Sahar?\"\n\n\"No, son, we're going a long way. Captain Singer is coming too. I want to show them what fine young men you and Hormoz have become. You can ride all kinds of horses, you can shoot well...\"\n\n\"It's not possible,\" Zari interrupted. \"Khosrow's got exams.\"\n\n\"But mother,\" Khosrow replied in astonishment, \"you know very well my exams finished today. Please let me go.\" Turning to his uncle again, he said: \"If only I could bring Sahar along...\"\n\n\"Sister, let him come and see something of life, become a man, outgrow his fears. He'll be in good hands, I promise you.\"\n\nAmeh, who had been deep in thought till now, interrupted him:\n\n\"The man you want to make out of him is a far cry from what Yusef has in mind. Leave the child alone. All this lying and pretence\u2014\"\n\n\"Auntie, mother, please let me go! I'm old enough now,\" Khosrow begged.\n\n\"Go on, son, get ready for the trip. I'll let you use my own Brno\u2014that is, if it's not too heavy for you,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan said cheerfully.\n\n\"I have my own gun,\" Khosrow answered as he hurried off.\n\n\"Do you imagine it's possible to stand up to the Governor?\" Abol-Ghassem asked gently. \"Yusef is risking his life with the kinds of things he's been doing and saying lately. At least let me cover up for him. I've heard that Malek Rostam has been listening to my brother's high-flown nonsense and he went and pulled a gun on his own uncle. Now he's taken refuge with Yusef. They're even saying that Yusef has handed out provisions to thirty tribal families. Malek Rostam, who's even more out of his mind than my brother, and that demented Majid, have joined forces with him to build houses for these families, filling their heads with all sorts of dangerous ideas.\" Abol-Ghassem Khan paused.\n\n\"For instance,\" he sighed, \"they're building thorn-houses out of star-thistle. Pipes take water to the roof, the water drips down on to the walls, and the wind cools the place. Of course our dear Yusef is sitting there, whistling away, thoroughly enjoying himself! Doesn't the young fool realize that these tribal people don't need provisions? That they don't need thorn-houses? As far back as anyone can remember, they've been content with their acorns, mountain almonds and their own shelters. Why should they need houses? Their black tents are more than enough for them. These people are rebels against the government. Just a few days ago they disarmed a gendarmerie regiment in the Takab Pass. And Yusef has joined up with a bunch of dreamers like himself to take over the unlawful distribution of the town's provisions.\" Abol-Ghassem Khan paused again. \"So you see,\" he concluded, \"there's no harm in giving the Governor a small bribe now and again to soften him a bit and make him better disposed towards Yusef. I tell you, it's fatal to fall out with the Governor.\"\n\n\"You can't oppose the Governor,\" said Zari dejectedly, \"and you can't oppose Singer. They've become sworn brothers. This town becomes more and more like the Mordestan red-light district every day.\"\n\n\"By Almighty God!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan lashed out. \"More of Yusef's nonsense! Look Zari, don't argue with me. Don't I have any rights at all __ over my brother's worthless horse? I swear on my dead father's soul that I won't let Khosrow suffer... I'll take him hunting. I'll keep him in the village for a few days. Whichever of my colts he chooses, he can have. Get a receipt for the horse when they come early tomorrow morning to take it away. When we return, just say the horse died. It's the only way. While we're in the village, I'll find a way to tell Khosrow that the horse is sick. I'll say he mustn't let himself be so attached to worldly things if he's going to suffer so badly when he loses them.\"\n\nAmeh raised her head. \"Why don't you practise what you preach?\" she said bitterly.\n\nBefore Abol-Ghassem Khan could reply, Khadijeh came to take away the opium brazier.\n\n\"Where are the children?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"They're with Gholam watching some tribal men and women do a dance. These beggars from the tribes are in such a sorry state, poor souls!\" Khadijeh sighed.\n\n\"Good gracious!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan said with a laugh. \"Why does every member of this household have to be so concerned with the welfare of tribesmen, peasants and porters? I just don't understand it.\"\n\n\"Khadijeh, go and light a hookah and bring it here,\" Zari said. As Khadijeh walked out, Khosrow came on to the verandah.\n\n\"Mother, will you give me the key to the cupboard?\" he asked. \"I want to get my gun... Have you seen my hunting trousers?\" he added. \"I can't find them.\"\n\n\"Come without them, boy,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan said cheerfully. \"We have so many pairs of hunting trousers there, you wouldn't believe it!\"\n\nZari felt a lump in her throat. She took out the chain from her house-dress, and placed it on the rug on which she was sitting. When Khosrow left, she started to cry. \"So this is how they manage to corner you,\" she thought to herself. \"By making all their deals behind your back. But there's still time. Tomorrow morning when they come from the Governor, I can refuse to give the horse. I can tell the Governor's servant that Sahar died and that will be an end to it.\"\n\n\"Sister, as God is my witness, I can't bear to see you cry,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan began. But he stopped short because Khosrow walked back in just then carrying his travelling clothes, his rifle and saddle-bag.\n\n\"I'm ready,\" he announced. Zari, struggling to hold back her tears, bent her head. Khosrow kissed his aunt, then turned to his mother and put his arms around her neck. Kissing her wet face, he said, \"I'm not going away to China, you know... Mother, ask uncle to let me take Sahar with us.\"\n\n\"Come along, son,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan urged. \"Gholam will take care of Sahar.\" And he said goodbye and walked away.\n\n\"I can't refuse to go,\" Khosrow whispered in his mother's ear, \"because uncle will think I'm afraid of the shooting.\"\n\nSahar was standing quite still under the orange trees. He didn't move when Khosrow approached him. The boy took the colt's face between his hands and stroked his mane. Then he called over his shoulder: \"Mother, don't forget to give him some sugar lumps. Gholam knows the rest. He'll muck out the stable, give him clean hay and groom him.\"\n\nSahar lowered his head and dug at the soil underneath the orange tree. After Khosrow had gone, he came near the verandah and neighed loudly. His mother answered him from the stables. Zari looked at him through her tears. \"You poor beast!\" she thought. \"What sweet eyes you have. Why don't you look straight at me? Why lower your gaze? Why don't you call me a helpless woman who'll betray you tomorrow?\"\n\n\"I for one am leaving this place,\" Ameh Khanom announced. \"Why do I need a 'dashport', 'pashport' or whatever they call it? I'll get myself smuggled out. I'll buy gold coins with my money, and sew them into the lining of my coat. I'll just take one suitcase, get myself to Ahwaz, and it'll be easy from there. I'll go through the date-palm plantations, then find some Arabs, give them each a gold coin, and they'll put me in one of their boats to cross the Tigris. Then I'll be rid of all this. From then on, I won't be a burden and I won't let anyone impose on me. And it won't be my own country so I won't have to worry all the time about what happens to it.\" She clenched a fist to her bosom, praying:\n\n\"O Imam Hossein! Allow this poor creature of yours to come to you in Karbala!\"\n\n\"Did you want the hookah, Khanom?\" Khadijeh came in to ask, bringing one with her.\n\nZari took the pipe from Khadijeh, and drew deeply on it. It made her cough. Then she drew on it again and again. It made her feel sick, but she kept on inhaling.\n\n\"They can drive you to addiction, sister,\" Ameh warned. \"You mustn't smoke if you can help it. A habit is a terrible thing.\" She looked up at the sky and said with bitterness, \"O Lord, I'm not ungrateful, yet I've never known anything but sorrow in this world of yours. They hounded and harassed my husband to death. He couldn't take it any more, and smashed himself, on horseback, against the pillars of the British Consulate building. My only son died young. A boil grew in his throat, and he withered away before my very eyes. In all of this godforsaken town no one could give him the medicine he needed... O Lord, maybe you brought me all these sorrows to see whether I have the patience of Job. Well, I haven't, I haven't! Grant my only wish now. Let me make my pilgrimage!\"\n\nZari was in tears again. She brushed them away with the back of her hand. \"Ameh Khanom,\" she pleaded, \"don't make me so unhappy. Where do you want to get up and go to? At least this is your homeland. Your husband and son are buried here. Whenever you feel lonely, you can visit their graves. Whom will you turn to there?\"\n\n\"To Imam Hossein.\"\n\n\"It's hot there. The climate won't agree with you. There's a big garden here. My children are like your own. We live like sisters. Besides, how will they send you money?\"\n\n\"I'm only one person. I'm willing to live on bread and water. What makes me more special than Bibi, my mother?\"\n\nBefore Zari could reply, Khadijeh came out to the verandah: \"Khanom, the children are making a fuss. No matter what I say they refuse to eat their meal. They're driving me out of my mind.\"\n\n\"I'll come,\" Zari said, getting up and going to the parlour. She found Marjan sitting on the table, rubbing her eyes. Mina was standing by her, looking frightened and staring anxiously at the door. Catching sight of her mother, she laughed and stretched out her arms. Zari sat next to them and tried to put a spoonful of food in Mina's mouth, but the child pushed the spoon away. When she tried to feed Marjan, the same thing happened.\n\n\"I don't want any rice-pudding!\" Marjan cried.\n\n\"Why not?\" asked Zari.\n\n\"I don't like it!\" she shouted.\n\n\"All right, then just have some bread,\" Zari offered.\n\n\"That child who threw a stone at me said, 'Gimme some bread! Gimme some fruit from your tree!'\" said Marjan, rubbing her eyes.\n\n\"Which child?\"\n\n\"That child who didn't have any shoes. That one whose mama danced. The papa sat down and said: 'Ouch!' His foot was hurt bad,\" Marjan explained.\n\n\"See, that poor child had no bread to eat. But you won't even have your rice-pudding and honey.\"\n\n\"Gholam went and hit him,\" Marjan said.\n\nThey drove Zari to distraction before taking a few more spoonfuls. As she was taking them to bed, she saw that Ameh was still sitting quietly next to the opium brazier.\n\nThe children, unable to get to sleep, tossed about restlessly. Obviously, Abol-Ghassem Khan's disturbing afternoon visit had affected them too.\n\n\"If you close your eyes, I'll tell you a story,\" Zari promised.\n\n\"I'm scared,\" Mina whimpered.\n\nZari didn't know why she should suddenly think of McMahon and the story he had written for Mina and Marjan. That night, the night of the wedding, when she had gone to the dinner table, McMahon had managed to find a plate and cutlery for her, despite his drunken state. The room was so crowded, with everyone rushing to find a place at the table. No one moved away, and late-comers were not given a chance. Those people didn't know the meaning of real hunger, Zari reflected, but they certainly behaved as though they did. Their children didn't have to go around barefoot, begging for a lump of bread...\n\nZari remembered thanking McMahon. \"I really enjoyed your story,\" she told him. McMahon had laughed. His eyes were like slits in his face. She remembered him saying, \"I'll polish it up, and send it to a publisher of children's books.\"\n\nThe Governor had come out then, and invited McMahon to sit at an empty table reserved for foreigners only, where they would be served roast pork. But McMahon wasn't tempted, choosing to stay with his friend's wife. Again, Zari thanked him.\n\n\"I hope you succeed in building that airplane which drops toys to little children!\" she said.\n\nMcMahon sighed. \"But who will ever build an airplane which will shower consolation over sorrowful men... men who've lost their mothers...\"\n\nYusef made his way to them, bringing a plate of rice spiced with pistachio nuts and raisins.\n\n\"For all three of us,\" he had announced.\n\nMcMahon went on talking to Zari. \"When I think about it,\" he said, \"I realize that all of us, all our lives, we're just children who get our happiness from our toys. The day, alas, they take away those toys, or don't let us have new ones\u2014our children, our mothers, our philosophies, our religions\u2014we crumble.\"\n\n\"Have some of this now,\" Yusef had laughed. \"I've never seen anyone so blind drunk and so philosophical at the same time!\"\n\n\"I promise you I couldn't swallow a thing,\" McMahon replied. \"Anything more, and I'd burst!\"\n\nMarjan brought Zari back to the present. \"I'm scared!\" she cried out. \"Snake!\"\n\n\"Go to sleep, dear,\" Zari said reassuringly. \"There's no snake around. It's in Haj Mohammad Reza's yellow box. They've taken its teeth out, too, and the box is locked.\"\n\nThen she started to tell a story.\n\n\"Once upon a time there was a man who built a big plane. The plane carried only toys, story books, fruit, food and sweets for children...\"\n\n\"Mummy, was there a snake in the plane?\" Mina asked.\n\n\"No, dear,\" Zari answered, \"there wasn't a snake; the plane was loaded with things children like. This plane would fly over the towns to drop whatever toys the children wanted.\"\n\n\"But they'll break!\" Marjan exclaimed.\n\n\"No, the plane flew low over the houses, and the children held out their skirts underneath the plane. Then the pilot dropped whatever they wanted into their skirts.\"\n\n\"What about Khosrow?\" Marjan asked. \"Khosrow doesn't have a skirt.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" Zari smiled. \"But the pilot also gave toys and things to boys even though they don't wear skirts. Sometimes he stopped his plane on the roof and...\"\n\n\"Would he give toys to the child who was throwing stones?\" Marjan interrupted.\n\n\"Of course,\" said Zari.\n\n\"Oh good.\"\n\n\"Now where was I?\" Zari continued. \"Oh yes. The pilot stopped the plane on a rooftop and picked up the good children and took them to the sky with him. They flew past the stars, past the moon. They flew past them so closely they could reach out and gather the stars and put them in their lap.\"\n\n\"Tell him to bring his plane on our roof,\" Marjan piped up again, \"and give Sahar to Khosrow... all right?\"\n\n\"All right,\" Zari promised; \"now go to sleep.\" It occurred to her that if the twins were developing a memory even for recent events, they were no longer babies.\n\nAs soon as the children were asleep, Zari went out on to the verandah. Ameh was still sitting there, with her hand under her chin, staring at the cold brazier in front of her.\n\n\"Are you thinking of your journey?\" Zari asked.\n\nAmeh lifted her head. Zari was taken aback to see tears in her eyes.\n\n\"Yes, sister,\" Ameh answered. \"Even if my heart is sad and heavy, it doesn't mean that's all there is in the whole world. Now that it's too late for happiness in this life, I want at least to prepare for my peace afterwards. They say whoever is buried next to the Imam won't have to answer to Nakir and Monkir. There's no inquisition of the dead either. First the Imam Ali, and then Imam Hossein come to you. If you're a woman, Hazrate Fatemeh comes to you. Hand in hand with these holy ones, the dead are taken to God...\"\n\n\"It's strange,\" commented Zari, \"how Abol-Ghassem Khan disturbed us all with his news! Even the children felt it. They saw Haj Mohammad Reza's snake yesterday and they weren't afraid. But tonight they were frightened and couldn't sleep.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" Ameh said. \"It's been a long time since I went over the untimely death of my loved ones in my mind. Tonight all of them passed again before my eyes.\"\n\n\"I've been in your family for many years now,\" Zari said, \"but I'd never heard you mention your late husband or your child before. Tonight...\"\n\n\"I know. I've always kept my grief to myself,\" Ameh replied. \"I've never told anyone what I've suffered.\"\n\nZari sat down and took her sister-in-law's hand. \"You've always said yourself that a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. You used to say that the Imam Ali would lean over a well and tell his sorrows to the water deep down which he couldn't see.\"\n\nAmeh nodded. \"Should I sigh for you in sorrow?\" she recited, as if to herself. \"Then as Ali I look into a well.\"\n\n\"Am I not as good as a well?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"You're young. I don't want to destroy your hopes in life with my unhappy tales.\"\n\n\"I've had my share of sorrows.\"\n\n\"I know.\" And so it was that Ameh began to tell all she had kept locked away inside her; stories which Zari had never heard before. \n\n# _6_\n\nThat night, Ameh began, I was sitting right next to this very brazier, in the same wretched darkness, stirring the ashes with these tongs. I was gazing at the brass figurines, holding hands all around the edge of the brazier. That night I counted thirty-two of them. They're still intact, those featureless little figures.\n\nIt was the night my child died. Soudabeh, my father's mistress, sat with me till dawn, shedding tears as I cried. When he died... at the grove... all alone... I knew he was dead, but I held him, my six-year-old, and ran to Sardazak. If I hadn't lost him, I wouldn't be obsessed with veils and religious modesty now, nor with opium and convulsing at the mere thought of not getting any.\n\nI rushed to my father's house. He and Soudabeh were sitting in the room with the sash windows next to this very brazier. Grief-stricken, I wished I could breathe out fire and turn everyone around me into ashes. Soudabeh stood up and took my child from me. She was shaken, but trying hard not to show it. What a woman! She went out and came back without the child. I asked her what she had done with him. She said, \"Who knows, maybe my brother, Mohammad Hossein, can bring him back to life with his healing touch.\" I said, \"Don't blaspheme, woman! Only God brings to life. It says in the Quran: I breathed life unto him of My Spirit.\" But Soudabeh wanted to give me hope.\n\nI had studied Arabic and Persian with my father, and geography and geometry with Mohammad Hossein, Soudabeh's brother. When my father came back from Tehran after completing his religious training, he shut himself up at home. He didn't go out to lead prayers anymore. He was forced to give up teaching at the Khan seminary too. He only taught at home, in the main room with the sash windows. Men would come in, kiss his hand and bring him questions on jurisprudence or theology. I used to sit in the next room and listen. When my father returned from his pilgrimage to holy Najaf, everyone in town went all the way on foot to Baj Gah to welcome him. That first day he led the communal prayers, and all the mullahs in town\u2014even the Imam Juma\u2014followed him as a mark of respect. When he spoke at the Vakil Mosque there was a packed audience.\n\nOh Lord! And I was quite a woman in those days too! I remember being daring enough to carry my father's secret anti-government letters in my bosom to the Shah Cheraq shrine where I would deliver them to someone waiting there. I can remember it as if it were yesterday... the meeting place used to be between the two lion statues at the front of the shrine.\n\nThen my father, of all people, fell for an Indian dancer. Mohammad Hossein and his sister Soudabeh had recently arrived from India. Despite my father's courtship, to the last Soudabeh refused to marry him. She used to say they were better off the way they were. Of course she broke up our home and caused Bibi, my mother, no end of grief. But what a woman she was! And what a dancer! I'll never forget the day my father asked Soudabeh to dance for his guests at the Rashk Behesht Gardens. She wasn't really pretty, quite short and very sallow. She had a dark beauty spot on her upper lip, and used to outline her large brown eyes with a lot of kohl. When she wasn't laughing she looked like an owl, but when she smiled it was as if the heavens had opened.\n\nAt that gathering, everyone\u2014men and women\u2014stood around the paving of the garden to watch her dance and to clap. I'd never seen her perform before. It was certainly out of the ordinary. She seemed naked at first glance, except for a few bits of jewellery. But in fact she was wearing a jewel-studded brassiere and a flesh-coloured body-stocking. She managed to move each and every part of her body: not only her shoulders, belly, eyes and eyebrows, but even her chin, nose, ears and pupils. First, she pretended to do a ritual dance over the corpse of a man. For the second dance, she wore a blue silk dress with a gold border, and had two live doves with dyed feathers perched on her breasts. She moved slowly and gently, as if afraid of disturbing the birds. When the dance was over, she let them fly away. By the end of the third dance, she was looking hot and flushed, so she went and sat by the pool, dressed in her pink satin dress. As she dipped her bare feet in the water, I saw my father, my Haj Agha\u2014the high clergyman of the town\u2014sit down before Soudabeh and meekly fan her.\n\nSo it came about that my father asked Mohammad Hossein to teach me at home. I used to study geometry and geography with him, drawing endless charts and maps. I was so wrapped up in my studies, I was often unaware of what was going on around me. Just imagine, the first day an airplane came to this town, everyone packed their rugs and took off at dawn to Baq Takht to watch its arrival. I was sitting on the roof of our house in the sunshine, drawing a map of India. The airplane flew right over my head and I didn't even lift my eyes to look at it. Oh God, a person like that shouldn't become an opium addict!\n\nMohammad Hossein was quite a character. He was a sun-worshipper. Every morning and evening he'd go on to the roof to watch the sun rise or set, until finally sunlight ruined his eyesight. He could also do conjuring tricks. He fried eggs in a felt hat floating on the pool. He could produce gold coins from bits of paper. He would swallow my Haj Agha's fob-watch and bring it back out of Abol-Ghassem's pocket. He dabbled in palmistry, too. Once he told my fortune, and said I would have twelve sons, all of whom would become ministers. I remember thinking that my family would make up the entire cabinet! My father used to say that Mohammad Hossein had spiritual powers. But the townspeople thought he dabbled in witchcraft and black magic. Whatever he was, the man took great pains over my lessons, God rest his soul.\n\nThat terrible night it was Mohammad Hossein who washed and buried my child. For a whole week he would make me sit in front of him, gaze into my eyes, and repeat, \"I shall put you to sleep, and in your sleep you will see your child, see how well and happy he is in his new place.\" But I couldn't be hypnotized. He said I resisted too much. He even painted my thumbnail black and told me to gaze at that. \"Your child will appear right now,\" he said. \"Can't you see him? Here he is. Here he is. Ask him what he wants. He wants something to eat.\" But no matter how hard I stared, I didn't see anything.\n\nHis sister Soudabeh, however, had charmed my father. She never did become his wife, but she had him under her spell. What a woman she was! The kind who could draw people to herself as if by magnetism... once seduced, you could never be free of her. It had nothing to do with beauty. It had more to do with charisma. Everyone around Haj Agha was amazed at his behaviour. Perhaps they even cursed him behind his back. One sly fellow\u2014we never found out who it was\u2014commissioned several lengths of hand-printed cloth from Isfahan, picturing the proverbial Sheikh San'an going to Europe with his followers. The Sheikh was shown as a besotted-looking old man, wearing a turban and cloak just like my Haj Agha. There was a train of followers behind him and a lewd woman languished in an upper chamber of the house. Those days wherever you went, they seemed to have hung up one of these cloths. People certainly know how to be vicious when they want to.\n\nAs for Haj Agha himself, he would say, \"They've taken away my teaching and preaching from me. Far be it from me to interfere in other worldly affairs. I gave it a try and suffered the consequences. After all, a person must do something greater in life than just the daily business of living. He must bring about changes. Now that there's nothing more left for me to do, I'll abandon myself to love.\" \"Love hath done more than steal your faith,\" he used to quote, \"A Sufi it can turn to Christian.\" And sometimes he would add, \"The pilgrim's destination is but the starting place for love.\" The mullahs in town even spread a rumour that he had turned into a heretic and a Babi. But since my father was always a generous host, and continued to solve their problems by telephone, he was never officially excommunicated. Besides, the clergy had lost much of its power, and most mullahs had exchanged their religious turban for the civilian hat.\n\nOur Haj Agha felt the time hadn't come for his beliefs. So he decided to retire. But he was never one to put up with injustice either. During the fighting between the police-chief and Massoud Khan, almost every household hung up a British flag to show their loyalty to the police-chief and to prevent raids on their homes. My father not only refused to put up the flag, but he even helped, side by side with the chief Rabbi, to carry the Jewish wounded from the poorest quarters to a doctor. He did his best, too, to prevent the armed men from plundering the Jewish quarter, but to no avail. Those men had been well paid.\n\nThey had shot a Jewish mother as she was nursing her baby. The baby was still suckling when she passed out. When Haj Agha arrived on the scene, he quickly tucked the baby under his cloak and rushed straight to Dr Scott, the European doctor at the Missionary  Hospital. And who was this Dr Scott? None other than the special physician to the police-chief and his family, who refused to visit those wounded by the police-chief's cronies. Single-handed, my father had the hospital closed down that day, forcing Dr Scott and several Armenian nurses to visit the wounded mother and other casualties in the Jewish district. The mother recovered. Do you know who she is? Our very own Tavuus Khanom who still comes to see us regularly and brings wine for Yusef.\n\nI remember Felfelli, a drummer with Musa's musicians, had been among the wounded. They brought him to our house and stretched him out at the entrance on the doorman's bench. Blood was gushing out of the wound in his thigh like an open fountain, covering the entire entrance. My father happened to be away and Bibi, my mother, fell sick at the sight of all that blood. I grabbed my veil and ran to Dr Abdollah Khan's office in the Arab quarter. I didn't stop for breath until I got there. Between you and me, they hadn't put up the British flag either.\n\nDr Abdollah Khan's father was the well-known Haj Hakimbashi, who was still alive then. He had four sons, three of them doctors and the youngest a pharmacist. They owned a pharmacy too. God rest their souls. Only Dr Abdollah Khan is still with us. In his office that day you could hardly move for all the wounded and dying. I resorted to tears and pleas before the doctor agreed to come with me. They used to say he was quite a healer, despite his youth. But as fate would have it, Felfelli was already dead by the time we arrived, and he had been covered with a bedspread. His relatives were crowding into our house and raising the roof with their wailing and mourning. Bibi had fainted. And now where do you think our house was? Right opposite Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's father's house. Ezzat had just married, and her husband\u2014none other than the police-chief's son-in-law\u2014had actually moved into her parents' home. All the trouble had been started by this very son-in-law. Now what if they had heard the din in our house?\n\nOf course, Ezzat-ud-Dowleh and I had taken an oath to be sisters, but in those troubled times people hardly thought of their real sisters, let alone their sisters by oath. No, it was respect for Haj Agha that prevented them from raiding our house, especially since they were afraid he might decree a holy war. All this happened well before my father became a recluse, you see.\n\nI'm sure Haj Agha had the kind of power it took to hypnotize people, if he wanted to. He would stare right at the space between your eyes, and who could resist him? Imagine a man like that letting himself be enslaved by an Indian dancer and break our Bibi's heart! Oh Lord, don't put us to the test! Bibi knew what was going on, but she never said a word. It's all over with now, but she never even confided in me, her own daughter. Haj Agha and Soudabeh were the talk of the town, but my mother, the only one that mattered, remained silent.\n\nAt least my father had the decency not to bring Soudabeh and Mohammad Hossein into the house until all the family had moved away. I was married first, then Abol-Ghassem Khan found a wife. Finally Bibi went off to Karbala. My husband was a textile merchant who traded with Egypt and India. He and his father imported a delicate fabric known as 'miyur'. It was even finer and more beautiful than silk, and quite often used for underwear or babies' clothes. Nowadays you can't find it anywhere. But my husband was an unhappy man and he committed suicide. One day, at sunset, he dashed himself on horseback against the pillars of the British Consulate building. Because of our son, and because of an unjust society that made life unbearable for him. You see, Haj Agha could retire when he felt the time wasn't right for his ideas. But my poor husband was still a young man. Just like Yusef, God forbid. Yusef is ahead of his time, too. That poor soul used to say, like Yusef, that we had to change the times. But he was just beating his head against a stone wall\u2014as he literally did in the end. Let's face it, these are times for double-dealers like my brother Abol-Ghassem Khan. When will it be time for people like Yusef, I wonder?\n\nI'll never forget, after my husband and child died, Yusef wrote me a letter telling me to stand on my own two feet. He said if I fell, no-one in the world would bother to help lift me up. One could only rely on oneself, he said.\n\nThank God Bibi was not around to see my unhappiness. When she made up her mind to leave, she invited the entire family to dinner. That night she kept staring at us as if to engrave our faces on her memory. Only Yusef wasn't there because he had been sent abroad for two years to finish his education. Actually, when Abol-Ghassem Khan complains that our father never spent any money on his education, he isn't telling the truth. Haj Agha wanted to send both of them away together and Abol-Ghassem Khan turned it down of his own free will. He asked my father to give him what his education would have cost in land, and that's what Haj Agha did.\n\nAnyhow, Bibi bid us farewell that evening, supposedly to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Hazrate Massoumeh in Qom, and from there to Mashad. She said she would be away for a month or two. But unbeknownst to us, she had arranged to have herself smuggled over the Iraqi border to Karbala. All she had in the way of worldly possessions was some money Haj Agha had given her, and some women's trinkets, a suitcase and her ewer. Her emerald earrings she left in my care, in case something should happen to her on the journey. I was to keep them for Yusef to give to his wife on their wedding night.\n\nA month later a letter arrived from her telling us not to worry, that she was in Karbala where she planned to stay permanently as part of a religious vow she had taken. Only much later did we discover\u2014and please don't let this be known\u2014that she had ended up being a maidservant there\u2014to a Khanom Fakhr-ol-Sharia. All the time she was in Karbala, Bibi never asked for money, nor did my Haj Agha offer to... no, perhaps three or four times on our insistence he did send her some in one way or another. Whether she received it or not, I never found out. She wouldn't write, you see. In that first letter she stipulated that we were not to write to her, since she wanted no distractions from her religious calling.\n\nBut I've been digressing. I was talking about that dreadful night, wasn't I? Yes, I was sitting right here by this brazier, prodding the ashes with my tongs. There wasn't much of a fire left. I was counting my sorrows in the dark, with Soudabeh sitting next to me the whole night. What a woman she was! A pity she broke our mother's heart.\n\nThat night I asked Soudabeh, \"I never understood why you, with a thousand admirers, should have chosen my father, driving my mother out of her own home?\" She said she couldn't help it; she knew she had ruined the reputation of a Shi'ite clergyman of the highest order, and made an innocent woman homeless. But it was out of her hands, she claimed. \"Sometimes, in a previous life,\" she said, \"you've lost a person you've been very close to. Once that has happened, you keep coming back to this world to find him. You bear the waiting, the separation. But when you finally find the person again, how can you possibly let go of them? It's like two intertwining plants at first, where one withers and dies, then in a later life they happen to be two migrating birds, who return once again as two loving deer\u2014and perhaps one is shot by a hunter\u2014and so on. They could be father and daughter, sister and brother... who knows? And when they find each other at last, they can no longer be separated.\" She often used to say things like that. She would say these things and yet she never agreed to marry our father. She just stayed with him until they grew old.\n\nAfter my husband's untimely death, I decided, as Yusef had advised me, to stand on my own feet and run the estate I had received from Haj Agha as my wedding gift. I'd straddle my horse in my breeches, cover the poppy fields from one end to the other on horseback. How old do you think I was then? Twenty-eight. I even used the bastinado on my peasants, God forgive my sins! Bibi had been gone then for about three years. The poor woman was only forty-four when she died. One day, Fakhr-ol-Sharia telegraphed my father to say Bibi was ill. To his credit, Haj Agha made every effort to get exit permits. He cabled Yusef to go to his mother at once, but decided not to say she was on the point of death. Which is why Yusef only arrived after we had buried Bibi in the shrine tomb. Abol-Ghassem Khan had gone to great lengths, paying quite a bit out of his own pocket, to get permission for the body to be placed in the shrine, even though we knew the moment our backs were turned they would take the corpse out to a public graveyard. Still, even one night in such a holy place was quite a blessing, and Bibi's wish had been fulfilled.\n\nO merciful Lord, what a tragedy it was! My Bibi in the throes of death in a room two feet square, on a torn straw-mat covered by a ragged quilt... she cried out from the heat, but there was no cool basement, no iced water for her. Fakhr-ol-Sharia would call on her for service, for a hookah, for this or that without the least consideration or respect. Oh Lord, no Khanom, no title! My mother's name was Fassih-ol-Zaman, meaning 'eloquent one'. An eloquence which never uttered a word of what had happened to her! Even the story of her becoming a housemaid was told us by Fakhr-ol-Sharia herself, who talked about Bibi as though she came from a long line of devoted servants. I've never said a word of this to anyone. Not even Yusef. There was no point. He was only twenty years old, he couldn't have taken it. Is he ready to bear it now, at forty? I doubt it.\n\nWe never did find out how Bibi got herself to Karbala. We merely heard that when she arrived, she fell into the clutches of a certain Sheikh Abbas Qomi who used to disguise himself as an Arab and frighten illegal pilgrims by threatening to denounce them to the authorities unless they bribed him. When he confronted my mother, she was so panicked she dropped her suitcase, grabbed her ewer and ran away! As it happened, her birth certificate was in the suitcase. With the hundred tomans Haj Agha had given her, she managed to obtain a dead person's birth certificate from a worker at the mortuary.\n\nKhadijeh came out to the verandah to ask: \"Aren't you having any dinner tonight?\"\n\n\"We'll call you when we're ready,\" Zari answered.\n\n\"No, that's enough for now,\" Ameh intervened. \"I've talked too much and I've given you a headache. Let Khadijeh bring us a bite to eat, then we can go to sleep and see what tomorrow will bring.\" \n\n# _7_\n\nEarly next morning, Zari instructed Gholam to tell anyone coming from the Governor for anything that Khanom was not at home, and that nothing could be given away in her absence. If the person still insisted and mentioned a horse, Gholam was to feign ignorance and say they had come to the wrong house\u2014they used to have a horse, but it died. At a pinch, he was to give them the chestnut horse.\n\nIt was watering-day for the garden, and Zari went outdoors to watch the trees and the grass thirstily drink in the water, sharing their refreshment and feeling revived herself by breathing in the smell of moist earth. Gholam and the gardener, shovels against their shoulders, trouser-legs rolled up, crossed the garden barefoot from one end to the other, opening or closing the flow of water in the narrow irrigation canals. Mina and Marjan wanted to stay around, but kept getting in the way. Finally Zari had to coax them into building a mudhouse under the big elm near the stables. She told them they could plant flowers in it, and have a wedding for their dolls. But she warned them that if they didn't stay in the shade, the sun would scorch their lovely soft skin.\n\nMina started to draw a plan for the house, making room for a little pool, a cupboard, and a cold furnace. Marjan completed the plan by adding the stables. Then, with a lot of squealing and fuss they caught a toad which they put in the stables, but it soon leapt away. Still, there were plenty more in the garden.\n\nGholam directed the flow of water towards the elm trees, and before long the children's mudhouse was flooded. Water ran into pools around their feet, and they squatted down in it. Zari called them away, all the while listening for a knock at the door so she could hide in time from the Governor's messenger. Mina shouted at Gholam for having ruined their mudhouse:\n\n\"You meanie!\"\n\n\"It was just a flood, sweetheart,\" was his reply.\n\nAll that day and the next there was no messenger from the Governor, and Zari felt reassured, thinking that they must have changed their minds. Even Ameh commented, \"Thank God! So much needless worrying. They must have just mentioned something in passing, and Abol-Ghassem Khan made them a promise to curry favour, as usual.\"\n\nBut early in the morning on the third day, Zari had just got out of bed when there was a knock at the door. Gholam went to answer while Zari kept watch from her hiding-place. She saw a gendarme greet Gholam and embrace him, handing him an envelope. Gholam brought the envelope to Zari.\n\n\"It looks as though you know him,\" she said.\n\n\"Yes, he's from my village,\" he replied. \"From Bardeh. He always wanted to become a gendarme, and now he has.\"\n\nZari went to the verandah and waited until Ameh Khanom had ended her prayers before opening the envelope. Then she read out loud the neat handwriting addressed to herself:\n\nMy dear Madam,\n\nIf I were not certain of Shirazi hospitality and of the generosity of your respected family, I would never make the following request of you. Recently, my daughter Gilan Taj was so badly afflicted with typhus that the doctors had given up hope. But God's mercy was with us, and my child has recovered. My daughter enjoys horse riding, and despite carefully searching this town, we have not been able to find a horse gentle enough for her use. I assure you the general sent us two of the best horses from the army stables, but they were large, headstrong animals not suited for a child who has just left the sick-bed. Our honoured friend, Abol-Ghassem Khan has promised to send us your son's colt. I hear he is away on a trip. I humbly beg you to loan us the young horse belonging to your respected son for a few days by means of this messenger. The moment Gilan Taj tires of horses and horse riding, we shall return it.\n\nYours sincerely\n\nSince the signature of the Governor's wife differed from the rest of the handwriting, Zari decided the letter must have been written by someone else.\n\n\"Now what am I to do?\" Zari turned to Ameh.\n\n\"They've taken us by surprise,\" she replied. \"We can't give the colt away, and yet we can't refuse either. If we give them the colt I know Yusef and Khosrow will be up in arms. If we don't, well, you remember Abol-Ghassem's outburst the other day? There will be endless quarrelling. If he isn't made a deputy one of these days he'll blame it on us and our pettiness.\"\n\n\"And now that they've stated their request clearly,\" Zari added, \"I can't even send them the chestnut. What should I do?\"\n\n\"Just sit in a corner and think, I suppose,\" said Ameh with a sigh.\n\nThey asked the messenger to come in and sit on a chair by the pool. Khadijeh brought him some breakfast which she placed on another chair. The gendarme took off his hat and put it on his knee. Zari watched him empty the sugar-lumps from the bowl into his pocket and gulp down his unsweetened tea on top of huge mouthfuis of food. Gholam was sitting opposite him on the edge of the pool.\n\n\"Are you the guard at the entrance to the Governor's estate?\" Zari asked him.\n\n\"Hmph!\" grunted the man with his mouth full, and then he quickly swallowed his food.\n\n\"Do you have a wife and children?\"\n\nGrinning widely, he answered in a thick accent: \"I wed me cousin last New Year's.\"\n\n\"When will you return the horse?\"\n\n\"The lieutenant gave me a mission,\" he said. \"His honour said I'm a good lad. But he didn't say anything about bringing the horse back.\" And again he grinned from ear to ear.\n\n\"But it's not mating season yet, brother,\" Gholam intervened.\n\nThe gendarme dug a hand into his tunic pocket and produced an envelope which he presented to Zari, saying: \"Agha Mirza, the governor's secretary, gave me this. He said it's eighty tomans.\"\n\nZari took the envelope, opened it and began to count. It really was eighty tomans. She whispered to Ameh: \"They imagine they've paid for it, too.\"\n\n\"Let him take Sahar away for now until we think of something,\" said Ameh.\n\n\"Gholam, go and bring Sahar out of the stables,\" Zari ordered.\n\n\"Khanom, I swear what they're doing is wrong,\" Gholam protested. \"Mating season is over now. Besides Sahar is too young...\"\n\n\"They don't want him for mating,\" Zari explained wearily, \"the Governor's daughter has taken a fancy to Sahar...\"\n\nGholam took off his felt hat. His bald head was flushed and sweaty. He said, \"Khosrow Khan has left Sahar in my care. Now you ask me to give him away to someone else? Never!\"\n\n\"Gholam, can't you see they've sent a gendarme?\" Ameh said.\n\n\"What makes you think this poor fellow's a gendarme?\" said Gholam. \"He's just a simple, honest lad.\" Turning to the gendarme, he continued, \"Listen brother, go and tell your master that the horse was dead. Khanom here will give you your tip.\"\n\nBut the gendarme was insistent.\n\n\"Aren't we from the same village?\" he pleaded. \"Don't make it so hard for me. The lieutenant ordered me to bring the horse back by whatever means. He gave me a mission. He said I'm a good lad. He said if I don't bring the colt back with me, I can resign my post and go straight back to Bardeh, back to my mother's apron! He said that himself.\"\n\nGholam put on his hat and said: \"Whoever wants to take Sahar has to go and bring him out of the stables himself\u2014if he dares. I'll knock him over so hard with my shovel, he really will have to run straight back to his mother's apron!\"\n\n\"I give the orders here,\" Zari intervened authoritatively. \"I'm the mistress of this house. Go and bring Sahar from the stables.\"\n\nBy now Mina and Marjan had woken up and come outside to the verandah, with Khadijeh trailing behind asking them to wash their faces first.\n\n\"Khanom, if you ask me, you shouldn't do this. Think of tomorrow when your son comes home\u2014 he'll be heartbroken. Think of later on when the master gets back... don't be afraid of these people. Just refuse, that's all. What can they do to you?\"\n\nThe gendarme started off towards the stables. \"Aren't we brothers, from the same village?\" he appealed.\n\n\"Where do you think you're going?\" Gholam asked.\n\n\"To the stables.\"\n\n\"We may be from the same village,\" Gholam threatened, \"but if you dare set foot in those stables...\"\n\n\"I haven't brought my gun\" countered the gendarme, \"I'm going to get it now.\"\n\nGholam grabbed him by the collar and shouted:\n\n\"Now you're showing off to me with your gun? Aren't you the same miserable urchin who used to sneak off at night to steal chickens? Did your lieutenant tell you to come threatening me with your gun too?\"\n\nThe man shook himself free and muttered: \"No, I swear it! But he said I could resign my post and go back to the village if I failed. How can I go back there?\"\n\nAmeh Khanom called Gholam over.\n\n\"Gholam, don't be stubborn,\" she said quietly. \"Abol-Ghassem Khan has already made them a promise. Let him take Sahar away for the time being. I've had a good idea. I think I can get him back before Khosrow returns.\"\n\nGholam fetched Sahar from the stables and gave the reins to the gendarme. As he tried to mount, Sahar gave a mighty kick, reared up on his hind legs, and neighed loudly. Both the mare and the chestnut horse answered from the stables. The man fell back and let go of the bridle. Sahar turned to Gholam and sniffed at his rolled-up sleeves. The gendarme made several more attempts to mount, sweating profusely all the time. He tried stroking Sahar's mane and patting his neck. He brought out a sugar-lump and held it in front of the horse's mouth. Finally he managed to grab the bridle. Zari handed him the money.\n\n\"Take that for yourself.\"\n\nThe gendarme's eyes shone. Putting the notes in his tunic pocket, he dragged Sahar away.\n\nThe twins watched in horror, ignoring all Khadijeh's pleas for them to have breakfast. To Zari, it felt as if the garden had been robbed of its life and lustre. Ameh Khanom roundly cursed the universe, before turning on Zari: \"Now why did you have to go and tip him?\"\n\nGholam stood there, watching his mistress whose eyes had filled with tears.\n\n\"Khanom, may the men return safely from hunting,\" said Khadijeh appeasingly. \"That's all that matters. The mare is young, and soon she'll give birth to another Sahar.\"\n\n\"I bet I shall have Sahar back in three days!\" said Ameh. \"It's just as well you returned their money.\"\n\nZari was not convinced, however. She ordered Gholam to dig a mock grave down by the stables. She told him to pull out the weeds, smooth over the soil and arrange some stones in a rectangle with a few pots of petunia around it.\n\n\"Take my word and be patient for a while,\" Ameh advised.\n\nBut Zari merely turned to Gholam and warned him not to breathe a word of what had happened to Khosrow.\n\nWhen they went into the sitting room, Ameh Khanom went straight to __ the telephone and invited Ezzat-ud-Dowleh for lunch in three days' time.\n\nWhen the day of the luncheon invitation came, Zari went to great lengths to receive Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, although she had never liked the woman much. When she arrived, Zari took her guest's head-scarf and white gloves and dark glasses and wrapped them neatly in a bundle. Then she gave her a fresh peach-coloured chador to replace the dusty outdoor one. Even though Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had brought along her favourite maidservant, Ferdows, Zari sent the girl to rest in Khosrow's room. And even though Zari had cooled the parlour since early morning by closing the windows and letting down the straw blinds to keep out the sun, she still provided Ezzat-ud-Dowleh with a fan. Trying to make herself pleasant, she complimented her guest, \"What a beautiful head of hair you have.\"\n\n\"God bless you,\" responded Ezzat-ud-Dowleh.\n\nAlthough it was well before lunch-time, she refused any sherbet drink or fruit. She asked for tea which, when she tried, she did not seem to like. She merely remarked: \"Ration tea is always stale.\"\n\nAt lunch she didn't eat much. She toyed with a few spoonfuls of rice and kebab which she then pushed aside, asking for sour-grape juice instead. To that she added some grated cucumber and bread-crumbs and onions, saying it was good for her leg pains. Unfortunately the sour-grape juice was last year's, too, like the tea.\n\nAfter lunch, Zari spread out a thin cotton sheet in the parlour and brought a pillow and a delicate coverlet for her guest's afternoon nap. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh stretched herself out, fan in hand, while Ferdows the maid massaged her legs. Ameh Khanom lay down on another cotton sheet beside her. Zari left the so-called sisters by themselves, and went to her own bedroom, leaving the door slightly ajar so that she could overhear their conversation. If Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was willing to cooperate, she was the one person who could get Sahar back. She could even have Zari's earrings returned, sp Zari's pains would not have gone unrewarded.\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh's voice could easily be heard through the door: \"God bless you, Ferdows. Rub harder. That's better. Have you said your prayers yet? No? Then get up, child, go and say your prayers...\"\n\nZari could tell Ferdows had left, because Ameh was chatting and laying the groundwork for the favours she wanted to ask later. It was a pity Zari could not hear every word. But Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, lying closer to the door, could easily be heard in a loud and flowing monologue. \n\n# _8_\n\nNow I understand, she was saying. When you called I asked myself, why has my sister suddenly remembered me after all this time? We only see each other on holy days or funerals. So you have some sort of problem, and I may be able to help.\n\nDid you say horse? No, as God is my witness I had no idea your nephew had a colt called Sahar. I had heard about your brother keeping horses. I thought, well, talk about showing off... but as for giving the Governor's daughter the idea of harping after your nephew's colt\u2014upon my word, never!\n\nTrue, I can't stand the sight of your brother. And if Zari hadn't become your sister-in-law, I wouldn't have hesitated to destroy her entire family. Yes, the whole thing goes back thirteen or fourteen years. But can I ever forget? A distinguished lady like me going to their slum to ask for her hand for my son! Their smoky little living-room the size of our prayer-chamber at home, and her mother like a living skeleton! I'd be ashamed to have my own servant looking like that, with her white hair and yellow complexion, her front teeth missing, wearing an old crumpled dress. I had to hold my breath for the smell of her sweat. You would've thought she could at least get some false teeth, comb her hair and dab a spot of rouge on that wrinkled face. After all, I'd come to ask for her daughter's hand. Such a distinguished lady as myself, too! It was a great stroke of luck for her that my innocent boy had chosen her daughter of all the girls available to him. A hundred times I asked my Hamid, \"Son, isn't it beneath you to marry the daughter of Mirza Ali Akbar Kafar, that unbeliever of an English teacher at the Shoaieh School?\"... Now don't you be offended, sister, I'm only telling the truth. Anyway, Hamid would say to me, \"I'm looking for something I don't have myself.\" I said to him, \"What does this girl have besides a nice pair of eyes?\" He said, \"She has gentleness, virtue and education.\" I'd say, \"But my love, my son, you can't live on gentleness, virtue and education.\" To cut a long story short, they turned down that piece of luck themselves. I sent Kal Abbas, the doorman, to their awful house for an answer and all they said was that they had consulted the Quran for an augury and the outcome was unfavourable. Since when had Mirza Ali Akbar Kafar's family believed in consulting the Quran?\n\nBut Hamid had set his heart on marrying Zari, and there I was having to lower myself to go to that ramshackle house again\u2014not once, but twice, three times! Until finally the mother admitted you had taken their daughter the customary shawl and ring, and they'd promised her to you. I thought of coming to dissuade you, telling you that the mother had cancer, telling you that a beggar will always remain a beggar at heart. But you had long since turned your back on our oath and sisterhood. Now, now, how quickly you take offence! It's true isn't it?\n\nNo, as God is my witness I didn't give the Governor's daughter the idea of taking your nephew's horse. And now... all right. I'll do what I can. I'll tell them it's a real shame, the boy is utterly heartbroken, and they should give the horse back to him. You did say you've sent back their money, or haven't you? Maybe I'd better persuade her to ride the horse\u2014it's sure to take off with her and gallop right back to its old stable. That will put riding out of her mind for a while! But as for talking to them about \"oppression\" and \"cruelty\" and saying that everyone is cursing the Governor behind his back, that I can't do. Unlike you, I won't hurt my friends. You insist? Well, all right. Just for your sake I'll do it. You know me. I bear grudges, that's true. But I also understand friendship and sisterhood.\n\nI'll tell you the truth about those emerald earrings of Zari's. The minute I walked into that wedding and set eyes on your sister-in-law looking so pretty and prosperous, I decided to get my own back by making her suffer the loss of her precious earrings. What, you didn't know? How's that? You mean she hasn't let on about them? Well, I could have told you she wouldn't be particularly honest, coming from that family!... Now it's no use getting offended, I'm only telling the truth. Yes, it was my doing. I sent Ferdows off at top speed to the haberdasher's bazaar to buy some green silk. I threw it around the bride's neck, and told them to go and borrow the emerald earrings belonging to Yusef Khan's wife, knowing full well they're not the sort to return earrings. Why are you getting in a state about it now? Let Zari do the worrying. Come now, sister, please don't look so upset. Well yes... I did know they were a special token... very well, I'll try to get the earrings back, too. You don't need to tell me how to do it; I know myself.\n\nLet's be sisters again like we used to be. Do you remember that celebration we had when we were children, and we brought over a mullah to swear us to sisterhood, and then they showered us with sugar-plums? But then you changed. Ever since you lost your little boy and your husband killed himself, you seem to have changed into another person altogether. Do you remember, when we were a bit older we both fell in love with Dr Marhamat Khan? He'd just come from Tehran, and they said he'd studied in Europe. I can't forget that day when we made ourselves up so no-one would recognize us, and went to the doctor's office. We counted eleven other girls there\u2014some from the town's best families\u2014who'd also made themselves up and were pretending to be ill. like us, they were really there to show off their faces and bodies to the doctor. Do you remember Etrat, who later became Etrat-Saltaneh, wearing her fancy starched kerchief? Oh Lord, those were the days! You'd pulled out a handful of your hair to say you were going bald, and I'd made up a story about a lump in my right breast which was sometimes there and sometimes not. He dabbed some tincture on your bald spot, and told me I was imagining things. He never married any of us, either. He went and brought a wife from Abadeh.\n\nThen each of us went our separate ways. I was married first, but we both met with tragedy. Maybe you were better off in the beginning, but your happiness didn't last. And I couldn't bring myself to confide my troubles to anyone, not even to you, my sworn sister. They say every ill-starred woman has at least forty days' grace in her husband's home, but I didn't even have that. Imagine my large dowry, my parents' house and wealthy life-style all falling into the hands of that no-good husband of mine! And a distinguished lady like me, the police chief's granddaughter... and he was a man whose forefathers had ruled our province like sultans, generation after generation...\n\nYou see, we'd only been married three days before we began to quarrel and my husband said, \"Don't play the police chief's granddaughter  with me; all your ancestors were traitors. Even your great-grandfather was a close aide to that ruthless Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar in return for a piece of cold-blooded treachery.\" He said, \"Don't you show off to me with your ancestral home either. Every one of its stones and bricks was laid over the body of an honest, hard-working person. Its clay plaster was mixed with the blood of our wise men...\" What, sister! Are you saying my husband was right? I'll show all of you what right is! Anyway, that same evening when my brother turned up, my husband was all sweetness and light again. You should have seen him with his yes-sir no-sir!\n\nIt was during the first month of our marriage that he fell in love with Nim-Taj, the wife of Massoud Khan. \"Major\" Massoud had been appointed by the government as chief of police here, if you remember. My uncle and my brothers didn't want the town to fall into his hands. From the day he arrived they gave him trouble, and finally they set off that famous riot. I watched my coward of a husband suddenly change and become the driving force of that fight, turning my house into a sort of headquarters for my uncle's armed men. I said to him, \"Didn't you say my brothers, fathers and ancestors were all traitors? How is it that now you're fighting their battle for them?\" I'd just found out that he'd fallen for Nim-Taj. May he never rest in peace!\n\nEventually Major Massoud realized he had no chance of surviving. Early one morning he ran away on foot to Seyyid Abol Vafa's shrine so he could take sanctuary there. My disgraceful husband chased him on horseback and caught up with him before he ever got there. He shot him in the back, and left the poor wretch rolling on the grass crying out for water. A crowd gathered to watch him in his death-throes. No-one dared give him a drop of water for fear of the armed men. Haj Agha, your father, appeared on the scene and took control of the situation. He shouted at the armed men, and told them they'd gone out of their minds, just like their master. He said they'd do penance for this killing right here in this world, and they'd always be haunted by the memory of the poor man's death-agonies. And he carried Massoud off in a droshke, but apparently the young man died then and there in your Haj Agha's arms. My husband was afraid of your father, you know. Several times they were about to raid your house but my husband stopped them, saying that Haj Agha would call for a holy war, and Solat the Qashqai chief would join him\u2014and no-one could resist that combination.\n\nBut I was impressed by Nim-Taj. That very night she went to Agha Sheikh Razi, and wouldn't budge from the house until they arranged to get her back to her parents. When my shameless husband went for her, the bird had flown.\n\nMay your soul never rest in peace, man! He never deserved a well-born lady like me! Whenever we quarrelled, he would say that I was cross-eyed, and he'd been forced to marry me. He would say he didn't love me but wouldn't leave me either because he didn't want people to insult our son by saying that his mother was a divorcee. And I, pathetic fool that I was, loved him to distraction. He knew exactly what to do to get his own way with me. I was always finding strands of blonde or black hair or sequins from women's dresses on the collar of his coat. Eventually he had the nerve to bring his women to the house. First he only brought them as far as the outer courtyard, and then he even brought them to the inner rooms.\n\nTowards the end, he loved to have \"hundred toman\" whores. He'd say it was too demeaning for a \"hundred toman\" whore to be taken to the outer courtyard. So they would sit on the wooden bed we placed over the pool in the inner courtyard while I sent them trays of drinks. I would soak his tobacco in spirits and prepare his hookah. That hypocrite! First he would say his prayers, then he would settle down to his drinking. \"Don't perform the holy prayers after imbibing drink,\" he would quote from the Quran. I would watch them through the stained-glass windows of the sitting-room till dawn.\n\nIn the morning he would kiss my hand, he would kiss my feet. He would say, \"What can I do, that's how I am. The minute I see the flutter of a woman's veil, any woman, I lose my senses.\" And I would cry floods of tears and tell him, \"Take my marriage portion and set me free, go away, leave me alone. This house and everything in it is mine anyway. I don't need a useless effigy to call a husband.\" I would swear by my one and only son, threaten to go to Haj Agha your father or to you, my sister, and take sanctuary. Haj Agha wasn't the kind of man whose word people took lightly. But he was always ready with an answer. \"Whose house did you say you're going to?\" he would sneer. \"Haj Agha himself is one of the great lovers of our time. He keeps a mistress living under his own roof!\" He declared he didn't care a hoot what the Almighty said, let alone Haj Agha. Believe me, he meant it; he had turned away from God. Around that time he stopped bothering to say his prayers altogether. When he rode on horseback and people greeted him, he wouldn't return their greetings. He would signal to the outrider to answer them. Yes, my sister, this is the first time I'm telling you all this. You see, when your husband and son died, you forgot about me, your sworn sister.\n\nThe incident with my maid Ferdows and her mother? I suppose you heard rumours about that and now you want to hear the truth from myself? Well sister, I have nothing to hide from you.\n\nOne night after my evening prayers, I was coming out of the door of the New Mosque, when I saw a little girl crying by the door, with a bundle next to her. The sight of her was so pathetic, it would have melted a heart of stone. When I asked her why she was crying, she said, \"My mistress threw me out of her house where I was a maid and I don't know how to get home to Baj Gah.\" I took the child in as an act of charity. The next morning I sent for the midwife to examine her. I thought someone might have taken advantage of her and then the blame would fall on my poor, innocent son Hamid.\n\nTo cut a long story short, sister, within a week either my husband or my son managed to take advantage of the girl. It never occurred to me that they wouldn't even pass up a wretched little peasant girl. Of course, I didn't find out which of them had done it. I scorched the girl with a hot iron but she wouldn't confess; her screams pierced me to my very bones, but there was no way I could ask Hamid himself. A mother can't talk to her son about things like that.\n\nFerdows grew into a woman in our house. When she got her period, she bloomed into a rosy-cheeked, dimpled lass, with such a twinkle in her eye! I was worried all right, and I looked around desperately for a solution, but sure enough before I could do anything her belly was out there and I didn't know who to blame\u2014my husband or my son?\n\nAnyway, I was forced to latch her on to Kal Abbas, our doorman. Before that, his mother used to go to the Jewish quarter once a month and buy him a little girl for three tomans, dress her up in pink satin and bring her home. By the time the dress had worn out, so had Kai Abbas's interest, at which point she would take the girl back to her family. But do you think Ferdows would consent to my plan for her? I locked her up for three days in our chilly basement in the middle of winter. She had no food but her own thoughts and tears... I said to her, \"You shameless wench, what do you want from me? Should I be sending you back to Baj Gah with your belly full like this?\" She said, \"I can go to the police station to lodge a complaint against you, and then your family's reputation will be ruined.\" That half-size peasant wench certainly knew how to play her cards! \"I'll give you whatever you want,\" I promised, \"just get out of my house!\" Obviously she had fixed all her hopes on that bastard in her belly. She said to me, \"The child is yours; his inheritance and wealth will be worth piles and piles of money.\" Finally I beat her as hard as I could. Fortunately she started to bleed and Khanom Hakim got rid of that loathsome thing in her belly. With the baby gone, she gave up all her trouble-making. She just settled for having her mother brought over from Baj Gah and I had her start work for me on six qaran a day. Nana Ferdows, the mother, is an able woman. She's hard-working, but too bold as servants go... \n\n# _9_\n\nKhosrow was back from his hunting trip, covered with sweat and dust. His gun was still hanging from his shoulder, and a few dead partridges dangled from his hand. He went to the howzkhaneh which had a small pool in it and which Zari was preparing for use during the hot summer days. He held up the partridges before his mother's eyes as she was smoothing out the carpet.\n\n\"Look, I shot them myself!\"\n\n\"I can see,\" Zari replied, without looking up.\n\n\"Aren't you pleased to see me?\" Khosrow asked.\n\n\"Of course I am,\" said his mother.\n\n\"I'll give one to Sahar. He won't eat it, he'll just play with it.\" Then he added, \"No-one's happy to see me back. Gholam was sitting in Haj Mohammad Reza's shop; he almost ducked when he saw me. I came to you first and you didn't even kiss me. It doesn't matter.\"\n\nZari bit her lip and said, \"Take the partridges to the kitchen and give them to the cook to pluck. It's warm weather and they'll spoil. Tell him to serve them with rice tonight. Raisin rice, your favourite.\"\n\nAs soon as Khosrow had gone, Zari cursed the whole universe\u2014she cursed herself and her ancestors and her fears; she cursed her English schooling and her cowardice and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh. When she said goodbye Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had promised Ameh Khanom to send Sahar back to his old stable within three days. So what had happened? Zari sat by the small pool and turned on the fountains. At first the water came out in short, muddy spurts, then it cleared and rose higher. Soon after, the twins came in. They both sat down by the pool and held their hands underneath the fountain while their mother reminded them for the thousandth time not to tell Khosrow who took Sahar, but to say instead that he was dead.\n\nWhen Khosrow came back he didn't even notice Mina and Marjan.\n\n\"Mother, where's Sahar?\" he asked.\n\nZari didn't answer. Instead she busied herself washing the children's faces with water from the fountain.\n\n\"My uncle was saying Sahar had caught the glanders disease,\" Khosrow blurted, \"and that glanders is dangerous. Is that true? Captain Singer said glanders has become epidemic. Mother, he even imitated father. I nearly hit him when he said to me, 'This disease is yet another gift from the foreign army, as your father would say!'\"\n\n\"Singer was with you all the time?\" Zari asked, carefully skirting the issue.\n\n\"No, only for the first few days. There was a woman with him, too, who spoke good Persian. But she was just like a man. She even had a small moustache and wore boots. She rode well. Now tell me where have you sent Sahar?\"\n\n\"Well, why did they leave?\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Singer and that old woman.\"\n\n\"How should I know?\" Khosrow complained. \"Why are you interrogating me? Now you're probably going to ask me what we had for dinner, what we had for lunch... aren't you going to tell me where Sahar is?\"\n\n\"You went off and left us for so long. After all, you were the man of the house. Now that you're back, won't you tell your mother where you went? Who was with you? Whether you had a good time?\"\n\n\"Well, we went hunting,\" Khosrow answered impatiently. \"On the third day when we came back after sunset, another foreigner wearing dark glasses arrived and took Singer and the woman with him. Uncle sent three armed men and one of his guides along with them. They headed for the mountains. Four-eyed Hormoz said, 'You can be sure they're off to see the tribe.' Now tell me where Sahar is.\"\n\nZari bit her lip. \"God help us!\" she exclaimed.\n\nMina got up from the edge of the pool. \"Sahar was hurt and died!\" she blurted out.\n\n\"Died!\" Khosrow shrieked. \"But why? Is it true, mother?\" he asked through his tears. \"I guessed it myself. I saw the flowerpots on his grave.\"\n\n\"What could I do, my dear?\" Zari said with a sigh. \"It was his fate. Your uncle took you to the village on purpose so you wouldn't see him die. At least he had a peaceful end. We buried him at the bottom of the garden just for your sake.\"\n\nKhosrow squatted by the pool and said, \"I knew inside me right from the start that something was going to happen. I could tell from the way my uncle talked. He went on about how a person should be patient, and what you should do when you lose someone you love. And after that he kept talking about the glanders disease. That's funny, you know, I dreamt last night that I was riding after game. Uncle and Singer were there too. Singer had spread a map on his saddle, and at the same time he was looking through his long binoculars for game. The first day of the hunt he was doing that, you see, and my uncle kept saying, 'Look how these foreigners do everything with calculation, even their hunting'...\"\n\n\"Yes, especially when they're hunting people...\" Zari commented sadly.\n\n\"But I was riding Sahar, not uncle's horse. We were coming down the mountain. Suddenly Sahar reared up. His front legs and mane froze in the air, and there I was hanging in space on horseback. The earth looked like a nutshell under my feet. In the morning I told uncle my dream. He said, 'It probably means something has happened to Sahar. Now don't you get upset! It's not worth it. Pick out whichever of my colts you like.' I said, 'Uncle, that's impossible. When we left Sahar was perfectly healthy. How could it be? No other colt will ever take Sahar's place for me.'\" Khosrow broke off, sobbing. \"Now I remember. When we were leaving, Sahar was stamping his foot and digging at the soil with his hoof. Poor animal knew he wouldn't see me again, but stupid me, I didn't know. Mother, why is my stomach turning so? I feel as if someone's choking me.\"\n\nZari hugged and kissed her son.\n\n\"Wash your face with some cold water, my dear,\" she said, \"you'll feel better.\" Her own heart was brimming with sorrow. \"Why don't you invite your schoolfriends over this afternoon to a mourning ceremony for Sahar? I'll bring out some tea and sherbet drinks for you.\"\n\n\"Will you make some halva too?\" Khosrow asked.\n\n\"Certainly, if you want some.\" She paused and added, \"Yes, I'll make some halva. As soon as the smell of halva rises, Sahar's spirit will know we're thinking of him.\"\n\n\"Can we come too?\" Mina asked.\n\n\"No,\" Khosrow answered, kissing each of his sisters in turn. \"The ceremony is for men only.\"\n\nThat afternoon, Sahar's all-male 'mourning ceremony' really did take place in the garden. At least twenty children of various ages poured in. Gholam had swept over the make-believe grave, and covered it with a carpet. Watching from the verandah, Zari could see the children squatting silently by the grave. She noticed a small boy wearing a black mourning shirt, staring fixedly at something. When she looked more carefully, she realized that he was staring at his thumbnails. Probably to stop himself laughing. But finally he started to giggle and then burst out laughing. All the other children, besides Khosrow and Hormoz who was sitting next to him, joined in the laughter and the ceremony broke up. Zari couldn't bear it anymore. She went to the parlour. Seeing a lot of flies buzzing around, she took a fly-swatter and attacked them, killing them left and right. She could hear the children playing in the garden and looking out from the parlour window saw that they were going at the unripe fruit on the trees. But Khosrow and Hormoz were still sitting on the carpet while Gholam walked toward them with some coffee and Khadijeh put the trays of halva on the ground. Hormoz whispered something in Khosrow's ear and Khosrow slapped his forehead with a grown-up gesture, then covered his eyes.\n\nWhen the children had gone, Khosrow and Hormoz came to the parlour. Khosrow's eyes were red and Hormoz's glasses all fogged up.\n\n\"Cheer up, my dear,\" Zari comforted, \"it's not so bad after all. As Khadijeh says, the mare is young, she'll give birth to another Sahar for you.\" And she thought to herself, \"If, as Ameh Khanom said, he ever sees that wench riding Sahar, then all hell will break loose! How we end up lying to our children!\"\n\n\"I'm trying not to cry,\" said Khosrow, \"but I feel so unhappy...\"\n\nHormoz took off his glasses. He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped them. His eyes were puffy.\n\n\"I keep telling Khosrow this is just the beginning,\" said Hormoz. \"We have a lot of ups and downs ahead of us. We mustn't give up so easily. Besides, look how many people die of typhus or starvation each day. What's a colt next to all these people?\"\n\nZari looked at Hormoz. She wasn't sure whether they were his own words, or he had learned them from someone else. In any case, he was four years older than Khosrow. She thought with bitterness, \"The real death of humans next to the fake death of a colt! Certainly there's no comparison.\"\n\nSuddenly her mind went back to that evening in the Missionary Hospital where her mother was spending the last hours of her life. Zari had had no idea how near the end it was, even though Khanom Hakim had told her, \"Now the cancer be overtaking the whole body, and there be nothing more the knife can do.\"\n\nHer mother had looked at Zari out of the corner of her eye.\n\n\"Stay with me tonight!\" she had said.\n\nBut how could she stay? Khosrow was only three years old and would not eat unless she fed him nor sleep unless she were next to him. Besides, they had guests. Yusef had invited a number of people.\n\n\"I have to go,\" she had said. \"We have guests. I'll be back tomorrow morning.\"\n\n\"Tomorrow?\" her mother had echoed. And didn't insist anymore. She merely asked for some sacred soil to be brought her by Ameh Khanom. By the time Zari had gone home and Ameh Khanom had finished her prayers and her opium-smoking, put on her outdoor dress with the long sleeves and her gloves and her scarf, the evening had drawn on and she was unable to go all the way to the hospital by herself. In any case, no-one would have thought a person who seemed so alert one minute would die the next.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan had arrived before all the other guests and when he found out about the situation, offered to accompany Ameh Khanom. But he had no car in those days, and they couldn't find a droshke. They managed to get there, nevertheless, though it was after eleven by the time they returned. Zari was serving dinner and Khosrow had not been put to bed yet. The guests were playing with him, taking turns holding him and listening to his sweet baby-talk. Zari didn't even get a chance to ask Abol-Ghassem Khan how her mother was. As for Ameh, she went straight to bed. Later, at dinner, Abol-Ghassem Khan drank so much vodka that he became completely drunk. Tears streamed down his face and he babbled on about his own mother. He smashed several glasses against the wall and then threw up violently, upsetting the other guests. Finally they took him to the bottom of the garden so he could vomit as much as he liked. When the guests had left, they told Zari her mother had died, that alas, she hadn't received the sacred soil she asked for, that no-one had been at her bedside, except a foreign nurse who didn't speak her language...\n\nAt that moment Mina and Marjan barged into the room, bringing Zari abruptly back to the present. Each of them was holding a doll.\n\n\"Uncle gave me this,\" Mina said.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan followed them into the parlour with Gholam in his wake, carrying two loaded sacks.\n\n\"It's our first picking of lemons,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan announced. At a sign from Zari, Gholam took the sacks to the storage-room. Abol-Ghassem Khan embraced Khosrow and said, \"Shall I send for that colt of mine you liked in the village?\"\n\n\"No, uncle, I don't want a horse at all.\"\n\nMina, still holding her doll, put a hand on her brother's knee.\n\n\"Have you seen my doll?\" she asked. \"Do you want to have it?\"\n\n# _10_\n\nThat week Zari finished early at the asylum, for typhus had reduced the number of patients to slightly over half compared to the week before. The warden, a short fellow with a dark complexion who received her every alternate Thursday, would only allow her to distribute bread and dates among the inmates after taking adequate payment for himself and his nurses. This week he told her that the epidemic had hit them hard and that his patients had been refused admission to the town's hospitals. \"He doesn't look too well himself,\" thought Zari, as she handed over his payment. Not that he ever looked particularly well, dealing as he did all the time with mental patients. His eyes had sunk into their sockets.\n\nWhen they entered the men's ward, Gholam put the tray of food on the floor, but unlike other weeks, no-one seemed to show any interest. Zari looked around at the men, with their shaved heads and soiled white gowns, sitting silently in the room. They seemed to be listening to sounds only they could hear and to which one or other of them would occasionally mumble a reply. They took the bread and dates from Gholam absent-mindedly. Zari felt depressed. It was as if today her vow had not been fulfilled since she hadn't made anyone happy. Downhearted, she began to distribute cigarettes and matches. One patient who claimed to be the Chief Commander of the World and who always asked for the Homa brand of cigarette, took an Oshno this time and without striking a match, listlessly put the cigarette to his lips. The sun poured in through the shutterless windows, and flies buzzed sleepily around the room, exploring every nook and cranny, as well as the untouched food in the patients' hands.\n\n\"Ali!\" summoned the head nurse loudly. Ali was Zari's favourite patient, a tall German-looking young man who had attempted three times to escape from the asylum. Twice his relatives had found him, each time in the neighbourhood of the high-school where he had finished five grades. The last time Gholam had found him on the hill overlooking Yusef's garden. Apparently Ali had followed Gholam like a lamb, allowing himself to be led back quietly to the asylum. Hunger had taken its toll. He had told Gholam:\n\n\"They tricked me. They whispered to me that the airplane is ready; please get inside it and go to Europe to your uncle. I came out and no matter how hard I searched, I couldn't find the airplane. Maybe it left without me. I have many enemies, you see.\" Later he confessed, \"I've been drinking water from the gutter and stealing bones and bread from dogs. Yesterday I grabbed a piece of raw meat from a dog, and ran away with it. I washed the meat in the gutter and ate it. My stomach turned, and now I have diarrhoea. There's blood in it too. I really looked everywhere, but I just couldn't find our house. I know my father made our house get lost on purpose so I wouldn't find it.\"\n\nFrom that day on, they chained Ali in the asylum basement. Zari would visit him there and take him bread and dates. He always smiled when he saw her. Once he had asked her for 'Essential English, Part III', and Zari had brought him one. Thereafter, he refused to speak a word in Persian, talking instead in a language no-one could understand.\n\nAli came in. He had lost so much weight that Zari felt distressed at the sight of him, and he did not recognize her. He threw her a blank look and, without using his invented language, proclaimed in Persian, \"An attack of pliers equals typhus + famine + cheating in an exam. O madmen of the world unite!\"\n\nThe Seyyid from the Arab Quarter was also sitting silently in a corner. Usually when he saw Zari he would reach under his belly and start scratching himself, saying, \"Burning, burning, I am burning!\" And then he would add, \"It's me Eilan-ud-Dowleh, it's me Veilan-ud-Dowleh.\" In exchange for Zari's gifts, he would give her bits of imaginary paper with prayers of love and affection on them, or magical and occult charms or talismans.\n\n\"Our account is clear,\" he would say, \"but do wash your shirt with water from the morgue. Spread it out on a deadman's grave then have him wear it the next morning. Tiger's whiskers and the brain of a black mule...\"\n\nThen there was another patient who tied his imaginary leg wounds with whatever bits of material he could get hold of, and would stretch out the leg and fan it. But today the fan had fallen away from his hand.\n\nAs Zari and Gholam, accompanied by the warden, were passing through the dried-up yard of the asylum, they saw a young woman stretched out on an old mattress under a pine tree. Hearing footsteps, the woman flicked open her eyes. Zari recognized her, even though her face had been drained of colour until it blended with the dust on the ground. It was the same woman who sometimes claimed to be the wife of God, and at other times God himself. Occasionally she would smear her cheeks and lips with some red petals from the Marvel of Peru flowers in the garden and say she was waiting for God. Apparently she would stare at the sky and repeat some mumbo-jumbo in a language resembling Arabic, saying God was waiting for her on the roof. But she herself wouldn't go to him; she was a woman, and a woman could never take the first step.\n\n'God's wife' was now stretched out under the pine tree, her face twitching and her lips blistered. \"She seems ready to join Him at any time,\" Zari thought. \"If only she would intercede with Him for the rest of her fellow sufferers...\"\n\nA sound escaped the woman's lips. \"Water!\" she moaned, as her blankly staring eyes slowly closed. Gholam ran for some water.\n\n\"Why is she lying here?\" Zari asked the warden.\n\n\"She's got typhus,\" he replied.\n\n\"Well, all of them catch that at one time or another...\"\n\n\"All the better! It will be a relief for them. Their relatives pray that they'll be released from their suffering. What's the use of keeping them like this?\"\n\nGholam came back in a rush, holding a glazed bowl full of water. He lowered the edge of the bowl to the woman's lips. \"Drink, sister,\" he coaxed, but she couldn't swallow. Zari took her handkerchief from her handbag, soaked it and rubbed it on the woman's face and lips. Then she wet it again and placed it on her forehead.\n\nThey walked on. The warden followed alongside, offering explanations, \"Three of our nurses caught typhus,\" he said, \"and are now sitting comfortably under the Tuba Tree in paradise. 'God's wife' will be on her way there too tonight.\" Then, seeing Zari looking at him disapprovingly, he continued in a different tone, \"It's amazing. When their fever goes up, their madness seems to disappear. If only we could save them from this second disease, maybe they'd be cured of their madness too! But what's the use? If they ever came to their senses, it would only be the beginning of their troubles. Their families have become used to their absence, and they would have no room or patience for them.\"\n\nIn the women's ward, Zari noticed the crippled woman who always managed to frighten her. \"You fucking whore,\" she would say, \"are you back again? What do you want from my life?\" This woman blamed Zari for her paralysis and Zari felt guilty at heart about it too. When the woman had had healthy legs, she had asked Zari for a pair of old slippers, or a sturdy pair of second-hand givehs.\n\n\"I'm a respectable woman,\" she had said, \"and I can't go to the toilet barefoot.\" Then, \"May God strike Khanom Essmat dead! If she had spent my marriage portion and inheritance on me instead of on that goddam cuckold who sleeps with her, I'd never be grovelling for your droppings, you whore from Mordestan!\"\n\nBut the following week Zari had been due to go to the prison, and the week after that she had forgotten all about it. By the time she remembered to buy the woman her new shoes, it was too late\u2014she was already paralysed. Of course everyone knew her paralysis had nothing to do with the givehs. But every time after that when she saw Zari she threw unspeakable insults in her direction. Still, the nurses said she hugged the new shoes tightly each night as she went to sleep.\n\nZari glanced around for the young teacher with the glass eye. This one wasn't particularly fond of her, either, and wouldn't let her come close. Zari always left her share of bread and dates on the sill. Sometimes when the teacher was in a good mood she would say things like, \"Look how much perfume this harlot's used! Ugh! How lucky you are, my little servant, to have got this far. You remember you were the daughter of our dressmaker? I knew you'd finally give in. With that cab driver who had a wife in every town...\" And she would put a finger under Zari's chin and say, \"You little coquette!\" Then suddenly she would get angry and shout, \"You've put rat poison inside these dates! You've taken out the pip and put ratsbane instead. What an offering!\"\n\nApparently she used to teach first graders. One day, sometime after the veil was banned, the school was inspected by the Governor, the army commander and the minister of education. The minister had found out that this teacher would punish children by squeezing a pencil between their little fingers and laugh when they hopped with pain. He had made quite a fuss, but only about the issue of corporal punishment, yet the young teacher had fainted from humiliation at the sight of all those important people. She was immediately hauled off to the principal's office where they revived her, but the shock had been too much. She had stared blankly at everyone, then calmly taken out her glass eye, holding it out in the palm of her hand for her bewildered audience to behold.\n\nOne day in the asylum she played the same trick on Zari. Until then, Zari hadn't known that the woman had a glass eye, although she had noticed that the right eye didn't move in its socket. The young teacher was agitated that day. When Zari came into the room she went over to her, reached out her hand, and said, \"Take it!\" Then she opened her fist into Zari's hand, and there was Zari holding a large, shiny glass eye.\n\nNow, on inquiring, Zari was told that the first fatality from typhus had been this very girl.\n\n\"At first we didn't know she had typhus,\" the warden explained. \"Of course her fever was very high and she was delirious. She imagined she was putting on her shroud. She tied anything she could find around herself saying it was her shroud, and began reciting the Quran by heart. She was superb. But instead of cursing the Devil, she cursed the Cardboard Man. I believe the Cardboard Man was that same minister of education who fired her from her job. Finally, she said her last prayers and threw herself into the pool. She died that night.\"\n\nAt the end of her rounds, Zari went to Khanom Fotouhi whose bed lay next to a window where she could constantly watch the yard, in the hope that her relatives would come and take her to the 'hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden'. Zari knew the Fotouhi family. They were well off. At the beginning of Khanom Fotouhi's illness, they kept her at home. But when she finally drove them to desperation, they gave up hoping for her recovery, and passed her on to the asylum. Before the war, she had had a private room where she was visited regularly by her mother who would even take her home for a week or two sometimes. When she had had enough, she would drag her daughter back to the asylum, leave her in the reception office and disappear. But the mother had died years ago.\n\nKhanom Fotouhi's brother was the well-known history teacher in town and something of an idol for its youth. The most he could manage was to visit his sister once in a blue moon. Now it looked as if they had all really abandoned her at the asylum. But Khanom Fotouhi never despaired. She was still waiting for them to come and take her to the 'hundred and twenty-four thousand metre' garden.\n\nShe was a sallow-looking girl with thick eyebrows that joined in the middle, protruding teeth, and grey hair. She never accepted food from Zari, as if it were too demeaning to show interest in something which others would grab at with such greed. When the fruit in her garden ripened, Zari usually took woven baskets piled high with apricots, sour apples, cherries, peaches and pears to the prison and asylum. But Khanom Fotouhi wouldn't even look at these.\n\nOn several occasions Zari had prepared a special fruit basket for her and left it on the windowsill. But the nurses later said that the minute she had stepped outside, the other patients raided the basket. When they got to the sour apples they would split them in half, ask for some salt and sprinkle them until they were well 'seasoned' in the Shirazi way. It was enough to make anyone else's mouth water. But Khanom Fotouhi would merely stare out of the window at the yard, waiting for her relatives to take her away to the 'hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden'. The other patients didn't even spare the apricot pips which they would either split open with their teeth or bang with stones on the floor to get at the little kernels. After all, as the warden said, how could any of the patients get real sustenance on their pitiful daily allowance? Most of them had gone mad from poor nutrition in the first place.\n\nWhen she had finished dividing the food, Zari would sit next to Khanom Fotouhi's bed and listen to her complaints. Khanom Fotouhi hated all the other patients and never spoke to any of them. They, in turn, had nicknamed her 'Princess'. The kinds of things Khanom Fotouhi used to ask for included the large-format _Iran_ newspaper which was mailed to Yusef twice a week from Tehran, lined notebooks and pencils which she would accept from Zari, saying, \"I have allowed you to contribute to the world of science and literature.\" She loved all the serial articles in the _Iran,_ and the notebooks she would use for writing her autobiography\u2014or so she claimed.\n\nEach time she finished a notebook, she would hand it ceremoniously to Zari. \"Rent a safe deposit box in the National Bank,\" she would say. \"Take the money for it from my brother and store my works there. We could have a fire here someday, and I don't want to have my works destroyed.\"\n\nThe first time Zari had believed her, and tried to read one of the notebooks only to discover that it was filled with some incoherent ideas written out in a language of the occult sciences. Wherever the handwriting became legible, it described a 'hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden' with man-made waterfalls and lakes, blooming water-lilies, acacias and ash-trees. In one part she wrote about a well-built man with a wide forehead and white hair around the temples who hid behind an ash-tree while she herself, wearing a loose white chiffon dress which fluttered in the wind, stepped gracefully into the open air. Her shapely breasts and erect nipples showed through her dress, and the well-built man rushed out from behind the tree, capturing her in his arms and hugging and embracing her. At the end of her notebook she had written, \"Thus endeth the sorrowful tale of the Fotouhi maiden in the Nai prison,\" and underneath this sentence she had added, \"Some verses by the Fotouhi maiden:\n\nI was a fledgeling my mother died\n\nThe wet nurse took me, but she too died\n\nThey raised me on cow's milk\n\nI was so ill-starred, the cow then died.\"\n\nZari was quite certain these lines were not composed by the 'Fotouhi maiden' because Ameh Khanom had hummed them herself from time to time. Actually, in the days when the 'Fotouhi maiden' was in her right mind, she had been a good writer, producing articles in local papers about women's rights, and the injustices of male domination. She also brought out a magazine which aimed to raise women's consciousness.\n\nIn the days before her mental breakdown, Khanom Fotouhi was a woman to be reckoned with. She had been the first to abandon the black veil\u2014or black shroud, as she called it\u2014in favour of a roomier, more attractive blue veil. The lifting of the veil had not yet been announced officially before she even gave up the blue one also. On a good day, she would complain to Zari that it was too bad she had not been appreciated. \"A pity,\" she would say, \"that our men were not ready to accept a woman like me. At first they thought I could be taken advantage of, like a pot of honey you could dip your finger into. But when I smacked them on the fingers and sent them off packing, they humiliated me or ignored me.\" Then she would suddenly shout with tears in her eyes, \"They drove me mad! They drove me mad! I told them I wouldn't give in! I won't give you what you're after! And that's that! When will other women\u2014those silly little dolls\u2014ever understand who I was and what I stood up for!\"\n\nZari sat down by Khanom Fotouhi's bed and greeted her. Khanom Fotouhi turned her gaze from the yard to Zari and said hello. Zari reached into her bag and brought out four issues of _Iran_ for her, at the same time catching sight of a pillow next to which all the previous newspapers had been neatly stacked. Khanom Fotouhi opened the new issues one by one. She frowned at the changes in detail and the recently introduced small format.\n\n\"Didn't you give the newspapers to the other patients to read this time?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"No, most of them have been freed from prison,\" she replied nervously. \"Ali took two of your newspapers and ate them.\" Then she looked Zari up and down. She didn't seem to like the long, wide sleeves of Zari's shirt. \"You've wasted a hundred metres of good material just on those sleeves, haven't you?\" she asked. Then she crumpled up the new newspapers and threw them down beside the bed. She turned her attention to the old newspapers and started counting them. Then she rolled one up and suddenly hit Zari very hard on the head with it. \"They say Afsar Khanom, the daughter of the commander, is dead!\" she shouted. \"And she didn't even have a shroud!\" \n\n# _11_\n\nA Shirazi woman, trained as a midwife in Tehran, had recently opened an office in town. She had more patients than she could handle, but Zari had managed to get an appointment for seven o'clock Thursday evening after her rounds at the asylum. As soon as she was finished, she sent Gholam away and headed for the doctor's office, thinking all the while of the futility of her charities. She remembered Yusef's words, \"What's the use of your charity and goodwill? This society is rotten at the core.\" But no matter how hard she thought, Zari did not seem to come up with any ideas on how to improve a society at its core. The solutions which Yusef suggested always seemed so dangerous that they sent shivers down her spine.\n\nAt six o'clock, she arrived at the midwife's office. She was feeling queasy. There were two donkeys standing at the door with their bridles tied to the door knockers. In the small courtyard next to the office, two women were huddled on a bare wooden bed, with another stretched out behind them. One couldn't tell their age because the expression on their faces was so strained. A sick man was tossing about on yet another bed. Right next to the door of the waiting-room a woman was stretched out stiff as a rod. Her bare, henna-dyed feet protruded grotesquely from underneath the blue polka-dot veil with which she was covered. Her black trouser-legs had been pulled up to her knees. Zari was taken aback. Surely the woman was dead. Zari had seen enough in life to recognize death when she saw it. But it would seem the woman had no-one, since she was obviously abandoned even in death.\n\nInside the waiting-room all the seats had been taken. Only five of the patients were pregnant women\u2014recognizable by their round bellies and blotchy skin\u2014the others were either male or elderly. A young girl with blistered lips leaning her head on the shoulder of an older woman entered the waiting room just then. \"Oh, my heart! My heart!\" she moaned. A pregnant woman stood up and gave her place to the young girl, opening the window above her. But only a blast of hot air came in. The door of the doctor's office opened, letting out a pregnant woman, who slowly crossed the waiting-room as if the weight of her nine-month burden made it impossible to move any faster. A nurse with dishevelled hair followed her and announced:\n\n\"Forty-eight!\"\n\nZari managed to reach the nurse as she scanned the patients for number forty-eight.\n\n\"Forty-nine!\" the nurse said loudly.\n\n\"I have an appointment for seven,\" interrupted Zari.\n\n\"It's no use getting an appointment these days, dear. All sorts of patients are crowding in on us. Even the courtyard is packed. Didn't you see for yourself?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did. One of them was dead.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said the nurse coolly. \"By the time they're brought here on donkey from the villages, they've taken their last breath.\" Then turning to the other patients she shouted, \"Forty-nine isn't here? Fifty!\"\n\nAn old hunch-backed woman got up. Clutching her veil tightly across her face, she walked over with an odd shuffle. The nurse opened the office door for her. Zari reached into her handbag, and the nurse followed her movements with her eyes as she groped for a handkerchief. Finally she grew impatient.\n\n\"If there's nothing wrong with you and you're here only for pregnancy, I suggest you leave it for another time.\" And with that she disappeared into the inner room.\n\n\"She's right,\" Zari thought to herself. \"After all, I'm in no hurry. In any case, I'll probably end up at Khanom Hakim's yet again.\" She decided to go home and wash thoroughly, even boil her clothes. She wasn't going to let those delicate children touch her before she had disinfected herself. On the way home she stopped at the pharmacy and bought anti-flea powder, alcohol, soap and sulphur.\n\nBy the time Zari reached the garden-gate of her home, the sun had already set. A dark little boy with curly hair opened the gate. As soon as he saw Zari, he grinned widely at her. Zari recognized him.\n\n\"What are you doing here, Kolu?\" she asked.\n\n\"I've come back with the master.\"\n\n\"Is he back then?\" she exclaimed, rushing past him towards the house. Yusef, still dressed in his dusty travelling clothes, was sitting on the cane chair by the pool, smoking a hookah. His face lit up at the sight of his wife.\n\n\"Where have you been till now?\" he asked. \"I was waiting for you. I came all the way to... why are you standing so far away?\"\n\n\"You're back so early,\" Zari answered, \"but I'm glad you've returned. You mustn't touch me, though. I have to take a bath first. I'm full of germs. Oh, when you're here everything seems so much brighter!\" And she hurried inside.\n\nBathed and perfumed, she came back into the garden, but by that time it was nearly dark. Yusef was holding his head in his hands. She went to him and lifting his head, kissed him on the hair.\n\n\"Don't you feel well?\" she asked him.\n\nYusef pulled his wife on to his lap and the chair creaked beneath them. He kissed her neck and face and bare arms with soft, tender lips. Zari got up.\n\n\"Let me go and put the lights on,\" she said.\n\n\"Leave it,\" he said, pulling her by the hand.\n\n\"It's a heavy sky,\" Zari observed, glancing up. \"But it won't rain either to let us breathe.\"\n\n\"Not unlike my heart...\"\n\n\"Well, it's midsummer,\" said Zari. Her mind was on Sahar and how to prevent her husband from asking after the horse.\n\n\"The house felt really empty when I arrived. Where are the children?\"\n\n\"Amen Khanom took them to Mehri's house for the Rowzeh,\" replied Zari. \"Khosrow has gone out with Hormoz.\"\n\n\"You really shouldn't be sending the children to the Rowzeh.\"\n\n\"They insisted on going,\" said Zari. \"Besides, they don't pay any attention to all the mourning. They play with Mehri's children. Ameh Khanom has made them chadors, and they say their prayers standing next to her...\" she stopped in mid-sentence. \"Why are you back so early?\" she asked. \"And why did you bring Kolu with you?\"\n\n\"Send him to the baths tomorrow and give him some new clothes. I've adopted him as a son,\" Yusef said quietly. \"I killed his father, so I couldn't stay at the village any longer.\"\n\nZari's heart sank. \"I don't understand,\" she said. \"You killed Kolu's father? Our shepherd? You? Nonsense!\"\n\nYusef buried his head in his hands. \"Don't talk about it anymore,\" he said. \"My head is about to burst.\"\n\n\"But won't you tell me what happened?\"\n\n\"Well, that's why I came back so early. I just dropped everything I had to do and rushed back so I could confide in you, but you weren't here.\"\n\nZari took a seat next to her husband and let his head rest on her shoulder, stroking him soothingly.\n\n\"My love, how was I to know you would suddenly arrive? Tell me about it now and I'll listen. You'll feel better if you talk about it.\"\n\n\"Our shepherd was supposed to take the last of our flocks up to the mountains. Before he went, he killed two of our sheep, cured the flesh and stored it in a sheepskin. I don't know what suddenly possessed him to do such a thing. He's never been dishonest before.\"\n\n\"Well, you told me yourself that people are panicking because of the famine.\"\n\nYusef got up and started to pace about.\n\n\"Nothing escapes the notice of the village headman,\" he continued, ignoring Zari's comment. \"When I got there, he had to come out and tell me all about it in front of everyone. I wanted to ignore the whole thing, but the headman had no intention of dropping the matter. When the shepherd brought the flock back at sunset, the headman reminded me again. I was forced to interrogate the shepherd and ask him why two sheep were missing. He swore that a wolf had eaten them. The headman then told him to take an oath, and swear by the holy prophet Hazrate Abbas that he was telling the truth.\"\n\nYusef paused. Then he went on, \"I could see the poor soul shaking at the knees as he stepped forward to take the oath. There I was watching him, stupid fool that I am, and I did nothing to stop him. That night he came down with a stomach-ache. I went to his house\u2014or rather hovel. He looked at me with dumb eyes\u2014like a lamb\u2014and begged to be forgiven. I nearly shouted at him that I'd forgiven him all along. I told him that he should know me well enough. But it was no use. Tears were rolling down his face on to his dirty pillow. I tried giving him sweetened warm wine, but he refused it. He kept saying that he'd sinned more than his share and the holy prophet Hazrate Abbas would take his due. 'But I'm the owner of the sheep and I forgive you, man,' I said. And still he wouldn't listen. He just repeated, 'The prophet has struck me down. You can't do anything for me anymore. Give the flock to my brother and he'll care for them in my place.'\"\n\nYusef sat down by his wife and went on, \"He motioned to Massoumeh, Yarqoli's wife, who disappeared for a moment and came back with two sheepskins full of cured flesh. She threw them in front of me. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me...\"\n\n\"My love,\" Zari said calmly, \"you know very well it wasn't your fault. It was that cruel headman who didn't know any better. The shepherd took a false oath, or maybe he'd just eaten something bad. Besides, why must you think the worst? He could have caught typhus. We know nothing of God's will. Perhaps his son was meant to get an education and have a bright future. How do we know?\"\n\nKhadijeh came out to the verandah and put the light on. Then she went to the garden to lay out the beds. She fixed up the twins' bedclothes on a wooden bed on the far side of the pool. Then she arranged the mosquito net over it. When she got to Khosrow's bed, she laid out the mattress but then it seemed that she had lost something when she got to the bedclothes.\n\n\"Khanom, have you put Khosrow Khan's blanket somewhere?\" she asked Zari.\n\n\"No. Maybe you used it for the ironing yourself,\" Zari replied from where she sat.\n\n\"I didn't, Khanom.\"\n\n\"So what's happened to it?\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know. Maybe the same clumsy thief who stole the clothesline, stole Khosrow Khan's blanket too.\"\n\nSuddenly Zari was filled with anxiety. Could it be that Khosrow was behind the disappearance of both items? But what for? Very early that morning, even before prayer-time, Zari had been woken up by a light footstep next to where she slept on the roof terrace. When she opened her eyes, she had seen Khosrow, looking stealthily all around him, tiptoe to the clothesline and untie its knot from the hook on the wall. Then he had gathered the entire length of rope around his arm and sneaked into his room with it. When he returned he crawled silently under the mosquito net and pretended to be asleep.\n\nKhosrow had been acting very strangely these past few days. His mind seemed to be elsewhere and from time to time Zari had caught him staring blankly into space. When he first heard of Sahar's death, he seemed heart-broken, the tears springing to his eyes at the slightest excuse. He hung around most of the time at the bottom of the garden by the grave, digging out the weeds and watering the flowerpots with his own hands. But recently he had changed. He didn't even glance at the grave anymore. He avoided his mother's gaze, and gave only short, confused answers to her questions.\n\nZari got up. She had a feeling he had also taken his gun, even though she remembered having locked it away in the cupboard and taken the key with her. Yusef's voice brought her back to herself. He was saying, \"Why are you standing like that? Sit down. Say something.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\" she said, as if roused from a daydream.\n\n\"I know I've upset you. You're disappointed in me too.\"\n\n\"You're wrong,\" Zari answered absently. \"It's not at all your fault. I saw the sick they brought in from the villages to Khanom Massihadem, the midwife. One of them was dead. Typhus has spread in all the villages; the town is full of it too.\"\n\n\"What were you doing at Khanom Massihadem's office?\" Yusef asked in amazement. \"Are you...\"\n\nZari felt completely flustered. It was as if they had been inhabiting two different worlds. How little one knows of what goes on in the mind of another person!\n\n\"Oh I just went to buy some anti-flea powder from the pharmacy and I passed by there,\" she said. \"The door was open so I took a look. Well, maybe that patient wasn't really dead... I was probably imagining it...\" She didn't know what she was saying anymore, so before Yusef could pin her down, she hurried to the bedroom. Without switching the light on she found her bag, took out her keys and groped around for the keyhole in the cupboard. Her hand was shaking and her stomach turned. No, thank God, the guns were still there. To reassure herself, she touched their long, cool barrels, the breech-blocks and heavy butts, leaning tall against the cupboard wall. She locked the cupboard door, closed the windows and doors of the parlour and went to the telephone. She asked the operator softly to connect her to Abol-Ghassem Khan's house. She couldn't be heard, so she had to ask a second time. Abol-Ghassem Khan himself answered at the other end. She asked whether Khosrow was there. He said no, and Hormoz wasn't either. She could hear Abol-Ghassem Khan asking around from others in the household. Apparently Hormoz had said he was having dinner at his uncle Yusef's house. He had said that Zari had invited him... \"Now why weren't we invited too?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan complained jokingly. \"Do you think we would have turned down a treat?\"\n\nZari's throat constricted. She mumbled something about God willing next time, and hung up. She was terrified. Both boys had lied, so there was no doubt they were up to something. They had also taken a rope and a blanket with them. She must go and tell Yusef everything.\n\nAs she was leaving the parlour the telephone rang. She went over and picked up the receiver. It was Abol-Ghassem Khan. He had been thinking about the boys and had become worried too. Zari pulled herself together and managed to say, \"Don't worry. I think they've gone off to the cinema or somewhere together. They'll come here for dinner, it's not too late yet. As soon as they're here, I'll tell them to call you.\"\n\nShe opened the doors and windows of the parlour again. She heard Mina's voice. The children had arrived. She went out to the garden. Both children were sitting on Yusef's lap, and he seemed a little more relaxed. Mina was saying, \"Mother won't let us. She says we'll get all burned on our skins and we'll have to stay inside.\"\n\nAmeh Khanom was sitting there, with her veil still on.\n\n\"Sister,\" she said, \"Mehri sends her regards but says she's cross with you because you didn't call in for the Rowzeh. She won't forget it, she said.\"\n\nMina clapped her hands together from where she was sitting. \"She's cross with you! She's cross with you!\" she chanted.\n\nThen she turned round to kiss her father under the chin, and struggled to climb down from his lap. Yusef hugged both children tightly. \"Well,\" he said, \"what else are you going to tell me about, my little dolls?\"\n\nZari, staring at the verandah lights and listening to the sounds in the garden, could not think where to begin. Like the patients at the asylum that afternoon, her mind was all in a jumble though she seemed composed on the outside. Mosquitoes, tiny moths and various kinds of dragonflies flitted around the verandah light, got stuck to it, and finally dropped off. In the garden, the crickets and the frogs were having a contest. There was no other sound or movement. If the boys were heading home, she would easily have heard their footsteps. She had to tell the others now and rouse them to some kind of action, make them comb the town to find her son. What if this were the shepherd's vengeance? What if the Lord had sent them the shepherd's son in exchange for their own son? She felt sick. The trees seemed to slumber under the heavy blanket of the sky. If only there was a breeze, or if she could, like a furious wind, whip the trees and everyone around her into action. If only the sky would clear so the stars, like a million eyes, could scour the earth for Khosrow, and the trees could whisper his whereabouts to her.\n\n\"Let's go and sit somewhere else,\" she said involuntarily.\n\nYusef was holding up Marjan's hair and kissing the nape of her neck. He laughed and said, \"What better place than right here?\"\n\n\"Let's go and find Khosrow,\" said Zari.\n\n\"Sister, Khosrow has gone to Abol-Ghassem Khan's with Hormoz,\" said Ameh Khanom.\n\nZari was unable to contain herself anymore. \"But he's not there!\" she sobbed. \"He's gone off with a rope and a blanket, though his gun is still here.\"\n\nYusef put the children down in amazement. \"What for?\" he demanded. \"Where could he have gone to?\"\n\n\"I don't know where he's gone,\" Zari replied through her tears. \"Let's go and find him. I know something has happened to my son. I realized it when I saw Kolu. It\u2014it must be God's revenge. God has sent Kolu to replace my son.\" And she broke down into loud sobs.\n\nYusef got up and held her by her shoulders. \"Your nerves have been under strain,\" he said. \"It's my fault for telling you everything that happens. Put these superstitions out of your mind. Call Abol-Ghassem Khan's house. Maybe he's there.\"\n\n\"I've already called.\"\n\n\"I'll put the twins to bed,\" Ameh Khanom volunteered. \"Go over the hill to the Governor's house. I've a feeling Khosrow and Hormoz are there.\"\n\n\"What's all this, sister?\" Yusef asked with a look. \"Have you turned clairvoyant?\"\n\n\"The sooner you leave the better,\" Ameh insisted. \"I'll call Abol-Ghassem and ask him to get there as soon as possible.\"\n\n\"I don't understand it at all,\" Yusef said wearily. Then he had an idea. \"They could have gone to Fotouhi's house. Hormoz's history teacher. But then Fotouhi's in Isfahan. I know he's not back yet.\"\n\n\"Come on, leave right away,\" Ameh Khanom urged. \"Zari will tell you everything on the way.\"\n\nZari and Yusef went out by the small door in the back wall of the garden which opened on to the foot of the hill behind their house. They headed towards the hill.\n\n\"What have you been up to, woman?\" Yusef demanded. \"What have you led Khosrow into? Maybe it's my own fault for not controlling my tongue... walk faster...\" He took such long strides that Zari had to run over the rocky terrain to keep up with him. By the time they reached the top of the hill, Zari had had enough. The Governor's estate, on the other side of the hill, looked wide awake with all its twinkling lights. Zari, panting hard, collapsed on a rock.\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" she said.\n\nHer pulse was racing, her stomach heaved. She retched and then vomited so violently she thought she would bring up her insides too. Yusef took her by the shoulders and massaged her neck.\n\n\"You're driving me mad!\" he begged. \"Why don't you tell me what's happened, for goodness' sake? What has brought us all the way here to look for the boys?\"\n\n\"You go on,\" Zari replied. \"I'll sit right here. If you don't bring Khosrow back with you, I'll die on this very spot. I'll lay my head on this rock and die. Abol-Ghassem Khan forced us to send Sahar for the Governor's daughter. I guess Khosrow's now gone to steal Sahar back from the Governor's house. That place is surrounded by gendarmes and guards! They've probably killed my son!\" And she sobbed hysterically.\n\nYusef slapped Zari. It was the first time he had ever done such a thing. Zari didn't know it would be the last time also.\n\n\"Shut your mouth!\" he said quietly. \"In my absence you're no better than a stuffed dummy!\"\n\nHe let go of her roughly and headed downhill. He was wild with rage. Zari got up despite herself, wiped her mouth on her skirt and began to run. She stumbled, and got up again. She had to reach him and calm him down. She could see his looming silhouette in the darkness approach the wall of the Governor's estate and stop. Thank God he had stopped. Somehow she managed to reach him with her last ounce of energy. By now she was fighting for breath. She grabbed his hand, but he only peered around, listening for noises.\n\n\"We'll go to the guard-post by the gate,\" he said. \"If we hear the boys' voices we'll go in. God help them if there's so much as a scratch on either one of the boys!\"\n\n\"Promise me you won't make a fuss if they're all right,\" Zari pleaded.\n\nThey knocked at the gatehouse and went in. Yes, the boys were there. A young lieutenant was sitting casually on a desk, the smoke curling up from a cigarette dangling from his lips, in imitation of movie-star officers. When he saw the husband and wife, he asked, \"What can I do for you? I suppose you've lost the way too?\"\n\nOn the desk was a half-eaten tray of food, and in front of it stood Khosrow and Hormoz. Two armed non-commissioned officers\u2014one of whom Zari immediately recognized as the man who had come to take Sahar away\u2014were searching the boys' pockets. Khosrow looked as if he had been crying. When he saw his father, a smile broke across his face, and Zari felt as if she could breathe again.\n\nGholam's friend extracted a few lumps of sugar from Khosrow's pocket. He put them on the table and stood to attention.\n\n\"Sugar-lumps, lieutenant!\" he announced.\n\n\"On what charge have my boys been brought here?\" Yusef demanded angrily.\n\nDisregarding his question, the lieutenant said, \"To be included in the file.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Zari interrupted as calmly as she could, \"these boys go on scientific expeditions in the afternoons.\" Her eyes took in the rope and blanket on the table and the sack Hormoz was holding, inside which something seemed to be squirming. \"They collect stones and... and...\" she hesitated, unable to guess what was inside the sack. So she said, \"They collect insects, butterflies, field mice. They dry them later. They take a blanket to sit on and rest. Sometimes they take a rope and pretend they're Tarzan... or if they find suitable trees, they make a swing...\"\n\nThe young lieutenant was clearly becoming interested in Zari's face and voice. Zari continued, \"Tonight they were late, so we came to fetch them.\"\n\n\"It's true, sir,\" Hormoz confirmed. \"We've sworn it to you. We'd gone on an expedition, lost our way, and when we saw the lights we came here.\"\n\nThe lieutenant squashed his cigarette butt in the ashtray.\n\n\"Then why did you whistle?\" he inquired.\n\n\"We whistled so some kindly person like yourself could hear us and come to our rescue,\" answered Hormoz.\n\nYusef lost his temper again. \"What possible harm could these two defenceless young boys do with a couple of sugar-lumps in their pockets?\" he shouted.\n\nZari grasped her husband's arm. \"Please don't get angry, my dear,\" she pleaded. \"You can see the boys are perfectly safe and sound. There's just been a misunderstanding which we'll soon clear up.\"\n\n\"They're treating my children like criminals,\" Yusef shouted more angrily than before. \"Do you know why they came here...\"\n\nZari knew that if Yusef told the truth, there would be no end to the matter, and none of them would be allowed to leave. \"My husband has just returned from a journey,\" she interrupted, explaining to the lieutenant, \"he's very tired...\"\n\nThe lieutenant suddenly noticed the sack Hormoz was holding. \"What's in this sack?\" he queried.\n\n\"A snake, sir!\" Hormoz answered coolly.\n\n\"A snake?\" the lieutenant exclaimed.\n\nZari instantly realized that it was probably the snake Haj Mohammad Reza had found in their house. She remembered that the snake's fangs had been pulled.\n\n\"I told you they collect reptiles. This time they found a snake. But it's probably harmless.\"\n\n\"Would you like to see it, sir?\" Hormoz asked. And he emptied the contents of the sack on the floor.\n\nA brightly-spotted snake crawled out. At first it held its head high, looking straight at the lieutenant's shoe. Then it flashed its tongue and slithered under the desk. The lieutenant hastily lifted his feet out of the way.\n\n\"Kill it!\" he cried.\n\nGholam's friend went for the snake with his rifle butt, but it escaped.\n\n\"Threatening the life of an officer on duty with a snake...!\" shouted the lieutenant. But he never finished his sentence. Jumping down from the desk on which he had taken refuge a few seconds ago, he inadvertently stepped on the head of the snake. Meanwhile Gholam's friend was about to attack the snake again when the lieutenant suddenly stood to attention and did a military salute.\n\n\"Good evening, your honour!\" he said.\n\nZari turned to discover Abol-Ghassem Khan in the doorway. \"Sister,\" he chuckled, \"is this where you bring your newly-arrived husband?\"\n\nThe young lieutenant was stammering in confusion. His foot was still on the snake's head, while at the other end the tail wriggled grotesquely.\n\n\"Your honour,\" he said, \"I had no idea the gentleman was your honour's brother. Even though the resemblance of nobility can be detected in every feature... if I have given offence, please forgive me, I apologize...\" And turning to Yusef, he bowed and said, \"Why did you not inform me, sir?\" Indicating the other graded officers he added, \"I shall have these bastards thrown in jail.\" Giving the man closest at hand a slap across the face, he barked, \"Imbecile, you bring the son of the most respected man in town to this sentry post?\"\n\n\"Forgive them this time,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan said with measured coolness and dignity. \"My regards to His Excellency, the Governor. It's too late, otherwise we would have gone to convey our regards in person.\"\n\nYusef, Abol-Ghassem and the boys were climbing back up the hill, joking and chatting. The sons were telling their fathers all about it from the beginning. They took no notice of Zari. She no longer had the strength to follow them uphill so she turned into a side-street which led up to the main road, and walked off alone as quickly as possible. A few Indian soldiers were sitting by the stream along the road, another one urinating at the foot of a tree. When Zari passed him, he turned and flashed his naked body at her, saying, \"Need woman!\"\n\nZari quickened her step. A gendarme and a night-guard turned to look at her as they walked past. Deep down she was hoping that either her son or her husband would follow her, but when she turned into the small road that ran alongside their garden, she saw no one on her trail and felt it was just as well they hadn't even done her that favour.\n\nAs she went into the garden, she was surprised that the others had not arrived yet. The twins were sleeping peacefully under the mosquito net. Zari sank on to her knees by the pool and immersed her face in the water. Then she sat on the edge of the pool and soaked her feet in the surrounding overflow. The water was luke-warm. She placed her hand on the head of the stone figure by the pool. Whenever they needed to use the well for watering the garden, the cistern supply flowed out of that open stone mouth. Hossein Kazerouni, the labourer, would arrive with a little cushion which he placed on the ledge behind the treadwheel, and from morning till dusk, from that cushion-seat he would work the wheel with his feet, filling the water-bucket and bringing it up to the surface. His hands were free, except when the brimming bucket appeared. Then he would detach the bucket and empty it into the little reservoir which led in turn to the cistern. Alone, from morning till dusk, that was all he did. When he went to other houses, he did the same thing. He never even sang, and Zari used to think it was a wonder his mind didn't wither away. In order to keep him entertained, she would send the twins to watch him and talk to him. But how long could they be expected to stand there and watch?\n\nSuddenly Zari thought, \"That's the way I'm spending my whole life! Every day I've sat behind a wheel and made it turn. The wheel of our lives, nurturing my children, my flowers...\"\n\nAmeh Khanom called her from the roof, interrupting her thoughts. \"Did Abol-Ghassem Khan arrive on time?\" she asked.\n\nZari lifted her head and said, \"Ameh Khanom, please come down. I'm not in the mood for arguing with them by myself.\"\n\nThere was loud knocking at the garden gate. Gholam, lantern in hand, dressed in a nightshirt and his usual felt hat, opened the gate. They all came in. But Khosrow followed Gholam straight to the stables and stopped in front of Sahar's make-believe grave. Zari could only see his legs in the light of Gholam's lantern and she stood up despite herself to get a better look at what he was doing. The feet kicked over the flowerpots one by one, and then all of Khosrow could be seen squatting to dig out the stones arranged around the grave. He flung them around the garden, disturbing the birds in the trees. The others came to join Zari and sat on the cane chairs. By this time, Ameh Khanom had come down too. Her head was bare and she was wearing a long white nightdress.\n\n\"Sister, which way did you come?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan asked. \"Halfway up the hill, we realized you weren't with us. We followed you to the street...\" He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. \"I suppose there's no whisky to be had in this house? Spare us a bottle of Tavuus Khanom's wine then, will you? As there's no Dutch cheese to be found either, we'll put up with some goat cheese and thyme. I'm not an ungrateful sort, after all!\"\n\nZari didn't move, watching for Khosrow as he approached them by the garden path. His footsteps could be heard on the gravel, but his body was enveloped in darkness. He walked up to his mother and flung the bundle he had in his hand at her feet. It was the sack, the rope and the blanket.\n\n\"Mother, why did you tell me so many lies?\" he shouted. \"Why?\" And turning to his father, he added, \"Father, you ask them why they all got together to fool me? Would they do something like that if you had been here?\"\n\n\"I've decided,\" Yusef sighed, \"that I'm incapable of changing anything. If I can't even influence my own wife...\"\n\n\"We were afraid you might do something rash and endanger your life to try to get Sahar back,\" Ameh told Khosrow, interrupting Yusef, \"which you did... and now don't shout so much, you'll wake the twins.\"\n\nBut Khosrow stubbornly raised his voice louder than before. \"Either the children are sleeping, or the ladies are afraid!\" he shouted. \"Women are either worrying or lying. All they can do is to dig graves, or sit around and cry!\"\n\n\"Sister, how about that wine?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan asked, blinking.\n\nZari looked at him; she looked at all of them. How strange and unfamiliar they all seemed! Abol-Ghassem Khan bit his lip and turned to Khosrow. \"I told you it was my fault, my boy, now don't argue so much with your mother...\" And to Zari he said, \"Sister, give us your wine, I want to drink the boys' health.\"\n\nZari walked off like a robot. She went to the cellar and fetched the wine. Khadijeh followed her with a tray of drinks and snacks. Zari could hear Ameh Khanom telling Hormoz, \"You're the older one, you should've had the sense to tell us. Poor Zari nearly died of fright tonight.\"\n\n\"But if we told you, you would've tried to stop us,\" said Hormoz.\n\n\"If they had seen you climbing that wall, they would have shot you!\"\n\n\"Well, they didn't, and no one shot us,\" said Hormoz. \"Our plan was to have me climb the wall first, then pull Khosrow up by the rope tied around his waist. We wanted to throw the blanket over Sahar's head and bring him out through the back gate. We were going to let the snake loose in the garden as our revenge...\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan poured three glasses of wine. He handed one to Hormoz. \"Cheers!\" he said. \"Drink this stuff from now on and try to enjoy the world! I hope you won't turn out like your uncle who ruins life for himself and everyone around him by taking on a whole nation's burdens. Brother, why aren't you drinking? Lord knows this world isn't worth it; all your pleas for justice, your frustration and your self-destructive attitude. A man of the world like myself is clever enough to have his smuggled whisky always at hand! One must take advantage of these foreigners, you know. Besides, they're having the time of their lives behind your back and a good laugh at your expense. Actually, why don't I break the good news to all of you now? I've finally made it as deputy in parliament and my appointment has just been confirmed! The telegram of approval arrived from Tehran today.\"\n\nAnd he got up and did an absurd little dance of joy.\n\n\"Uncle, you'll probably go to Tehran and take Hormoz with you,\" Khosrow said sadly. \"We had so many plans together...\"\n\n\"Yes, my dear boy,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan replied, \"I'm certainly taking Hormoz. He's very lucky too. Here the two of you have been taken in like so many idiots by that man Fotouhi. The fool's gone to Isfahan to get a permit to start a Communist party here, and he's persuading the seamen down south in Bushehr to join him. Pah!\" Turning to Yusef he added, \"I hear his highness came to you first to try to enlist you, but thank God for once you had the sense to refuse. I don't believe in these political parties one bit. They'd invited me to join that Anglophile Baradaran party too. I didn't refuse, though, I just put them off for the time being.\" Then he chuckled and added, \"Actually, it wouldn't be so bad, would it? One brother flirting with the Russians, and the other with the British. When the going gets tough, one brother could come to the rescue of the other. Still, I guess you're not the kind to help out your own flesh and blood when it's needed...\" He lifted his glass again and said, \"Cheers!\"\n\nThere was a pause while he carefully rolled some meat patties, pickled eggplant and fresh herbs in a piece of bread and gave it to Khosrow. Then he continued, \"I was there when the man reported to the Governor about you and Fotouhi, telling us how well you'd spoken and stood up to them. I said well, don't take my brother here too lightly! It's not for nothing that he has a doctorate in agricultural economics from Manchester or Massagussets or whatever university it is...\" He laughed heartily at his own joke. Then he added, \"Actually, I'm making up these names right now. At the time I didn't mention the name of your university. I don't even remember the name. Anyway, our man said you told them you don't like being a slave\u2014either to an individual or to a group. You'd said you despise party discipline. Even though laziness was probably behind it all, I'm still proud that, for once in your life, you came out with the right thing...\"\n\nYusef shook his head bitterly. \"That person was obviously a bit of a hypocrite, and hadn't understood most of what I said, or didn't repeat it all because you were there...\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan interrupted, defending the man. \"From the report he gave the Governor, it was clear he had been keeping his eyes and ears open.\"\n\n\"The main thing I said was that it wasn't as easy as they thought,\" explained Yusef. \"I said Marxism or even socialism is a difficult school of thought which requires careful training and education. I told them that adapting those ideals successfully to our way of life, attitudes and social fabric, requires a great deal of maturity, open-mindedness and sacrifice. I said I was afraid they were about to stage a play with inexperienced actors; that because of its novelty the play would draw large crowds for a while, but that soon both actors and audience would tire of it and despair. To achieve something for the people of this country, we need enlightened minds, intellectuals, and no outside interference.\"\n\n\"And what actors these are! Gorbeh Shah Cheraq, Masha Allah Qari, Fotouhi, Seyyid Agha with the long face, the son of Ghavam's wet-nurse... Hah!\"\n\n\"I didn't mean to insult anyone,\" Yusef replied sadly. \"These people are worth ten times the rest of the so-called Actors of our Golden Age...\"\n\nHormoz laughed uproariously. Abol-Ghassem Khan threw him a ferocious look. Hormoz lifted his glass clumsily to his lips, grimacing  as he swallowed.\n\n\"My uncle is right,\" he opined.\n\n\"Who asked you to air your views, you young parasite?\" his father retorted.\n\n\"Brother, let him have his say,\" Ameh Khanom interceded. \"Don't shut him up like this in front of everyone.\"\n\nHormoz stammered, \"This\u2014this very Masha Allah Qari has so far sold two of the houses he inherited in the weavers' quarter, and distributed food among the poor with the money.\"\n\n\"Don't tell so many fibs, boy!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan snapped. \"I've had enough of this nonsense. Let's go now, it's getting late. I was in such a rush, I forgot my night-pass. We'll be lucky if we don't get stopped under the curfew.\" He stood up and told Yusef, \"Do you imagine that the British are just going to sit quietly and watch while others carry on as they like down by the Gulf? You just wait and see how they'll buy off all these upstart Communists in one go. If they can't do that, they'll bribe the big shots and the leaders. Then all the pious, gullible, freedom-loving idiots better start watching out!\"\n\nAfter Abol-Ghassem Khan had left, Yusef turned to Khosrow. \"How many times have you been to Fotouhi's house?\" he asked.\n\n\"Four times.\"\n\n\"Did he give you the idea of stealing the horse?\"\n\n\"No, he said, just like you did tonight, to try and find the solution to the problem on my own. Hormoz said let's do a sit-in and protest. I said no, it's better if we just steal him.\"\n\n\"You should have told your mother where you were going.\"\n\n\"Told my mother?\" Khosrow sniggered. \"I'm not a baby anymore, I'm a man. Mother likes to cover up and stop you from doing things. The first thing Mr Fotouhi taught us was to burn the bridges behind us so there would be no way back. He said we were to memorize those words like a lesson.\"\n\n\"Well, bless my soul!\" Zari exclaimed angrily. \"You've got to have a reason to be burning bridges behind you! What reason do you have? What have you ever had but love and affection from your father and me? Have we neglected your lessons, your schooling, your clothes or your fun for an instant? If Fotouhi is at all sincere, he should look after his pathetic sister at the insane asylum, who's glued to the window, waiting for him to come and take her to some imaginary garden!\"\n\n\"But Mr Fotouhi says when society is reformed, no-one will go mad, and every place will be a garden!\" Khosrow said innocently.\n\n\"I'm certain a Fotouhi-type is just what we need to reform our society!\" Zari snapped back sarcastically.\n\n\"Can't he, father?\" Khosrow turned to Yusef.\n\n\"If Fotouhi and others like him can't,\" Yusef answered, \"at least they've offered our people the opportunity of sharing an important experience.\"\n\n\"I don't understand, father,\" Khosrow said helplessly. \"You're talking above my head again.\" Suddenly he grimaced at his mother and said, \"In any case, Mr Fotouhi doesn't lie, and he defends your rights behind your back!\"\n\n\"If I lied about Sahar,\" Zari said in a calm and motherly tone, \"it was on your uncle's orders. At any rate, I don't want you children to be brought up with fighting and quarrelling around you. I want our home to be peaceful, so...\"\n\nKhosrow finished his mother's sentence, \"So, as Mr Fotouhi says, we can all be blind calves who never see when we turn into cows. Just like...\"\n\n\"That's enough now,\" Yusef stopped him authoritatively.\n\n\"No, let him talk,\" Zari said with bitterness. \"He probably means a cow like me. Now listen here, the two of you, do you really want to hear the truth? You remember the day of the Governor's daughter's wedding? They came and took my emerald earrings as a loan, and never returned them. On the day of the foreigners' party, the Governor's daughter had the nerve to thank me for the present I gave her. Then they started talking about the horse. I'd decided to stand firm and not give in this time, in spite of Abol-Ghassem Khan's insistence. I knew myself that eventually I'd have to stand up to them. But I was afraid. Yes I was afraid of that gendarme who came to get the horse...\"\n\n\"But that stupid idiot was Gholam's friend!\" Khosrow broke in. \"You could've tricked him somehow, you're good at that!\" Turning to his father, he explained, \"He was that same man who followed us half-way up the hill after we left the guard-house and said I could come and ride Sahar in the mornings. He said the little mistress wouldn't mind. He said the poor animal had lost a lot of weight and wouldn't let the girl ride him at first, but now she can take a few turns around the garden. She doesn't dare go outside with him yet... he said he'd taught Sahar to trot. He said Gholam beat him up...\" His lips puckered and for a moment he became the same little boy whose plaything had been snatched away and given to another, not the lad burning with desire for manhood.\n\n\"That night I wanted to tell you about my earrings, Yusef,\" Zari continued, \"but you were already so angry, I didn't want to make things worse... it's always like that, to keep peace in the family...\"\n\n\"I always tell lies,\" Khosrow finished her sentence for her.\n\n\"When I said enough, I meant enough!\" Yusef reprimanded sharply. And he added thoughtfully, \"It's not your mother's fault. It's the way things work in this town; the best school is the British school, the best hospital the missionary hospital, and when a girl wants to learn embroidery, it has to be on a Singer sewing machine with Singer for a salesman. The teachers who've trained your mother have always tried to steer her away from reality, filling her instead with some etiquette and coquetry and embroidery. She can only talk about peace and quiet...\" And suddenly turning on Zari he shouted, \"Woman, what use is this peace and quiet when it's based on deception? Why shouldn't you have the courage to stand up to them and say those earrings are a wedding present from my husband, a keepsake from his late mother? After all, the poor woman died in poverty but she was still thinking of the bride her son would choose... How could you have given them up so easily? It's not their value that matters. It's the memory and the love behind them.\" He paused for breath. \"Woman, think a little bit. When you become too soft, everyone will bend you.\"\n\nAmeh Khanom who had been silent for a long time, decided she had had enough. \"What's all this about?\" she said. \"Why are father and son taking it out on this poor soul? Giving away the horse was not at all her fault. I was a witness. I even told her to give it away. As for the earrings, when I first heard the story from Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, I was very upset too, but after I thought it over, I decided she couldn't have refused them. What can you do when there are people who govern your possessions and your life, not just your town? Now do you want to know the truth, brother? She is soft, she gives bribes, so they leave you alone. And that's enough for one night. Eat your dinner and go to bed. Tomorrow morning it will all be water under the bridge. As for me I'm going to bed.\" With that she got up and left.\n\n\"I'm going to show you what I can do,\" Khosrow said, standing up. \"I'm not my father's son if I don't get Sahar out of their clutches. First I'll write a letter to the Governor himself and if he doesn't answer, I'll go to see him. My father and Mr Fotouhi are right. I have to solve my problem myself. If the Governor refuses to see me, I'll do my best not to get upset. No one's ever going to see me cry again. Mother, when they caught us, I was really crying for your sake because I knew you'd be worried about our being late. I hated crying in front of Hormoz, in front of the officers, but I couldn't help it because I know how afraid you are about me or father... Comrade Fotouhi...\"\n\n\"Yes dear,\" Zari said, \"according to you and your father and your teacher, I'm a coward, I'm helpless, I'm soft. I'm always afraid something may happen to one of you... I couldn't bear it. But when I was a young girl I too had a lot of courage...\" And turning to Yusef she asked, \"Wasn't it a mark of courage to walk off with you that day in the middle of a street riot... you, a total stranger... which girl would've...\" she bit her lip and tried to change the subject. \"But you're right about the rest. Our English headmistress constantly harassed us about manners and how to live. Singer was always doing us a favour by teaching us to sew, and Khanom Hakim had us convinced that our cures and medicines lay in her hands alone. I knew in my heart there was more to it than they were willing to tell. Something was wrong somewhere. I knew all of us, all the time, were losing something... but I didn't know what it was...\"\n\n\"And that was why I married you,\" said Yusef. \"Why have you changed so much?\"\n\n\"I've already told you; must I repeat it a hundred times? You're too outspoken and deep down I know it's dangerous to say the things you do. If I wanted to stand firm and put my foot down, I'd have to do it right here with you first, and then what kind of battle of wills would we have at home? Shall I tell you one more thing? You are the one who took my courage away from me... I've obeyed you for so long that subservience has become a habit with me.\"\n\n\"Me?\" Yusef shouted. \"Stand up against me? No matter how fierce I am outside this house, you know well that once I'm within these four walls I'm as meek as a lamb before you! I think your courage has been all show. Prompted by pure, unrefined instinct.\"\n\nZari thought silently that if she carried on any longer, they would have a real quarrel on their hands. She hesitated and then said, \"Who knows, maybe I was a coward from the start and I didn't know it. Time and again I stood up to that headmistress of mine without stopping to think whether I was committing an act of courage or rebellion. That day in Ramadan when she forced Mehri to break her fast... all the other girls abandoned the poor soul out of fear, but I stayed with her. I don't know, maybe in those days I had nothing to lose... and now...\" Without knowing quite what happened she lost all her patience and composure. She got up from her chair and slapping her belly hard, cried, \"I hope this one in my stomach will miscarry tonight... I've gone close to death and back for your sakes. Khanom Hakim has carved up my insides... etched a map on my belly and here I am on trial for courage!\"\n\nShe collapsed on the chair and burst out sobbing. It felt as though nowhere in the whole world was there a person as lonely and as tired as she. Yusef went to her and clasped her head in his arms. He kissed her hair and wiped her tears away with his fingers. He lifted her chin and looked her in the eye, fighting back his own tears.\n\n\"Don't cry, my love,\" he said. \"Why didn't you tell us all this earlier? I was completely taken by surprise.\"\n\n\"Today I damn well wanted to get rid of this one,\" she moaned, unable to hold back the tears. \"Wasn't I brave to keep it? When you bring a child into this world with such agony as I go through, you can't bear to lose him so easily. Every day I... I turn the wheels in this household to nurture you, my precious flowers. I can't bear to see people trample you. Like Hossein Kazerouni I don't do anything with my hands for myself... I... I have no experience, I don't know much of the world...\"\n\n\"My love,\" Yusef smiled, \"instead of going to the mental asylum and getting tired and nervous, you should go to the new Anglo-Iranian Council here and teach Essential English II! Can you believe Singer sent me this message via McMahon?\"\n\n\"You're making fun of me!\" said Zari from between her tears.\n\n\"You know I can't bear to see you cry,\" Yusef said gently. \"I wanted to make you laugh with the suggestion... But my love, if only you'd told me the truth right away, we wouldn't have gone on at you like this. You said you went to Khanom Massihadem's office, but you quickly covered up the real reason behind it. Why did you keep it a secret from me? Now I feel guilty about the way I jumped at you.\" Khosrow had sat down at his mother's feet. He was holding on to her leg and listening silently to her words.\n\nZari wiped away her tears. \"You had just got home from your journey,\" she said. \"You were tired and unhappy. I didn't want to make you feel even worse.\" She asked wearily and at a loss, \"What can I do to please you two? What can I do to become brave, as you say?\"\n\n\"I could teach you,\" Yusef said with a laugh. \"Your first lesson in bravery is this: whenever you're afraid to do something, if you feel you're in the right, then do it even if you're frightened. My sweet little kitten!\"\n\n\"For one thing I'm a person, not a sweet little kitten,\" Zari said pensively. \"What's more, you give a first lesson to someone who has to start from scratch.\"\n\nIn bed under the mosquito net, despite Yusef's cool hand caressing her warm abdomen, despite his kisses, Zari seemed to have forgotten all sexual response. Instead, she kept thinking about her past, and wondering whether she had always been a coward or whether she had become one. Was Yusef really to blame? For one instant she even concluded that marriage was wrong at its very basis. Why should a man be tied for a lifetime to a woman and half a dozen children... or conversely, for a woman to be so dependent emotionally and otherwise on one man and his children that she couldn't breathe freely for herself? It had to be wrong. Yet she knew that all the joys of her own life stemmed from these very attachments.\n\nShe couldn't sleep for remembering those carefree days of her girlhood. The memory of that day in Ramadan when the headmistress broke Mehri's fast came back to her as if it were yesterday.\n\nThat year Zari and Mehri were taking their sixth-grade exams. Four months before the final examinations a letter from the Ministry of Education arrived at the school stipulating that sixth-graders must be taught the Quran and religious laws. Zari realized that her mother's petitioning had finally worked. Because she couldn't afford a private teacher to instruct her daughter in religious matters, she had been pressing to have these taught as part of the school curriculum. Letter after letter and notice upon notice from the Ministry arrived on the headmistress's desk, upsetting her considerably. But Zari knew that behind this pressure lay her mother's insistence...\n\nThose days every lesson in 'Ethics' turned into a nagging session about the Ministry of Education. The headmistress would complain that the Ministry had agreed from the start to maintain a policy of non-interference. She went on about the impossibility of suddenly producing a suitable teacher in the middle of the scholastic year. She nagged about finding extra hours to fit in these lessons... and so on. She would say, \"Why don't you girls find an old mullah-baji somewhere on Sundays when the school is closed and learn your Quran and religious laws from her... or better still, ask your people to teach you at home?\" She would use the idioms correctly, since this one knew Persian well.\n\nMehri, whose uncle was the head of the Sufi dervishes, was well versed in both the Quran and in religious law. Unbeknownst to the headmistress, she agreed to give her classmates lessons in these subjects when they came back to school after the lunch-break. Zari struggled to pronounce the Arabic word \"Fassayakafikohomo'allah\" correctly, but she didn't always succeed. Still, Mehri was patient, being a year or two older than the rest. And then came the month of Ramadan. She had just been teaching them the Ayat Prayer for use in times of natural calamity, when that memorable incident __ took place. It seemed like yesterday.\n\nFasting was forbidden in the school, but Mehri was doing it anyway. When the headmistress found out, she stormed into the classroom and demanded that Mehri end her fast there and then by eating something. Mehri refused. The headmistress gave her a shove which sent her sprawling all over the classroom floor. Then she kneeled by her and holding the girl's head with one hand, roughly opened her mouth and attempted to pour some water down her throat. Mehri bit the woman's hand, at which the headmistress shouted at her and called her a pathetic wretch. Mehri sat up. \"The dirty hand of an unbeliever in my mouth was enough to break my fast,\" she said. \"Give me the water and I'll drink it to the last drop. The sin be on your head.\"\n\nThe headmistress slapped Mehri across the face, and again sent the girl on to the classroom floor. She then left Mehri and turned to the class to rebuke them. But the other girls were whispering anxiously and no-one paid attention. Even their Indian teacher was just standing, staring round-eyed at the scene.\n\n\"In this school,\" the headmistress shouted, \"there is no room for superstition. Leave fasting and religious mourning to your aunties and grannies! Ask your nursemaids about religious rules on menstruation and childbirth. Fasting weakens the body. Why did I buy parallel bars, a vaulting horse, and a basket-ball net? To strengthen your bodies, that's why! Now you want to ruin all my efforts by fasting? You don't deserve any of it!\" Then she barked again at the top of her voice, \"The bell has rung\u2014why don't you leave the classroom? Mehri's punishment is to stay right here on the floor till this evening. Come along now, girls! No-one is allowed to remain with her.\"\n\nThe headmistress marched out, and the Indian teacher, tossing her braid over her shoulder, followed her. The other girls filed out too. But Zari felt she could not leave. She bent over Mehri and gave her a hand to stand up. She dusted her off and sat her on the teacher's chair. Both of them searched for a handkerchief to wipe away Mehri's tears but neither of them had one. So Zari dried her friend's face with her fingers, and kissed her, saying, \"I don't think your fast is broken. You were forced to drink the water.\"\n\n\"There were only two or three hours left to the end of the fasting day,\" Mehri cried, \"and I had managed to fast for twelve days. I'd even fasted two extra days. This year I was determined to fast all thirty days of the holy month, because by next year I'll have my period and I'll never be so lucky again.\"\n\n\"Oh it's a long way to next year! Besides, you said yourself that a woman in her menopause doesn't get periods anymore. When you get to that age, you can fast all thirty days again.\"\n\nMehri laughed at that, and Zari was pleased to have made her laugh.\n\n\"I know who's been telling tales\u2014it must have been Taji. That stupid girl has turned Christian. I know my saviour Imam Ali will strike at her and she'll fail her exams! Tonight the dervishes are holding a chanting session for the Imam Ali and I hope my uncle curses her.\"\n\nThat night, they went home together. As they passed the Sufi monastery, they heard the rhythmic chanting of the dervishes, \"Ya Hu. Ya Haq. Ya Ali!\", as it drifted through the open doors of the house of Imam Ali. \n\n# _12_\n\nAll the quarrelling, reconciliations, and anxieties of the past days faded into insignificance when that very Friday morning Sahar walked back to the house on his own feet.\n\nIt all began like this.\n\nThey were sitting on the verandah at the back of the house which was protected from the morning sunlight, and which looked out on the hill Zari and Yusef had climbed with such fear and anxiety the night before.\n\nZari was using the breakfast table as an ironing board. The rugged hill lay bathed in sunlight, so still that it seemed hardly touched by the tread of human feet. Khosrow was sitting across from Zari, and had put a pen, paper and several books on the table in front of him. He was leafing through a book called _Principles_ _of_ _Letter-Writing_ and reading out loud: \"Write a letter to the head of an office and ask for a job. Write a letter to your uncle and ask him to... Write a letter to your friend and invite him for the Mab'ath holidays. With fondest regards and compliments... what joy to receive your latest missive... with reference to your letter of...\" He put the book down on the table and said, \"As Mr Fotouhi says, nothing more than begging and flattery!\" then took another and started to flip through its pages.\n\nThough still early in the day, it felt hot and there was no breeze to relieve the heat. Sweat trickled down Zari's spine, and she longed for a cool, refreshing drink like willow-water or betony, or perhaps a piece of crushed ice to crunch between her teeth. She remembered how in each of her pregnancies Ameh Khanom had gone to great lengths to provide her with whatever she craved. From Hassan Agha the grocer she would order Indian magnesia, which was crunchy and white as snow, and reputed to be good for the baby's bone structure. Other days it would be lamb's rumen, which Ameh would buy fresh and clean out herself, cooking it with nutmeg and making Zari take it because it tightened the belly. If a single raisin proved too sweet for Zari, Ameh would ply her with tamarind sherbet, and if one sour grape was too acid, she made hot syrups for her. But ever since Ameh Khanom's decision to follow her mother's footsteps to Karbala, she had become listless and depressed. She had no patience for anyone, not even the children. It was very noticeable, but Zari had decided not to say anything.\n\nKhosrow put down his book. \"What rubbish!\" he exclaimed. \"There's not a word in here about how you should ask for your rights!\" He took another book and leafed through it. \"I think I've found it...\" he said, \"what good sentences!\" He raised his head and asked Yusef who was facing the hill in his armchair, reading a book, \"Father, what does this mean? 'His deep-toned voice resembled that of a violoncello.'\"\n\n\"It means like the mooing of a cow,\" Yusef answered, without raising his eyes from his book, \"it won't do for Sahar. Listen, why don't you just write what comes into your mind?\"\n\nAmeh's voice could be heard ordering Mina to put down her coins, which were unclean from being passed around hundreds of hands. Ameh was sitting on a rug with her back to the hill, leaning against the verandah railings, sewing gold dinars into the lining of her coat. This had been her sole activity over the past few days and now she had started on her second coat.\n\nGholam came out to the verandah. \"Khanom, are Kolu's clothes ready?\" he inquired.\n\n\"They'll be ready in a minute.\"\n\n\"I know it's not my place to say this,\" Gholam commented, \"but why bother to iron them? Last night he only dreamt of cows and sheep. He kept waking up with a start to look for his kid goat. He kept me awake all night with his sighing and moaning. This morning he sobbed for an hour, asking for his mother, his sister, his brother... I don't see how he can last here.\"\n\nKhosrow chuckled as he laboured with his letter, and Marjan tried to build towers with Ameh's gold dinars which Mina would immediately scatter with a fling of her hand. As always, the initiative came from Mina who behaved as if she knew she had a headstart on her sister, having arrived fifteen minutes earlier into the world.\n\n\"Run along now!\" Ameh Khanom shouted at the twins. \"Money isn't for playing! Call Kolu and tell him to come here. Gholam, take the girls to the stables.\"\n\nThe twins pretended to cry and crawled under the table.\n\n\"Why don't you put on the chadors your aunt made for you and show your father,\" Zari said.\n\nMina emerged from under the table. \"Auntie, can we have a prayer-stone so we can say our prayers?\" Whenever Ameh stood up to say her prayers, they would also put on their chadors and bend or stand in imitation of her. When Ameh pronounced the 'amen' in Arabic, they would quickly put their foreheads to the ground to ask God for what they wanted. God alone knew what these little souls could be asking of Him... They would try hard to pronounce the Arabic 'Wala-z'alin' but they couldn't, so they would turn to Ameh and say, \"Now you say it.\"\n\nZari finished ironing Khosrow's old trousers and shirt which she had let out for Kolu and handed them to Gholam along with some socks, a vest and underpants. \"Put anti-flea powder on all of these,\" she said. \"Buy him a pair of givehs too.\" And she sat down on a chair. She was feeling parched, perhaps from all that ironing in the heat.\n\n\"The powder is finished,\" Gholam told her. \"I mixed the whole lot with water in the ewer to splash around the stables. They're infested with lice.\"\n\n\"Send Kolu here,\" Yusef ordered.\n\n\"Let him have his bath first,\" said Zari.\n\n\"Agha, he won't come,\" Gholam complained. \"This morning he was like a wild animal. He wanted to run off into the hills. He kept saying he was going to walk all the way back to his mother.\"\n\nAfter Gholam had gone, Ameh Khanom said, \"Brother, you can't keep the boy here. He's like that wild fawn we finally had to get rid of... still, it's none of my business. I'm only a guest in this house for a few more days.\"\n\nAt heart Zari agreed with her sister-in-law about Kolu. When she had seen him the day before, his eyes had looked to her just like those of the wild fawn\u2014large and outlined, with a shocked expression. Even though he had smiled at his mistress, deep down in his eyes lurked the fearfulness of a trapped animal.\n\n\"It really is too soon to take him away from his home,\" Zari observed. \"It's no use being kind to him. We're only making him unhappy, and his relatives angry...\"\n\n\"Once he's lived here comfortably for a few days, he'll feel at home with his new surroundings and he won't even mention his village anymore,\" Yusef said impatiently. \"Next year I'll send him to school.\"\n\nKhosrow stopped writing and giggled. \"Not unless you send him there with his hands and feet tied inside a sack,\" he said, \"he's too wild. And he's too old, anyway; they may not accept him.\"\n\n\"In a sack?\" Yusef asked absently, folding his newspaper.\n\n\"Yes, father. I saw Davoud Khan's son when they brought him to school from the tribe. They'd brought him straight there. I think I was in the second grade. At break-time we saw this tribal man with a big moustache arriving at school on a mule. He was wearing a felt hat and a slit tunic with a shawl wrapped around his waist. On his saddle was a big canvas sack tied up carefully at the top, with something wriggling inside it. The man got down from his mule and tied the bridle to the same tree I always use when I take Sahar to school. All this time he was holding the sack firmly with his other hand. He was being very careful with it. Then he hoisted the sack and brought it into the schoolyard. When he put it down and opened it, the Khan's son jumped out, wearing nothing but long black trousers! He did a few somersaults\u2014I don't know what for. Then he started to run all around the schoolyard. As if anyone could catch him!\"\n\nZari picked up her ironing and went to the pantry. She checked the cupboards. They'd completely run out of flower essence. In the kitchen she found Khadijeh, frying egg-plants on the stove. She was working stripped to __ the waist in the furnace-like heat, exposing sagging breasts and hairy armpits, while below the waist she wore her loose, flowery-patterned trousers. On seeing her mistress, Khadijeh grabbed her veil to cover herself.\n\nZari decided to pay a visit to her neighbours, the distillers. Maybe they could supply her with some essence. She went out the garden gate with her purse and two large pitchers. The neighbours' garden door was open, so she went in without knocking. There wasn't the usual pile of flowers on the paving in the middle of the garden, and the old distiller himself was nowhere in sight.\n\n\"Is anyone there?\" she shouted.\n\nShe approached the house, knowing that the distillery store-rooms were in the basement. She had an uncontrollable urge to fill a china bowl with betony extract, add syrup to it and mix in some crushed ice... she would stir the ice in her drink with her fingers and with a ladle that had a carved handle... ah, how refreshing that would be! Even if the distillers weren't there, she could go to the store-rooms, fill her pitchers and leave the money somewhere in sight.\n\nInside the house, she called out again, \"Anybody there?\"\n\nSuddenly the head of the old distiller appeared behind one of the basement windows. He peered at her through the ornate stone lattice. Then he came out to greet her, dressed only in his drawers.\n\n\"Khanom, why go to the trouble of coming here yourself? You could've sent one of the servants...\" And then he added, \"Please come to the store-rooms. Take whatever you want. We were waiting for the last picking of eglantine which hasn't arrived. The flowers will wilt. They say the whole town's been blocked because some horse has taken off with the Governor's daughter. They're not even letting goods deliveries come through.\"\n\nZari put the pitchers down.\n\n\"I'll be going down to the garden door,\" said the distiller. \"I've sent my sons to fetch the load and I want to see if they're here yet. I just know those flowers are going to wither. This town is turning into bedlam. Why does the girl have to go about riding a horse and getting herself into trouble? How can you make those fools understand that flowers don't have the patience of human beings? Especially eglantine. They have to be picked at dawn and piled inside the store-rooms by early morning. Flowers can't be kept waiting in this blazing sun!\"\n\nZari didn't know whether to be glad or upset. She felt for the child's mother: she was, after all, a mother herself. She knew Sahar was a noble horse and wouldn't throw his rider. But how terrified the girl must be! And how anxious the mother!\n\nShe took the pitchers and went to the basement. An intoxicating fragrance permeated the cool air of the cellars. The covers of the stone vats made especially for boiling flowers had been removed and leaned against the walls. The bamboo pipes leading from the vats to the tank were dry and, unlike the last time she had brought the twins to watch, were not dripping with thin streams of fragrant essences. Of the two tanks, one was full and the other half-full with rose-water. Flasks of rose-water were stacked neatly around the store-room. She opened a small door and went to an adjoining cellar. She dipped her pitcher in the first tank there and filled it with betony extract. How she longed to lie down right there on the cool moist earth of the store-rooms, next to the sweet aroma of those tanks!\n\nOn her return home, the first thing she noticed when she went to the verandah was the noise in the distance. The others were seemingly oblivious to it, Khosrow still writing his letter and Yusef leafing through his book, chuckling. The noises, however, seemed to be coming closer, a mixture of the sounds of a crowd and the hum of car engines. Zari glanced towards the hill. Not a soul in sight.\n\n\"Where are the twins?\" Yusef asked.\n\nNo-one answered.\n\nShe could see two cars now, one following the other at an angle to the slope. A voice rose, saying, \"He's heading for the hill!\" Several people started in the same direction.\n\n\"There! I've finished my letter,\" said Khosrow. \"Father, will you listen while I read it to you?\"\n\nYusef shut his book, got up from the armchair and looked out. \"What on earth is going on over there?\" he asked.\n\nKhosrow stood up too and went to the edge of the verandah. \"Look how many people there are at the foot of the hill!\" he exclaimed. \"Four... five cars!\"\n\nA voice in the distance shouted, \"Did you see? Right there!\" And another voice commanded, \"Don't shoot, you idiot!\" Someone screamed. The crowd at the foot of the hill was growing by the minute. A policeman and two gendarmes arrived. Two more cars passed by the slope. The first car was sounding its horn like an emergency siren, and raising a great trail of dust and gravel as it drove forward.\n\n\"Is there a war, father?\" Khosrow asked. Before Yusef could answer, another voice shouted, \"He's going up the hill!\" Other voices were lost in the din of the crowd, and the revving of car engines.\n\n\"I think it's to do with Sahar,\" Zari said. \"The distiller next door was saying that a horse had taken off with the Governor's daughter.\"\n\nYusef clapped a hand to his stomach and laughed heartily. \"What a war!\" he said, catching his breath. \"All this to catch a colt! There he is! Look, it's Sahar all right! He's standing at the summit. She'll be lucky if he doesn't throw her!\"\n\nAmeh Khanom, still sitting with her back to the hill, didn't even turn round. She was struggling with a thread and needle. \"It's just like threading a needle,\" she observed. \"If you aim the thread exactly at the needle's eye and your vision is good, then you get it right the first time. But if your eyes are like mine, on the blind side, you have to keep wetting the thread in your mouth, and guessing at the eye. The thread goes back and forth so many times until finally, by accident, it goes through the hole. Now Khosrow, your horse has come to you on his own feet by accident too. Go out there and let's see how well you thread your own needle.\"\n\nYusef put a hand on his son's shoulder. \"Your aunt is right, son,\" he said. \"Go ahead.\"\n\nKhosrow jumped down from the verandah and ran off. Zari, understanding Ameh's hint, knelt down and threaded her needle for her. \"But it can't always be helped, you know,\" Ameh commented. \"In life you're not always allowed to follow the right path, so only after a great many battles and a lot of failures do you finally make up for your mistakes.\"\n\n\"Sister, ever since you've decided to leave for the Holy City, you've become quite a philosopher,\" Yusef observed.\n\n\"Just a wise old owl,\" Ameh sighed.\n\nAt that moment Zari noticed a car struggling noisily up the hill. Sahar, at the summit, neighed and shifted nervously from side to side. The girl grabbed at his golden mane, shrieking above the noise of the crowd. The mare and the chestnut horse neighed in response from the stables.\n\n\"I knew the first day they tried to ride him outside the four walls of their estate, he'd head straight back home,\" Yusef said.\n\n\"A credit to that noble beast,\" said Ameh, still busy with her sewing.\n\nSuddenly a long black limousine drew up. The policeman saluted and the gendarmes presented arms. The driver jumped out to open the door, but the man in the back seat opened it himself and stepped out. Zari recognized the Governor. Then another limousine drew up behind the first. Singer stepped out, followed by two Indian soldiers. He and the Governor shook hands.\n\nThe crowd kept parting and re-assembling to allow for the random movement of the cars. The car which had driven up on to the hill backed down noiselessly as if afraid of causing Sahar to shy again.\n\nZari couldn't see her son as she strained to pick him out in the crowd. This was the time to act, so where was he? By now, the army commander's car had drawn up as well. Out stepped the commander and three more officers, slamming the door loudly. The car moved on, veering closely past the other two limousines. The army commander took in the scene around him. The officers, with swords dangling at their sides, headed straight for the hill. The Indian soldiers saluted and Singer started to do the same, but the army commander prevented him as if to emphasize their warm relations. Then the commander turned and saluted the Governor.\n\nYusef had meanwhile fetched his binoculars, and he and Zari took turns surveying the scene on the hill. Sahar neighed several times. The girl was clutching at his mane, lying full-length along his neck. Sahar slipped several times on the rocky terrain, veering first to the left and then to the right. The army commander, holding a short, thick baton in his hand, left the Governor and Singer behind, and headed uphill.\n\n\"Gilly dear,\" he shouted at her, \"take your feet out of the stirrups, sit sideways and try to jump down.\"\n\n\"I'm scared! I'm scared!\" came Gilan Taj's voice.\n\n\"What an ass!\" murmured Yusef.\n\nZari couldn't tell whether he meant the army commander or 'Gilly dear'.\n\nSahar seemed to notice the gendarmes all of a sudden. One of them uncoiled the rope he was carrying and threw the noose at him, in an attempt to lasso the horse and its rider. Sahar backed off, the girl screamed, and both disappeared down the other side of the ridge. The crowd surged towards the hill. The drivers of those cars who had room to manoeuvre, jumped behind their steering wheels, revved their engines and drove away to the other side.\n\n\"Get back, you half-wits!\" yelled the army commander. \"You've frightened the horse. He was standing perfectly calmly...\"\n\n\"If there was an ounce of brain in their heads,\" Yusef said, \"they would all go away and let Sahar bring the girl safe and sound back here.\"\n\nSuddenly Zari caught sight of Khosrow clambering up the hill. Her stomach began to churn. \"Amen Khanom, pray for him, pray for him!\" She turned to Ameh and begged her. Ameh looked towards the hill, and her lips moved in prayer: \"God's protection upon him; He is the most merciful of the merciful.\"\n\nKhosrow had nearly reached the top. He put two fingers in his mouth and let out the long whistle he always used for Sahar. Whenever he heard that sound, no matter where he was in the garden, Sahar would come to Khosrow and sniff at his sleeves. The crowd fell silent. Zari looked at her husband. Yusef's face was radiant with smiles and his green eyes were shining like two stars. Again Khosrow whistled. Sahar's head appeared in sight, looking to left and right.\n\n\"Here I am, Sahar!\" Khosrow shouted. \"Don't be scared,\" he reassured the girl, \"he won't throw you.\" The crowd was so silent, it was as if there had never been an uproar. Sahar neighed and slowly approached Khosrow. When he reached the boy, he lowered his head, as tamely as a household pet. Zari knew he would be sniffing at Khosrow's sleeves and pockets, taking in the familiar odour. She knew how closely the animal's existence was tied to familiar smells around him. Khosrow hugged Sahar's head, kissed him and patted his mane. Then he held his hand to Sahar's mouth, and Zari knew Khosrow had not forgotten the sugar-lumps.\n\nKhosrow helped the girl dismount. She was wearing riding boots and jodhpurs. As she touched the ground, she collapsed. Khosrow held the bridle as he bent over to tell the girl something. She sat up and screamed. Khosrow stood in front of the girl and was obviously talking to her. Finally he gave her a hand and lifted her up and the three of them descended the hill. Sahar had brought his ears forward, as if to listen to Khosrow's words. Near the foot of the hill, the girl left her companions and threw herself into the arms of her father, who had come forward to meet her. As the boy and his horse reached the crowd, people stood aside to make way for them. Then Khosrow mounted and galloped back home. \n\n# _13_\n\nThe mare was ready, saddled and bridled. Yusef was about to mount when Kolu dashed out of the stables and threw himself at his feet, begging to be taken back to the village. He was so altered after a haircut, a bath and some second-hand clothes! Or had he got thinner in the past few days? His dark eyes seemed sunken in his haggard face. Yusef tried to reason with him. \"Listen son,\" he said, \"you'll be staying in town, going to school, really be making something of yourself. You can learn a thousand things from Khosrow.\"\n\nBut Kolu was deaf to the master's words, uncomprehending, pleading only to be taken back to his mother and brother. Finally Yusef lost patience and boxed his ears. \"I'm not going to your village just now! I'm going to Zarqan.\" And he mounted. Kolu burst into tears and threw himself into the bushes, kicking and howling like a trapped animal. When Yusef bent over from the saddle to kiss Zari, he noticed tears in her eyes.\n\n\"Would you like me to take him back?\" he asked.\n\n\"No, I expect he'll settle down eventually,\" Zari answered. \"He can't know what's good for him, can he? Just remember, this time you're the one who's being charitable! What's the use of helping this one out and adopting him when there are thousands of other peasant children like him?\"\n\nOver Yusef's departing footsteps, Ameh Khanom splashed the customary water and orange blossom leaves from the crystal bowl she was holding, before going off to recite the An'am Surah for his protection and blowing it towards him with a symbolic gesture. What a curious creature a human being is! How easily a ray of hope or a happy event can renew his will to live! But when all around is oppression and despair, a person feels no more than a used-up shell, abandoned by the wayside. Ever since Sahar's return, Ameh had connected her life with the family's again and had stopped repeating that nothing concerned her anymore.\n\nZari went over to Kolu who had rolled away as far as the middle of the garden path. She knelt beside him and stroked his hair.\n\n\"Now look how you've dirtied your new clothes...\" she scolded him gently.\n\nKolu sat up and tore his shirt off angrily, screwing it up and throwing it in front of the master's wife.\n\n\"Listen,\" said Zari, \"if you're a good boy, I'll ask Khosrow to give you lessons from tomorrow. When you can read and write, I'll send you to your village to see your mother and show her you can read their letters and write letters for her, too.\"\n\nKolu had calmed down. Either he was paying attention or he had tired himself out. \"But no one writes my mama letters,\" he said.\n\n\"Get up, child,\" Zari urged, patting his sweaty back. \"Go and wash your hands and face. Shake the dust off your clothes and put them back on.\"\n\nAs Kolu didn't budge, she asked, \"What do you want me to buy you?\"\n\nKolu burst out crying again and sobbed, \"Send me home, mistress! I beg you on your children's lives, send me back to my mother and brother. My brother's sitting right now by the stream playing his flute. My mother's putting oil in the lamp. I'd laid some traps to catch a few goldfinches, and now they must be trapped and there's no one to get them out... I put my slingshot on the shelf\u2014my sister Massoumeh will take it and lose it. If I was there now, I'd have pinched a few walnuts and I'd be cracking them and eating them.\"\n\n\"Maybe the goldfinches will chirp a lot and someone will hear them and let them loose. I'll send someone to buy you some walnuts: and you can sit right here and crack them. I'll even get you some elastic and you can make yourself a slingshot.\"\n\n\"You make slingshots with leather cord, not with elastic,\" Kolu said with an unhappy smile.\n\n\"All right then, I'll send out for some leather.\"\n\nKolu's lips quivered again. \"No-one will go to the goldfinches. The traps are far away from the village.\"\n\nZari tried to distract him. \"Look,\" she began, \"the master is going to the village. Maybe he'll pass by the place you set your traps. He'll hear the chirping. He'll get down from his horse and take the goldfinches out of the traps and set them free.\"\n\n\"But the master isn't going to our village.\"\n\nKhadijeh's voice came from the verandah. \"Khanom!\" she called out. \"Telephone!\"\n\nZari stood up. \"Who is it?\"\n\n\"Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh.\"\n\nWhat could she be wanting, Zari wondered. Probably the woman wants to say what a huge favour she did us, and that she was the one who sent the horse back! When Zari came to the parlour, she saw Khosrow sitting idly by the window, staring out at the garden.\n\n\"For heaven's sake, Khosrow,\" she said, \"go and play a bit with that poor orphan boy...\"\n\nHe didn't move. \"Mother, don't even think about my giving Kolu lessons,\" he said.\n\nZari went to the telephone. It appeared that the very minute Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had set foot in her own home after their luncheon together, she had come down with a bout of her usual leg pains, confining her to the house. She had heard about her sister's intended pilgrimage, and she longed to see all of them\u2014including the twins\u2014in the near future. They owed her a visit after all. In fact, fresh water was being brought for her private baths the next day, and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh wondered if they would honour her with their company for a bath and luncheon on Wednesday. Zari's many excuses and protests were firmly turned down, and the date was set.\n\nOn Tuesday morning, Kolu went down with a fever. Zari darkened the pantry using reed blinds, and set up a bed in there so she could have him close at hand. Kolu would open his eyes wide and hold his fingers in front of them, straining to see. You could tell he was trying to focus, but wasn't able to. Khosrow, Gholam and even Ameh Khanom were of the opinion that he should be sent to hospital. There was little doubt he had typhus, and that put them all at risk. But which hospital would take him? Even the town's best doctors were down with typhus, and rumour had it that Khanom Massihadem and the three head-nurses at the Nemazee Hospital were in a grave condition. Khadijeh had heard from Sakineh, the woman who came to bake bread for them, that Dr Abdullah Khan, the town's most skilled physician, refused to leave Khanom Massihadem's  bedside. He would soak two large white towels in ice-cold water, wring them out, and continuously cover the patient's naked body with them. Sakineh, who had gone to visit Khanom Massihadem, had thought that she was already dead and they had spread a shroud on her. Before anyone could stop her, Sakineh was beating her head and searching for mud in the garden to smear over her hair in mourning. When they finally calmed her down and explained everything to her, she had rushed to the shrine of Seyyid Mir Mohammad to light ten candles in thanksgiving.\n\nNor was Sakineh the only one so concerned with Khanom Massihadem's fate. Large numbers of men and women had covered their heads with the Quran at Mehri's Rowzeh as a mark of urgent prayer for the sick woman, and had recited the Amman Yujib prayer for her deliverance. Akbar Khordel had circumambulated her bed with a sheep which he then slaughtered for her sake and distributed the flesh amongst the poor. The skin he had taken to the well-known mountain dervish, Baba Kouhi, so the old man would pray for her too.\n\nAmeh Khanom made Zari call Khanom Hakim for a hospital bed. But Khanom Hakim merely said, \"Unfortunately the beds of the Missionary Hospital be for the foreign officers and soldiers only and all the beds be full and even there be no place in the corridors.\"\n\nZari hung up without saying goodbye. \"Obviously the hospital was built for their own needs, not for the townspeople,\" she told Ameh who was waiting to hear what the doctor would say.\n\nThey put their heads together and began their nursing. They gave him manna of Hedysarum, and they wrung towels in cold water and wrapped them around him. They plied him with watermelon juice which he accepted eagerly, being parched from the fever. They moistened fleawort, sewed it up in some thin cloth, and kept it immersed in cold water, to be dabbed from time to time on his blistered lips. Ameh Khanom resorted to the traditional rite of placing some item blessed at the Shah Cheraq Shrine next to the patient. In this case, she cut two hand-lengths of braided white cord from the shrine, tied it around Kolu's neck, and sat by his bedside to recite the Hadith-i Kasa prayer. But despite all these measures, it was clear Ameh Khanom's spirits were sinking again.\n\n\"Obviously the poor boy's had a fever for several days and we hadn't noticed it, putting it down as we did to homesickness,\" she had begun to criticize as soon as Zari noticed Kolu's high fever that morning. \"Yes, nothing can replace a mother's loving care.\"\n\nDespite trying all day, they could not even get a doctor to visit Kolu, let alone a hospital bed. The boy was now semi-conscious and delirious. \"Goldfinches in the trap... chirp, chirp. Chirp, chirp. Beak down and feet up... in the air... no water... no seeds...\"\n\nAt sunset, Zari pleaded with Khosrow to go with Gholam to Khanom Massihadem's and persuade Dr Abdullah Khan to drop by for a minute to visit their patient. But Khosrow refused. \"I want to take Sahar out for a ride, and then go to Mr Fotouhi's with Hormoz,\" he said. \"Father didn't say I couldn't go.\"\n\n\"What a stubborn child!\" Zari snapped, losing her temper. \"Fotouhi is as crazy as his sister. All he does is to mislead other people's children!\" She was about to say that he was a paedophile, but stopped herself in time. Instead, she lodged a silent complaint, \"May God forgive you, Yusef! Look what trouble you've landed me in! What'11 I do if this poor child dies on my hands?\" And she vowed to send Kolu back to the village as soon as he recovered, whether Yusef liked it or not.\n\nMeanwhile, she felt she had no choice but to turn to Abol-Ghassem Khan for help. Gholam had returned without much success from Dr Abdullah Khan who had said he was getting old and hoped the townspeople would allow him to retire. Zari resolved to go back to Khanom Massihadem's herself and beg the doctor to attend to their patient if Abol-Ghassem Khan was unable to help. Surely a doctor couldn't take refuge by one patient's bedside and tell all the others that he's stopped practising, even if that particular patient is very young and has served the townspeople.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan was at home. He picked up the telephone himself. \"Well, to what do we owe the honour, sister?\" He was in a chatty mood and didn't allow Zari to get in a word edgeways. \"I hear Sahar came back to Khosrow on his own feet! I wasn't in town that day. I had to escape to the countryside, away from my honourable constituents. Can you believe they actually think I'm about to represent them? They've already started with their petty requests. One of them wants to have a patient hospitalized; another wants to obtain his rights in a court of justice; one fellow wants to have his daughter registered at the Mehrain School for free, and so on. For heaven's sake, this position as deputy cost me all of seventy thousand tomans! Anyway, it seems Sahar's escapade was quite a spectacle. Singer said my nephew charged into the middle of the crowd like a real hero wearing nothing but a pair of givehs and his shirtsleeves. Now sister, why wasn't he dressed in some respectable clothes? Anyhow, Singer was saying that as soon as the horse spotted Khosrow, he came forward like a long-lost lover and started kissing and sniffing at the boy, nuzzling into his arms.\"\n\nWith an effort, Zari forced herself to say, \"Abol-Ghassem Khan, I beg you to help me. Kolu has come down with typhus, and I have him on my hands. I can't get a doctor or anyone to come to him. All of them are so busy.\"\n\n\"Which Kolu? Why does this brother of mine bring the village sick into town? And in his own house too! Has he no thought for his delicate children? Didn't he always say that things must be changed at the root and our charities were of no use? I heard him say that to you myself.\"\n\n\"That's right, but this Kolu is our shepherd's son and his father died recently. He didn't have a fever when he first came. He's fallen ill now.\" Zari knew if she said anything about Yusef adopting Kolu she would receive a one-hour lecture on how another man's son will never behave as one's own.\n\nFinally Abol-Ghassem Khan consented. \"For your sake, sister, and for the sake of the children, I'll arrange to have him admitted at the Missionary Hospital.\"\n\n\"I've already called the Missionary Hospital. They didn't have any room.\"\n\n\"They'll have room for me,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan said grandly.\n\nIt was eight o'clock in the evening when Khanom Hakim called. \"Why haven't you tell me it be Abol-Ghassem Khan's patient?\" she complained at first. Then she added, \"There be an empty bed ready in the corridor and this be separated from an Indian sick man by a screen. And the Indian man also be sick with typhus. I be setting aside some pills for the family of Abol-Ghassem Khan which those who contracted... contacted the patient must be taking.\"\n\nAt the hospital, tents had been put up in the grounds to house extra beds. A strong smell of phenic acid penetrated the nostrils. Most of the patients were fair-skinned and fair-haired. They could not have been typhus cases because they were either sitting upright in bed with bandages around their heads or their arms in slings, or else lying down with their legs in traction. Four men were sitting around a table playing cards. Their fair hair shone under the light of a lantern which hung from the tent-pole. They did not seem to be ailing or suffering in any way.\n\nGholam held Kolu all the way in the droshke and carried him to the bed prepared for him at the hospital. From behind the screen, the Indian patient could be heard crying, muttering words Zari couldn't understand. \"Seri rama! Seri rama! Krishna!\" The crying became louder and he repeated names which Zari guessed must be those of his relatives, \"Sandra! Sandra! Kitu!\"\n\nWhen Zari got home, Khosrow was still not back. At first she wanted to call Fotouhi, give him a piece of her mind and vent her anger. But she soon thought better of it. Why blame Fotouhi? These young boys were looking for a way to express their manhood. Fotouhi was merely a vehicle. She decided to wait until her son returned, and then interrogate him. She would be gentle at first, then give him a scolding, and finally raise such hell, he would have something to remember.\n\nBut when Khosrow came back, he was at his most charming, pre-empting any efforts at remonstrating or questioning. The minute he arrived, he threw his arms around her and kissed her, saying out of the blue, \"Mother, you're not an aristocrat, are you? I mean, your father was a worker from a... something class... oh no! I forget what you call that class... anyway, your father was a worker, right?\" The questions tumbled out of his mouth.\n\n\"Why do you ask?\"\n\n\"Well, the comrades were feeling sorry for Comrade Hormoz and me because we're branded as aristocrats, and it takes so long to get rid of that label.\"\n\nZari burst out laughing when Khosrow confessed that the comrades were even against well-ironed trousers, so he and Hormoz had decided to smear their trousers with dirt and rumple them up before going to the meetings. As for ties, well, they were completely out. Then he admitted to having cut a hole in his new grey trousers and fraying the threads around the hole to make the trousers look old and worn. He told her he had boasted to the comrades about his maternal grandfather who had been very, very poor. \"Mother,\" he said, \"I told them my mother's mother had nothing but dry bread to eat in the morning, which is why she had a broken front tooth. I told them my mother now takes bread to prisoners and mental patients every week in memory of the dry bread that broke her front tooth...\"\n\n\"You've learnt to lie, too,\" Zari interrupted.\n\n\"The comrades really liked it. Now tell me about the day you stood up to your English headmistress. You had quarrelled, I mean struggled, with her many times. You said so yourself the other night. Those struggles are very important to me.\"\n\nZari felt depressed. What struggles!\n\nShe remembered the day when a group of Englishmen, newly arrived from London, were due to visit the school on a tour of inspection. Classes had been suspended in the morning so that Nazar Ali Beg, the Indian janitor, could sweep out the classrooms. The headmistress had sent the girls home and told them to come back in the afternoon looking absolutely spick and span, insisting that they all wear a spotless white shirt under their uniforms. Zari's father had recently died, and she owned just the one black shirt which she wore in mourning under her black-and-white check school tunic. All the girls who went into mourning did the same: it wasn't against the rules. But how on earth was Zari to produce a white shirt in the two or three hours she had, and with no money?\n\nHer mother was ill in bed, complaining of sharp pains in her breast and little lumps the size of lentils in her armpit which she wouldn't let Zari touch in case they were contagious. Zari couldn't let her mother pawn the silver mouth-piece on her hookah, nor the family silver plate, at Deror's the Armenian silversmith. She couldn't sell them either, to buy white material for Zari. Besides, even if it were possible, how could the blouse be made up in time? Those were very hard times, the first few months after father's death, as her mother used to say. They weren't getting a pension then. Later on, the head of the Shoa'ieh School gave them the idea of writing a petition. He had called Zari's brother into his office and quietly made him understand that his family could apply for a pension, giving suggestions on how to write the letter and to whom it should be addressed. When Zari's brother had come home and related the incident, their mother had prostrated herself and kissed the ground in thanksgiving.\n\nOn the day of the inspection, Zari decided to take a risk. She washed and ironed her blouse and went to school. They wouldn't kill her for it, after all, she decided. But when the headmistress spotted her, she was so upset, she nearly hit her. \"You ugly little runt!\" she shouted. \"You've become quite disobedient, haven't you?\" Of all her compatriots, this one had learned Persian well.\n\n\"I'm in mourning,\" Zari replied. \"My father died less than a month ago.\"\n\n\"And you answer back, too! When did your father ever believe in such superstitions?\" Then she calmed down and said, \"Too bad your English is so much better than all the other students and I need you to welcome the guests in English, otherwise I would expel you. Perhaps I was wrong to exempt you from paying tuition fees.\"\n\nNow it was all out. Until that day none of Zari's classmates had known she didn't pay fees. How could she ever hold up her head again?\n\nSomehow within fifteen minutes, the headmistress had found a white blouse Zari's size which she handed to her and ordered her to wear.\n\nBut Zari decided to be stubborn. \"I'm in mourning,\" she insisted, \"my father has just died.\"\n\nThe headmistress got down to it herself. In front of all the other girls, she carefully removed Zari's uniform, then yanked off the black shirt, ripping a sleeve in the process. The white blouse she put on again with care.\n\nSinger arrived before the others and assembled all the girls about him in the garden where they were scattered. Most of them knew him since they had bought sewing machines from him. He looked them over critically, saying, \"Like so. They enter the hall, you pretty girls bow. These people pay money for school from own pocket. For the sake of Jesus they give large school.\" Then he called Zari over. \"Zari, you say welcome. Lady stretch hand to you. You kiss hand!\"\n\nThe assistant headmistress rang the bell and all the girls lined up and filed into the assembly hall of the school to wait for the guests. Singer walked in after a while followed by an assortment of ageing ladies and gentlemen, some stooped over, others stiff as a rod, some of average height, others short. Zari counted sixteen of them. Singer was being particularly respectful to one of the old women who was sporting a large hat with what looked like two sparrows buried in it. One was perched with open wings, ready for flight, the other's head merely peeped out.\n\nZari stepped forward and spoke her welcome. The headmistress had a smile on her thin lips. Singer's eyes were fixed on the old woman with the sparrow's nest. When the woman stretched out her hand, Zari shook it. Singer frowned, but it was too late.\n\nThen Zari joined the other girls in singing the hymn \"Christ in Heaven\", ending with a resounding \"Hallelujah!\" Their Indian teacher opened the Bible, tossed her braid over her shoulder, and began to read St Paul's letter to the Corinthians: \"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels...\" But when it was Zari's turn to recite a poem, she involuntarily launched into Milton's \"Samson Agonistes\" instead of Kipling's \"If\":\n\n\"O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon...\"\n\nWhen they were filing out of the hall, the headmistress squeezed Zari's arm hard, whispering, \"You little wretch!\" This one knew Persian well. She even knew expressions Zari and her friends had never heard of. \n\n# _14_\n\nKolu's illness and the confusion that went with it, caused Zari to forget all about Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's lunch invitation. But Ezzat-ud-Dowleh herself had not forgotten. That distinguished lady had probably gone to great lengths to make preparations, because she rang bright and early on Wednesday morning to double check, reminding them of the invitation. Now it was Ameh's turn to grumble.\n\n\"Why don't you all go, sister. I, for one, am not going. I went to the baths only the day before yesterday. And sister, you didn't say a word to stop me. Besides, I'm not in the mood for Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's fuss and ceremony. She spreads a feast from one end of the room to the other, but her crossed eyes follow your every mouthful. She watches the sugar-bowl to count the sugar-lumps you take! And probably sees double, too.\"\n\nZari had never felt so tired in all her life as she had over the past few days. \"Ameh Khanom, the lunch is in your honour,\" she said. \"In any case, Ezzat-ud-Dowleh is your friend.\" She nearly added, \"She is your sister-by-oath and your crony,\" but decided against it. Instead, she said, \"You know, lately you've been cutting yourself off from us, and I was thinking perhaps it's because you're preparing to leave us altogether.\"\n\n\"You're quite right. When I leave here on my pilgrimage, I don't want to feel your absence all the time. Besides, I don't want these poor children to keep asking for me as soon as I go away.\"\n\nBut finally Ameh Khanom consented. They took a droshke through the avenues, but walked the narrow back-streets. Khadijeh carried one twin while Zari gave a hand with the other, who was walking, helping her over the rock-strewn alleys. They passed the narrow Qahr-o-Ashti street, and on the right-hand side, just before Sardazak, they stopped in front of the enormous gates of Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's house. Khadijeh was out of breath. Ameh Khanom read the Quranic inscription on the mosaic over the gate: \"Lo! We have brought unto ye a great and glorious victory.\" She glanced at the house opposite Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's, the house in which she had grown up. \"What a ruin it's become!\" she commented.\n\nThe gates of Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's house were open. As they passed through the large, shady octagonal porch, the doorman was sitting idly on his wooden bench. He jumped to attention, as if roused from a dream. Taking off his felt hat, he greeted them and invited them in. At the entrance to the outer courtyard, an old black maidservant held out a crystal bowl. She removed the lid of the bowl and invited them to help themselves. The two women each took a jasmine-flavoured almond sweet. The black maid bent down to serve the twins, and then came round to Khadijeh. At the entrance of the inner courtyard, which was an orangery, Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's personal maid Ferdows, wearing a blue silk chador, offered them a platter of fragrant melon. She served them as the black maid had done. Zari placed the cool melon against her face, inhaling its mild scent as if every refreshing aroma in the world was to be found right there.\n\nIn the large, cool basement, the fountains of the indoor marble pools had been turned on. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was dominating the room from her position at one end where she was sitting on a folded blanket. She apologized for not rising to greet them, explaining that her chronic rheumatism plagued her even in the middle of summer. She then welcomed them profusely.\n\nFerdows re-appeared carrying a square bundle of cashmere brocade which she placed before Ameh Khanom. Then Ferdows helped her take off her black outdoor chador which she carefully folded while Ameh Khanom unwrapped the bundle and examined the pile of different chadors, choosing a plain navy one. Ferdows opened it up and draped it on her. Then she wrapped up the bundle of chadors again, including Ameh's black one, inside the cashmere brocade and took them away.\n\nAfter this, they were brought fresh lime juice in a decorative china bowl with a matching ladle. The bowl was placed carefully before Ezzat-ud-Dowleh. On a silver tray, the old black maid brought some finely-cut crystal glasses and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh served the lime juice with deliberation and ceremony. Turning to Ameh she said, \"You're so fortunate, Qods-ol-Saltaneh. If I didn't have this rheumatism, I would have dearly liked to become a pilgrim to such an imam...\"\n\nZari had long forgotten Ameh Khanom's title.\n\n\"First of all, tell them to turn off those fountains,\" Ameh said. \"The damp does your leg pains no good.\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh ignored this. Zari concluded that the leg pains were merely pretence and wished that she would get to the point, in other words, the reason for all the hospitality. In an effort to make conversation, Zari once again complimented Ezzat-ud-Dowleh on the colour of her hair. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh smiled and passed a hand over her garish hair.\n\n\"Acquaintances,\" she said, \"even the Governor's wife, kill themselves to get me to reveal the ingredients of this hair-dye. But I've refused to tell anyone so far. Everyone who sees me says, 'What beautiful hair!' And I say, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 'But Zari dear, I'll tell it to you. You're like my own daughter. Your mother, God rest her soul, and I were like one soul in two bodies. I so wanted you to become my daughter-in-law. My poor Hamid singled you out from amongst all those girls. Well, it was not to be. That is, you played hard to get. But your own chestnut shade is also very pretty. It hasn't turned grey yet, so it's a shame to dye it. When you dye hair, it starts to go grey before you know it.\"\n\n\"God bless you for your kindness,\" replied Zari, and to herself, \"Thank God I didn't marry your lecherous son!\"\n\n\"I'm going to tell it to you, but you must swear never to divulge it...\" confided Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, staring cross-eyed at her guests, \"it's been a family secret. Henna, coffee and cocoa, that's what it is! I added the cocoa myself. It softens the hair. Take one soup-spoonful of henna, cocoa and coffee at a time, add some chamomile and rub all over the hair. Then cover this with fresh walnut leaves and wrap your hair overnight or from morning till afternoon...\"\n\nZari had no interest in hair-colour secrets. If her poor mother had been alive, it might have meant something. Her mother had vowed, if she ever recovered from her illness, to take a set of silver dishes as a gift to the shrine of Hazrate Abbas and then come back and dye her hair just like Ezzat-ud-Dowleh. She used to say that she would get the secret ingredients out of Ezzat-ud-Dowleh by whatever means. But her mother was away from all this now. She began to pray that Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's breathtaking generosity was not building up to some impossible favour in return.\n\nWhen they went to the changing rooms outside the bath, the black maid was squatting there next to a His Master's Voice gramophone with a conical horn which she switched on the moment they walked in. \"You left me and broke your pledge...\" The lower half of the changing-room walls was made of marble, while the upper half and the ceiling were covered with frescoes. Zari had seen this very hammam and the Zurkhaneh behind it, on that school trip when the teacher had brought all the girls of marriageable age to Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's place on the pretext of visiting a historic old house. The building was one of the town's landmarks, nevertheless, and no important foreign visitor left Shiraz without seeing it.\n\nIt was easy to understand why Hamid Khan himself had taken on the role of tour-guide to the school visitors. The large reception room with sash windows did not have electric lights yet, and Hamid Khan had tried to show the girls the paintings on the ceiling with the aid of a kerosene lamp which he held high above his head. The reception room ceiling was lined from one end to the other with portraits of men and women next to each other. The women were depicted with tiny, pea-sized mouths, doe-like eyes, and long, wavy locks. The men were identical to the women, only they had forelocks and no earrings.\n\nThat day Zari had not really noticed Hamid Khan's ogling. But the following week, when Ezzat-ud-Dowleh intruded into their private cubicle at the hammam, squinting curiously at her naked body, Zari suddenly realized what was going on. The woman's stare sent shivers down Zari's spine. It was as if something was being stripped away from her. How impudently Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had tilted Zari's chin upward to catch the sunlight in the cubicle, muttering to herself, \"God protect her, never seen such a fair and delicate body! Just like fine porcelain! Eyes the colour of mahogany... never seen eyes this colour. God created you for His own heart. By all that's perfect! God knows if we weren't in a bath I would've thought it was make-up or something...\"\n\nZari had wanted to shove the woman's hand away from her chin. But after two hours of Etiquette and one hour of Conduct every day at school, how could she possibly do such a thing? Of course they always ended up reading the Bible instead of Conduct, but Etiquette was about manners... and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was not going to give up. \"Pearly teeth, such a beautiful neck you'd think it's carved out of marble, what eyelids...\"\n\nThe twins brought her back to the present with their refusal to undress and their fascination with the paintings on the ceiling, especially one of a man on horseback staring at a naked girl combing her long hair. Zari remembered that on the day of the school-trip, Hamid Khan had purposely kept the girls for a long time in the changing-rooms to explain in detail about this very picture which was a scene from the famous Khosrow and Shirin love-story. The naked woman had huge breasts and was sitting next to a stream, combing her long, black hair. Some kind of screen separated the woman from the rider, who sported a thick moustache and a royal hat, and although the screen should have hidden the man's anatomy too, every detail of his body and that of his horse was visible. And the woman had nothing covering her genitals, either.\n\nZari promised the twins that if they let Khadijeh undress them, she would send them in the afternoon to see the Zurkhaneh next door which had pictures of the ancient warrior Rostam with his parted beard and tiger-skin garment, torn off the body of the monster, Akvan. They could also see Akvan being slaughtered and skinned.\n\nIn the bath, Ameh Khanom did an ablution, rinsed her body quickly and left. She couldn't bear the noise of the scratchy records. But Zari tried to linger as long as she could. She sat on the lowest step of the warm-water pool and let the hike-warm water engulf her body. Soon every part of her was feeling limp and relaxed. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the edge of the pool. When she got out, she sat on a shiny white tray, and wrapped a large white embroidered cloth around her body. The black maid came in at that moment. She was stark naked, and brought in the water-melon on a tray which she set down on top of one of the empty copper bowls. The water-melon had been neatly cut with a zig-zag pattern along the edge. The twins gaped at the sight of the negress. Marjan was about to cry out in fear, but was stopped by Mina's loud question, \"But mother, this one has a skin! Didn't you say they've skinned her and that bearded man is wearing the skin?\"\n\nZari laughed, and the black maid said, \"God bless you, my sweet child! I'll go burn some incense to protect you against the evil eye.\"\n\nNana Seyyid, the best bath-masseuse in town, came in holding a shiny pitcher with prayers engraved all round the rim. She was taken aback to see Zari, but she greeted her politely. She was naked except for a red loincloth tied between her legs and held up at the waist with a thin red band. On that day too, this same Nana Seyyid had been in their cubicle at the Shapuri Hammam. She had come to wash Ezzat-ud-Dowleh but was ordered to wash Zari first. Chatting away pleasantly, Nana Seyyid had first washed Zari's right arm, but had given the left one such a harsh rub that Zari was forced to say, \"Gently!\"\n\nNana Seyyid had quickly taken offence. Removing her bath-glove, she had placed it in front of Zari and said, \"Do it yourself, if you know how.\" And how pleased Zari had been about that! They didn't have any money to hire or tip a bath-masseuse, anyway.\n\nNow Nana Seyyid went over to the warm-water pool with the pitcher which she filled and then emptied over Zari's shoulders. She sat on the floor in front of Zari, pulling forward the raised tray containing the bath-glove and other items for the bath. She took a pinch of salt from a small copper bowl and rubbed it on Zari's heels. Then she began to gently massage the heels with a delicately fashioned pumice-stone which had a silver cap. It tickled, but Zari didn't make a sound. Again, the black maid came in and circled around each one of them\u2014even Khadijeh and Nana Seyyid\u2014with a fistful of incense. Shortly after she left, the smell of burning incense from the changing rooms filled the bath.\n\nZari sat on the outside step of the warm-water pool while Nana Seyyid massaged her scalp with a shampoo mixture of mud and rose petals. It occurred to her that it was a pity to stain the shiny whiteness of the marble floor with mud from the shampoo. But she surrendered herself to the gentle kneading of the masseuse, thinking of all those wonderful fragrances still lingering in her senses: melon, jasmine, lime, incense, rose-petal... and she wished this euphoria could go on for a long time. \n\n# _15_\n\nBut Ezzat-ud-Dowleh did not get to the point till late that afternoon. Even then she built up to it with much preamble, explanations and beating about the bush. It was early evening and her guests were sitting around cross-legged on a large, twelve-segment wooden takht placed over the pool for cool air. The takht was covered with layers of carpets over which soft, striped sheets had been spread. Carpet-covered cushions had been arranged against the tall latticed railings of the takht. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had taken up her usual place at the head of the takht, fanning herself. Ameh Khanom and Zari were seated on either side of her, but were not using fans.\n\nThe air had cooled. The blossoms of jasmine bushes, in large flower-pots around the pool, seemed to twinkle like so many stars at the reluctant sun, unwilling to set over the orangery. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had managed to send Mina and Marjan off with Khadijeh, Ferdows and her children, to the police-chief's garden to watch the Pahlavan Kachalak puppet show.\n\nZari didn't even quite realize how the conversation turned to her charities at the prison and the asylum. She found herself explaining about the women's prison. \"It's not too crowded there,\" she said. \"They're not too restricted, either, because the crimes are generally not more serious then stealing a ewer. Yes, I'm allowed to sit privately with the prisoners on the little rugs their relatives bring them and listen to their complaints. But I don't see the men. I just take their food to the Karim Khani citadel, and deliver it at the warden's office. What happens to it after that, is a matter between God and the warden! But there's a belief among prison wardens that whoever steals from rations will be stricken with leprosy.\" She added, \"One day I insisted on taking the food to the male prisoners myself. That day they were cleaning out the Dosagkhaneh latrines which are in the hallway. The stench makes you want to die.\"\n\nThen the conversation turned to the madam of a 'hospice' who had recently been imprisoned.\n\n\"I wanted this woman imprisoned myself,\" Zari said, \"but I wasn't the one who reported her. It was the regional officer who'd accompanied us. Mahin Khanom and I had been on an inspection tour of the houses in the Mordestan District, on behalf of the Women's Society. No matter how long we knocked at this woman's house, no one would answer. The regional officer started kicking the door. Finally the madam herself let us in. It was getting dark. We inspected all the rooms. Mahin had them open up some of the beds and she ordered fresh pillow cases and sheets for the mattresses. In the end, when we had gone to the madam's room to give her a supply of anti-flea powder and disinfectant, I saw something wriggling under the sewing-machine stand in the corner of the room. First I thought it was a cat. Only a black little head was visible. I reached out and switched on the light, motioning for the regional officer to take a look. Sure enough he pulled out a seven-or eight-year-old girl from underneath the sewing-machine table. The little girl was wearing a glittery, wrinkled dress, and her breasts hadn't yet fully developed. She was shivering like a sparrow in snow. Despite my quiet nature, I lost my temper. I shouted at the madam and asked whether she wasn't ashamed to use children of this age for work like that. At first she swore frantically that the girl was her niece who was staying with her for the night, but then she broke down and confessed. 'Well, what can I do, Khanom?' she said. 'There are too many customers. One Indian sergeant major has been waiting some time for a young girl. You can't let the customers down. We're constantly being ordered from above to keep our customers satisfied, and now you're here criticizing us? What brings you here, anyway? Isn't it to clean up the place to ensure the satisfaction of the foreign customers? After all, I've been in this business for many a year and no one has ever come to inspect us for anything else.'\"\n\nZari stopped talking. But when she sensed her hearers' eagerness to know more, she went on.\n\n\"Later it transpired that the madam had had ten or twelve of these children working for her and that day she had sent them off to escape over the roof\u2014all except the little one who hadn't been able to get away in time. But what bracelets the madam herself was wearing! She had on at least ten pairs of gold bracelets.\"\n\n\"Shameless woman!\" exclaimed Ezzat-ud-Dowleh. \"May she pay hereafter for what she did to those innocent children!\" Then she added, \"They've got our maid Nana Ferdows in prison too. I expect you'll see her tomorrow when you go there.\"\n\n\"On what charge?\" Ameh asked.\n\nZari suddenly understood. She realized the favour needed of her somehow related to the women's prison and Nana Ferdows. She waited. But Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was taking her time.\n\n\"What I suffer because of this child of mine! My husband\u2014may he never rest in peace\u2014had no idea how to raise a child. He didn't even let Hamid do his compulsory military service. He faked the medical certificate by slipping pebbles in the boy's urine sample and bribing the doctor to diagnose a kidney stone condition. If they'd taken him for military service, maybe it would have done him some good. May he never rest in peace, my husband! He would go whoring with a fifteen-year-old boy, and my poor Hamid caught gonorrhoea at sixteen. His wife isn't capable of making a man out of him now. How I wished he'd married Zari! It was not to be, I suppose. Like father, like son. May he turn in his grave, my husband, may he never rest in peace!\"\n\n\"But I heard Hamid has given up his extravagant habits and settled down,\" said Ameh Khanom.\n\n\"Settled down? With all the money he throws away and that shrew of a wife? I kept insisting that he should do up this big house and come to live here, but he wouldn't listen. Or rather, his wife wouldn't think of it. The woman kept repeating that she would get depressed living in these back alleys and nothing would do but that she had to live on a main street.\"\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh fell silent for a while and fanned herself.\n\nThen she went on. \"There's an old saying that only children turn out either mad or crazy. When my boy was five, all he did was to fly kites with coloured paper-lanterns. At seven or eight, he became obsessed with pigeons. When a person is born under an unlucky star... even now as a grown man all he does is play with pigeons. He's made three hundred nests on his roof-top for them. Every evening he flies his pigeons, and he claims that when the birds fly up and away, his heart flutters to the rhythm of their wings, and only comes to rest with them when they've returned.\"\n\nAmeh sighed. \"He was playmates with my poor son,\" she said. \"When my child died, I couldn't bear to see your Hamid. But now, time has taken care of all that. I miss Hamid.\"\n\n\"He'll come to see you in a little while. I told him his aunt would be here and he said he'd come early this evening to pay his respects. He misses you very much too...\"\n\nThe black maid appeared just then, carrying a tray of afternoon refreshments which she placed in the middle of the takht. There were all sorts of seasonal fruits as well as a variety of imported biscuits. She also brought in a brazierful of hot coals standing in an ornate copper tray. This she put in front of Ameh for her opium-smoking. She made tea in a red china teapot with floral designs which matched the china bowl of the opium pipe. The flowers on the design were white poppies. The tongs and the pipe-rod gleamed like gold.\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh went on. \"How I've suffered because of that child! You probably know that he sends foreign officers and soldiers here on the pretext of seeing antiques. In reality they sell us whatever extra bits and pieces they may have like biscuits, soap, shoes, stockings, silk, and so forth. I sell the goods in turn through Nana Ferdows...\"\n\nAmeh interrupted her harshly, \"Come now, Ezzat, do you think no-one knows? It's hardly a secret that you, a distinguished lady as you say, have turned into a smuggler! I didn't want to mention it today, but at our house I tried to give you some hints. You kept evading the issue and I didn't insist. Your son's driver told the story of your Jahrom haul in front of everyone at the Do-Mil teahouse. He said you and Nana Ferdows looked as if you'd put on quite a bit of weight overnight! He said you spent two whole hours wrapping up your body in silk to hide the smuggled arms. Apparently you also packed two big canvas sacks full of goods in the boot of a car which could have cost you a twenty thousand toman fine. Why have you become so greedy? A little bit of self-respect and dignity go a long way, you know.\"\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh controlled herself. Only the corner of her mouth twitched as she said, \"That driver was probably the one who betrayed us. I kept telling Hamid not to dismiss him in this godforsaken summer with all the sickness and famine around. But he wouldn't listen. What I go through because of that boy! But then you know, as I'm sitting here by myself of an evening, he comes along with a special rice dish, or a plateful of best quality apricots or some large tangerines... he'll say, 'Mother, I was thinking of you.' Then he'll kiss my hand, my foot, lay his head on my bosom and with all this pampering, I know that the next day he'll get anything he wants out of me.\"\n\nAmeh Khanom opened the small jewel-studded case before her, took a piece of opium, and smelled it. \"What good quality!\" she said. She warmed the opium and stuck it to the pipe-bowl.\n\n\"Forgive me for being so bold,\" Zari said, \"but you have a great deal of assets and property.\"\n\n\"May he never rest in peace that husband of mine!\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh exclaimed. \"What assets and property? He would steal the title-deeds of my land, cover his sister with a chador and take her to Sheikh Gheib Ali the notary and introduce her as his wife. He would sell my land, and have his sister\u2014well-hidden under her chador\u2014thumb-print the foot of the sale transaction as signature. All the money was spent on his women... and on that bedroom! His private room where he took the prostitutes, with that double-bed he brought over from India. He bought every pack of old playing cards to be found in this town so he could paste all the aces, queens and jokers on one wall of that room. He hired a painter to illustrate another wall with every imaginable kind of love-making position. Whatever money was left over, at the end when he was confined to the house, he smoked away in opium.\"\n\nAmeh Khanom took a puff and said, \"He left enough for your family to live on respectably for several generations. But if you're hinting at my addiction, too, let me just say I don't smoke away anyone else's money... it's my own. Besides, I've vowed to give it up the instant I set foot in the shrine of Imam Hossein. Right then and there, I'll break my opium-pipe in two. O Lord, please give me the strength to do it!\"\n\n\"Sister, why have you become small-minded?\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh asked. \"And why so touchy? I swear by my only son that I meant no offence to you. As for giving up opium, I'm certain that you'll be able to do it. You're one of those people who can do whatever they want.\"\n\nAmeh Khanom took a long puff. \"What good opium! Where do you get it? It brings the scent of the poppy-fields right to my nostrils! How often I used to ride around those fields! Field after field of poppies, and each one a different shade... the scent of it at sunset intoxicated both me and my horse. When the flower-petals have fallen, the yellowish, moss-green seed-heads nod in the breeze as if to talk to you, and you're certain they're alive. They have something no other flower in the world has. At sunrise, they come to cut them. The dew is still sparkling on the seed-heads, and drop by drop the pretty sap oozes out.\"\n\n\"Since you like it so much, I'll tell them to prepare some more pieces from the same batch for you to take with you on your trip. You can think of me when you use it.\"\n\n\"Curse the devil! Even if it kills me I'm going to give it up. The beauty of the poppy-fields is quite a different thing from its poison.\"\n\nZari was beginning to feel anxious. She had planned to visit Kolu in hospital earlier in the evening, but it was too late now. She was worried about Khosrow, who had gone to join Hormoz so the two of them could go to Fotouhi's together in the evening. Khosrow had inadvertently mentioned the night before that although they might not be accepting him at any party branch because he was under-age, Mr Fotouhi had generously allowed him to join Hormoz and his friends as an 'independent observer'. This was the same group whose members pitied those with aristocratic blood.\n\nZari turned to Ezzat-ud-Dowleh and said, \"I'm beginning to understand now. Nana Ferdows was caught red-handed smuggling.\"\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh sighed. \"I wish it were that simple,\" she said. \"This time she was actually smuggling arms.\"\n\n\"By Allah, the Almighty!\" exclaimed Ameh, putting her pipe down next to the brazier.\n\n\"Yes. Two Brno guns, ten revolvers and a box of ammunition. God knows we were very careful, very cautious. Four times previously Nana Ferdows had delivered the same load safely to its destination. But this time she was caught. I'm certain it was the driver who gave us away and was probably paid well for it too. A curse upon him! Nana Ferdows was supposed to take the load at sunrise before the women's public baths opened, to the Khani Hammam and deliver them to the Mirza Agha Hennasab.\"\n\n\"Which Mirza Agha? The son of your own wet-nurse?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"Oh no. No-one knows where my wet-nurse's son is. They say he's joined the Communists...\"\n\n\"I see. Go on.\"\n\n\"Yes, she was supposed to deliver the load to the Mirza Agha Hennasab and tell him, 'Mirza Agha, these are Khanom's bath things. I'm leaving them in your care. When it's the women's hour at the baths, give them to the bath-keeper's wife.' And Mirza was supposed to call out casually to one of the errand boys and ask him to take the bundle to the back of the hammam for safe-keeping. I'd wrapped up the 'bath things' myself in the dead of night. Even Nana Ferdows didn't know what was in it. I packed the guns end to end and wrapped them tightly inside a small rug. And even though my fingers were pricked till they bled, I pinned both ends of the rug so the guns wouldn't slip out and the fringes of the rug would cover up any parts that were showing. I placed the rolled-up rug on the porter's tray myself and put the large copper bowl which had the box of bullets hidden inside, next to it. The revolvers I rolled up in bath towels and carefully wrapped that in a cashmere brocade. These I put inside the large copper bowl as well, with part of the brocade cloth showing. I even sat down and prayed for the safe delivery of the load.\"\n\n\"What things you pray to God for!\" muttered Ameh Khanom.\n\nIgnoring her, Ezzat-ud-Dowleh continued. \"At dawn with the help of Kal Abbas, Ferdows's husband, we managed to lift the tray and put it on Nana Ferdows's head. It was very heavy, but she didn't have that far to go. Again I prayed and blessed the load and Nana Ferdows. I made her leave through the door of the inner courtyard. Kal Abbas had checked the street to see if the coast was clear.\"\n\n\"How did you find out she'd been caught?\" Ameh asked.\n\n\"I was saying my morning prayers when there was a knock. My heart sank. Apparently, just before reaching the public baths. Nana Ferdows had come across a policeman and a gendarme. I imagine they must have stopped her and searched her load. They asked her who it belonged to and where she'd got it. Kal Abbas says when she came home and he opened the door to her, it was obvious she'd been beaten up and had been crying. Anyhow, she had spilled the beans, and brought them to my doorstep. But see how clever and loyal Kal Abbas is. At the door, the policeman asked him whether he knew Nana Ferdows. Kal Abbas replied, 'No sir, I do not.' Nana Ferdows instantly burst out crying, saying, 'I spit on you! My own son-in-law! You don't know me? Has the world come to an end? Have you lost your eyesight that you don't know me?' And Kal Abbas said, 'listen you shrew, why make up such lies at this time of day? How should I know you?'\"\n\n\"What a mess you've got yourself into!\" Ameh said, between puffs.\n\n\"Well, by this time I was glued to the door of the outer courtyard, eavesdropping and trembling from head to toe. No-one should ever live through such a thing! Nana Ferdows was wailing and screaming, swearing by the Quran that the goods had been brought from our house. 'I had no idea there were guns and things like that in it,' she was saying. 'And this bastard here is Kal Abbas, my son-in-law, who's siding with them and won't help me out, his own mother-in-law! I shut up once when they dishonoured my daughter, but now they want to dishonour me too! I spit on you, Kal Abbas! You're a traitor, you help them. You helped them the other time too...' She sobbed her heart out, and cursed with such bitterness that my hair was standing on end. She kept saying, 'O Lord, where are You? Are You blind?'\"\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh fell silent for a while, fanning herself. Ameh Khanom and Zari kept quiet the whole time. Zari was biting her thumbnail. She thought silently, \"And now what is it I can do for you?\"\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh went on. Obviously she was not going to get to the point until she had recounted all the details.\n\n\"Either the gendarme or the policeman shouted at Nana Ferdows to stop blaspheming, and ordered Kal Abbas to wake the master of the house so he could be questioned. Kal Abbas told them the master had died a long time ago, at which point the policeman asked to see the mistress. By this time I was feeling so faint I had to sit on the ground. Kal Abbas said, 'The mistress is away on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam Reza.' The policeman shouted at Nana Ferdows, 'Didn't you say these were Khanom's belongings that you were taking to the Khani Hammam?' Kal Abbas didn't let Nana Ferdows answer. He laughed and said, 'Sir, we have a private bath in this house. The mistress never uses the public baths. I can show it to you if you like.' Then he said, 'Please go and have your fight elsewhere. I have a thousand things to do.' When the policeman started to hustle her away, Nana Ferdows pleaded with them, 'Where are you taking me?' The policeman said to her, 'First to the lieutenant, who's going to lock you up.' The foolish woman kept screaming, 'Let me see my child first, and I'll go wherever you want.' But they took her away. It was a stroke of luck that Ferdows and her children were sleeping far away from the entrance and didn't hear all the noise. As for me, well! No one should ever have to live through such a thing! I was shivering as if I'd been struck down with a fever. I couldn't breathe. I sent Kal Abbas at top speed to the Mirza Agha Hennasab to inform him.\"\n\nThen turning to Zari, she said, \"But Zari, my dear, you hold the solution to my problem. We've made the necessary investigations indirectly. We know that Nana Ferdows is in the women's ward. Now I beg of you, when you visit the prison tomorrow, go and see Nana Ferdows. Talk to her. Beg her on my behalf not to mention our name under any circumstances. You see, Kal Abbas managed to nudge her foot at the last moment and make her understand that she must keep her mouth shut. It seems she's either caught on or simply tired out, because she's stopped talking for the time being. My dear Zari, please tell Nana Ferdows to say at her trial that the mistress was on a pilgrimage; that Kal Abbas had bought the goods from a few Indians, wrapped them up in the mistress's bath things and given them to her to sell at the bazaar, and that the Mirza Agha Hennasab had offered to buy the goods. If she doesn't stick to this story, my whole family will be ruined. So will our long-standing reputation. We'll be utterly undone.\"\n\n\"Is it all right for Kal Abbas's family to be ruined, then?\" asked Ameh Khanom cynically. \"Why implicate that poor Mirza Agha Hennasab? I don't want to criticize you, but... well, anyway, it's none of my business.\"\n\n\"Qods-ol-Saltaneh, this is no time to talk Zari out of helping me,\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh pleaded with her. \"Doesn't our sisterhood mean anything to you? I swear I'll repent and give this up. Besides, neither Kal Abbas nor Mirza Agha's family will suffer. We've notified Mirza Agha in good time and he's escaped to the tribe. And I've persuaded Kal Abbas to cooperate. Tell her I've persuaded her son-in-law to cooperate. We've made enquiries and found out that if an ordinary citizen smuggles arms just for money and nothing else, the sentence is no more than a year or two in prison. They confiscate the arms and levy a fine twice their value. That's nothing to worry about; I'll take care of all the fines. I'll give Kal Abbas five thousand tomans reward when he gets out of prison. And I've promised to take good care of his wife and children in his absence. Tell her to ask for Mr Sharifabadi as her lawyer. I'll contact the judge and the public prosecutor for her. And I promise that this time I really will keep my word and send her on a pilgrimage to Karbala.\"\n\nShe reached under the cotton sheet and pulled out two envelopes and a small box which she handed to Zari. She shouted to the maid, \"Bazm Ara, put the lights on!\" The tall garden lights which looked just like carriage-lights were immediately switched on.\n\n\"Give her these two envelopes, my dear,\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh continued. \"The first one contains a written request for a lawyer, and the second one has the details that I've been telling you. She can read\u2014she reads the Quran\u2014but she can't write. Make her press her finger in this ink-box and fingerprint the bottom of the first letter. Then give the letter to the warden's office and ask for a receipt. You can say you wrote this letter yourself as a form of counsel or kindness to the prisoner. Since everyone knows you as a generous, charitable woman, no-one will suspect you. But make sure you take both letters from her... whatever you do, don't leave them with her. I beg you in God's name to do this... will you? I've thought of sending her daughter Ferdows to her as a visitor, but I don't trust the girl. There's a strange glint in her eyes these days. I'm afraid mother and daughter will get up to something and land us in a real mess. Should they decide to take their revenge, what better opportunity than this?\"\n\nZari wondered which would take more courage: to accept or to refuse? Giving two envelopes to a prisoner, and talking and probably reasoning with her, having her finger-print the letter, waiting for her to read all that was written on the two sheets of paper with her minimal reading ability\u2014all this in front of other prisoners, especially that madam who held Zari responsible for her imprisonment, demanded courage enough. But she could be adventurous and do it. What kind of justice, however, would that be? She would be shielding the real criminal and allowing her to appear innocent, while an innocent person took the blame for a crime. Besides, she wasn't afraid of Ezzat-ud-Dowleh.\n\nBut what if she refused to cooperate? Would she be showing the courage that her husband and son expected of her? After all, if Ezzat-ud-Dowleh didn't succeed in using her, she would merely find some other way, buying and safeguarding her reputation through whatever means. And it probably didn't make much of a difference to Kal Abbas whether he was imprisoned in the entrance of Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's house or in a real jail. Nevertheless, why should she be a vehicle for injustice? The right thing to do would be to encourage Nana Ferdows to tell the truth, undaunted by Ezzat-ud-Dowleh or anyone else's reactions or conclusions. But then, couldn't Ezzat-ud-Dowleh crush the woman with her money and influence anyway, and destroy her family? In any case, Nana Ferdows had long been an accomplice. She had accepted the life they offered for many years now.\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh broke her train of thought.\n\n\"Zari my dear, what a long time you take to weigh up such a small thing!\"\n\nZari pushed the letters and the ink-box in front of Ezzat-ud-Dowleh and said, \"No, I won't do it, I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"You won't do it? But why?\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh asked, stupefied.\n\nZari didn't reply. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh tried to cajole her like a child. \"What if I get your emerald earrings back from the Governor's daughter?\" she coaxed. \"Would you still not do it? I was just about to do something about your son's horse when this whole situation came up...\"\n\n\"My earrings are not that important to me anymore. It's better if you allow the truth to be known. You were saying yourself it was a pity Hamid Khan didn't do his military service. Well, this might prove to be a form of military service for him.\"\n\nAmeh Khan laughed so hard that she was seized by a fit of coughing. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh forced a nervous titter and said, \"You don't seem to understand the difference between Kal Abbas and Hamid. If Kal Abbas is convicted, his jail sentence is only for a year or two. But if our family name is mentioned, our whole livelihood will be at stake. They'll charge us with smuggling arms with intent to jeopardize national security. Sharifabadi was saying that according to article 171 of the penal code, the sentence for that would be execution, or at best life imprisonment. The maximum he can do is to settle the case on appeal for ten or fifteen years. No-one is going to believe that our living expenses are high and we did this for money.\"\n\nTears sprang to her eyes as she said, \"When you're born under an unlucky star... so much for friends and avowed sisters... they abandon you in times of need.\" And she shouted, \"Bazm Ara, bring me the drops for my heart.\" Then she continued, \"I know why you're refusing. You disliked us from the start. I don't know what we ever did to you. Or maybe you regret now that we didn't press you harder to marry Hamid. A beggar like you played so hard to get! I know. Now you want to take your revenge on us. With that crazy, temperamental husband of yours, I don't blame you. He's made more enemies than he can count!\"\n\nAt this moment Hamid Khan arrived. He looked plump and jolly, and greeted everyone effusively. He took his shoes off at the foot of the takht and stepped up in his socks. He hugged and embraced his 'aunt' over and over again. Zari noticed that Ezzat-ud-Dowleh hurriedly wiped away her tears and smiled at him. Her son literally bent down to kiss her feet. He kneeled down next to his mother and asked, \"How are you, how have you been, what news?\"\n\nHe went over to Ameh Khanom, leaned his head on her shoulder and touched her braided hair. Looking Zari over, he said, \"Khanom Zahra, touch wood, you remind me of first-rate wine! You constantly improve with age.\"\n\nHe held Ameh Khanom's hand affectionately, then kissed it and said, \"My dear aunt, how many years is it since we saw each other?\"\n\nAmeh Khanom didn't answer. She poured a cup of tea and placed it in front of him. Then she took up her opium pipe which she cleaned and prepared for fresh use. She asked him, \"Will you smoke if I fix you a pipe?\"\n\n\"What I've gone through in your absence, my dear aunt!\" replied Hamid Khan, trying to ingratiate himself. Turning to Zari, he said, \"I was never blessed with brothers and sisters, but God gave me two mothers instead.\"\n\nHe puffed on the opium pipe once, then several times, and became even more talkative, going over old times. He asked Ameh, \"Do you remember I used to sit on your lap, and even though I was three or four years old, I'd try and fondle your breasts and then ask you to nurse me. I loved you like a mother because you always looked after me. I remember that time when the other children threw stones at my prize pigeon and broke its leg. You'd come to visit my mother, and I was hugging my pigeon, shedding tears like a river as my dear mother would say, begging people to do something for it. The poor bird was making the most pathetic noises. It was worse than all the moaning in the world to me! I remember you soaked some crushed peas and mixed it with egg yolk and myrtle to make a sort of plaster for the pigeon's leg. When you finished, the pigeon was cooing peacefully again.\"\n\nZari felt as though she had nothing more to do there. She was restless and couldn't wait to excuse herself and leave. But Hamid was not ready to give up.\n\n\"Remember that night on the summer estate?\" he asked Ameh again. \"We'd all gone there for the day but ended up staying overnight. The musicians couldn't find a droshke to take them home, so they were forced to stay, too. When they spread out the bedclothes, there wasn't enough room for everyone. My mother never gave up the chance of sleeping next to my father if she could help it, so I was left alone. No-one else wanted to sleep next to me because I had some boils on my face and the one on my nose had become infected. Everyone knew those boils were usually contagious, especially since the garden buzzed with flies and mosquitoes which were carriers of that disease. I was left there wondering where to sleep, feeling really tired. It was very cold, too. Even though your own child was sleeping next to you, you called me over and said, 'Come my dear, come and sleep on my other side.' Then I cried and you wiped my tears. You even kissed my nose despite the infected boil. When your son died, I used to avoid you to spare you grief. One day in the Vakil bazaar, I saw a woman who looked just like you. I called her 'my dear aunt', and she turned around and slapped me one! 'Your dear aunt,' she said, 'I bet!'\"\n\nHe looked at Bazm Ara bringing a tray containing a small bottle of medicine and a cup of water to his mother. \"Mother dear,\" he asked, \"why are you taking medicine again?\" And he stole a meaningful glance at Zari.\n\n\"It's nothing,\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh answered. \"I'm having some palpitations again.\"\n\nTurning to Zari, Hamid asked, \"Khanom Zahra, I've heard you're going to the prison tomorrow. Will you be visiting our prisoner?\"\n\nCounting the drops she was putting in the water, Ezzat-ud-Dowleh said, \"But not as we wanted.\" And she resumed her counting. Hamid frowned and looked a little nervous. He took the opium and began to smoke again.\n\n\"Why?\" he asked. \"I suppose you're afraid. Well, it is frightening for you.\" He put the pipe down clumsily next to the brazier and addressed Ameh affectionately. \"But my dear aunt is as brave as they come. She'll kiss my boil this time again, won't she? I'm sure you don't want to see me on the gallows. Anyone but you carrying out a plan like this would be suspect, you know.\"\n\nZari saw Kal Abbas passing through the orangery and coming toward the takht. As he came forward and greeted them, Ameh Khanom pulled on her chador. Kal Abbas stood by the takht and called to Hamid Khan who bent forward while he whispered something in his ear. Hamid put his shoes on in a hurry and rushed off. Zari suddenly felt anxious. What if something had happened to her little girls! Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was capable of anything. She could even kidnap the children and keep them as hostages somewhere while she forced Zari to consent. Why hadn't she thought of that earlier? Why did she let the children go to the police-chief's garden in the first place? And she thought with bitterness that the real 'show' had been taking place right here! Only it was too complicated for the children.\n\n\"It's late. Why aren't the twins back?\" she asked Ameh in a shaky voice. She was ready to give in to anything they proposed now. If she were to choose between courageousness and her children, she would clearly choose the children. Yes, Hamid would come now and make the first move. Ameh looked at her sharply and said, \"Don't worry. They'll turn up sooner or later.\"\n\nZari thought, \"I'll wait. I'm worrying needlessly. It was a good thing I sent Khadijeh with them.\" She remembered a line from a poem Yusef often recited, \"From naught but a thought comes their fear and dread...\" No, she had changed the poem. It really went like this:\n\n\"From naught but a thought their peace or war\n\nFrom naught but a thought their fame or disgrace.\"\n\nHamid soon returned with a tall, well-built woman who was tightly clutching her chador. They came and sat on the takht.\n\n\"Mother, do you want a guest?\" he chuckled.\n\nZari immediately recognized the 'woman'. She had received her wearing the same veil in her own house. \"Malek Sohrab Khan!\" she exclaimed involuntarily.\n\nSohrab sat down and took off his veil. His unshaven face seemed thin and haggard, and he was covered with dust. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh laughed so hard, tears ran down her cheeks. He turned to Zari with a faint smile and said, \"I went to your house first. No-one was there.\" He held his head in his hands. \"If only Yusef Khan was in town,\" he said. \"I should have listened to him.\"\n\nBazm Ara came in, carrying a brightly-polished ewer and bowl which shone like gold. A thick towel with floral patterns was folded over the maid's arm and the soap she held was shaped like a pear. Zari's soap in the bath had resembled an apple. Was it for these items of luxury that Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had run such risks? But Malek Sohrab's presence there at that time of night seemed to shed a different light on the whole situation.\n\n\"Sohrab, we've just had the bath water changed,\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh said. \"Why don't you go and take a bath?\"\n\n\"Maybe they'll call,\" he answered. \"I'm hoping against hope that we'll be contacted and that the English haven't tricked us. I've come straight from the battlefield. I've been to that English Colonel who's just like the treacherous Yazid. He thinks this is the desert and he can play Lawrence of Arabia with us. He wouldn't see me. He sent a message saying he has a cold. A cold in the middle of summer? Then I went to that sly fox Singer who gave me a garbled answer about being too busy to receive me. The fool still hasn't learned Persian after all these years. If they've tricked us into fighting and looting without keeping their promise, we've shed our brother's blood for nothing. Still, he said he would call.\"\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh tried to signal to him, but since everyone else noticed, she merely said, \"Did you go to them wearing the chador too?\"\n\n\"No, I was wearing the uniform of a Captain Mohammad Kashmiri Kermani. His identity card was in the uniform pocket. First we stripped him down, then we put a bullet through his neck. It was ten against one. Afterwards I went over to Mirza Agha Hennasab's to change into the uniform.\"\n\nSuddenly the children's voices could be heard from the outer courtyard and Zari sighed with relief. Hurriedly she excused herself, saying she must leave, and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, happy to oblige, called out, \"Ferdows, bring my sister's chador! Bring my prayer things too. Make sure your hands are clean.\"\n\n\"Have you heard anything in town about our fighting in the region?\" Sohrab asked.\n\n\"No,\" replied Zari. \"They haven't mentioned it in the newspapers.\"\n\n\"When do they ever write anything in the newspapers? There's been a rumour that the bodies of the officers killed in battle with our tribe are being brought to town for official burial.\" He added, \"But we shouldn't be blamed for the bloodshed, because we only fought for our ideals. After the way the cunning English have treated us the past few days, I felt so guilty about the slaughter that the dead man's uniform seemed to be choking me.\"\n\nFerdows brought the brocade wrapper containing Ameh Khanom's black chador and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's prayer rug. Zari could not help noticing Hamid's expression. When the maid bent over to put the prayer rug before Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, his eyes sparkled as they swept over her body appraisingly. Following his gaze, Zari noticed for the first time the shapeliness of Ferdows's figure. Her legs clad in sheer stockings looked as if they had been chiselled out of fine marble. Her light-blue chiffon chador moved tantalizingly over a flowery crepe de chine dress which barely disguised the firm, well-proportioned curves of her body. It was hard to believe she had had three pregnancies and a miscarriage.\n\nBut Ameh Khanom didn't open the brocade wrapper. \"Khanom Ferdows,\" she said, \"take some food for the children and keep them in the outer courtyard until we come. Tell Bazm Ara to come and take away the brazier.\"\n\nFerdows busied herself piling two small plates with fruit and biscuits, oblivious to what had been going on and not understanding why the mistress was darting such poisonous looks in her direction. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh pushed aside the cotton sheet on which she was sitting and performed a ritual dry ablution with the dust on the carpet. With some difficulty she adjusted the starched headscarf over her head to cover up her gaudy hair for prayer-time. Only her face was now visible. But what a face! She looked as if she had just swallowed some bitter poison. At war even with the deity to whom she was praying, she tugged angrily at the prayer rug as she spread it out, and began her prayers in a seated position.\n\nDeep down, Zari was feeling quite pleased with herself for standing up to the woman. If only Yusef would hurry up and come back! She'd never had so much to tell him. Her experiences at the prison and the asylum were interesting enough, but not for Yusef. Often he would ask her to talk to him and cheer him up, and she had to rack her brains for something comforting or cheerful. It was a long time since she had been able to come up with things like that. She knew her stories had become quite repetitive of late, and Yusef seemed content just to be lulled by her voice. But now Zari had a chance to show her mettle and she couldn't wait to tell him about it.\n\nShe felt sure Ezzat-ud-Dowleh would prolong her communication with heaven just to annoy them, and that they would have to maintain a respectful silence for a while. But Malek Sohrab would soon tire of it and begin to talk. Her curiosity about the fighting had been aroused to such a degree that, if Ezzat-ud-Dowleh didn't actually ask them to leave, she knew she would wait until the whole story was told.\n\nThe black maid reappeared and took away the opium brazier. Zari broke the silence. \"Sohrab Khan, you were telling us about the fighting...\"\n\n\"Actually, I had decided to confess all the details of these recent events so that if I take off to the mountains and become an outlaw against the government, or if I disappear altogether from this place; if my tribal blood gets the better of me and I take my revenge on these foreigners, or even if everything is lost and me with it, my friends should know why I did the things I did. How I wish I had listened to Yusef Khan like my brother did! He knew. He's friends with McMahon. They translate poetry together\u2014poems of a revolutionary poet who's changed all the rules of our verse.\" He shook his head and recited,\" 'where in all the darkness of this black night, should I hang my shabby robe...'\" Suddenly he said, \"But Singer promised us! He told us to attack at Semirom, then at Shiraz, next at Isfahan, and finally Tehran. And what barbarities we committed! I'm the first to admit it\u2014what mistakes our brothers made. What an ugly war it was!\"\n\n\"Brother, maybe I'm the one who's confused,\" said Hamid, \"but I don't understand a word you're saying.\"\n\n\"Mark my words, McMahon must have known their intentions. He's a war correspondent.\"\n\n\"Come now, don't take it too hard. Be grateful you're alive and in one piece. It's all over with now. I think you should smoke some opium and forget about the whole thing. Shall I tell them to prepare it for you?\"\n\n\"I'm not the kind who can drown my sorrows with opium. If I can't atone for my sins, I'll do away with myself. Right now, I'm prepared to do anything.\"\n\nHamid baited him. \"What if the English do call? Then you'd even forget the cardinal sins, wouldn't you?\"\n\nZari thought that this was the only true thing he had said in his life.\n\nSohrab unwittingly confirmed Hamid's intended taunt with his next sentence. \"If they were really going to call, they would have done so by now. They trust you and your mother.\" And he continued, \"You see, the Russians had asked for thirty or forty Iranian soldiers, maybe more... some say they had requested as many as five divisions for logistics service. Soldiers, that is, armed with guns alone to guard ammunition stores and roads, to help with transportation or unloading cargo, admitting patients to rural hospitals, that sort of thing. Although Russia and England are allies for now, the British are obviously very reluctant to allow the formation of a 'communist nucleus', as Yusef Khan calls it, here in Iran amongst its soldiers. So they made excuses about the lack of training of the Iranian army... how worthless they are even in the face of a group of local upstarts. They staged our recent little skirmishes to demonstrate that point to the Russians.\"\n\n\"But if you knew all this, why did you go ahead and fight your own countrymen?\" Ameh asked.\n\nHamid laughed and said, \"My dear aunt, the Qashqai tribe loves to fight. Fighting gives them the same pleasure as hunting.\"\n\nIgnoring Hamid, Sohrab answered Ameh. \"Because I thought it was all rumours. Now I know better. You see, I've only just found out that there was a Russian inspector present at the Khoongah Pass to send back reports about the fighting. But the British were telling us to prepare our crowns as successors to the Achaemenid dynasty. They managed to get weapons to us by whatever means. For instance, twice we were instructed to raid their own shipment by previous arrangement. They had loaded our guns and ammunition in a civilian car and transported them as a shipment of coins from Khuzestan through the foot of the Bakhtiari mountains to the Shahi Bank in Isfahan. They did exactly the same thing during the First World War, only then they used mules. According to what we had been told to do, we ambushed the car, tied up and abandoned the driver and their agent at the roadside. The driver had been waiting for us, since he even signalled with his lights. But we took the car too.\"\n\n\"But I heard that you killed the manager of a bank and stole all the money,\" Zari said. \"Was that the same incident?\"\n\n\"No, that was another time. Well, it takes money to do things like this. Our friends helped too. Hamid and the others got weapons to us...\" Turning to Hamid, he added, \"These last bullets really came in handy, even though you overcharged us... and the revolvers too, although they seem heavier in the heat.\"\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh, whose prayers had come to an abrupt end, turned to Malek Sohrab and said, \"Must you say all this in front of strangers? The fact of the matter is, we've been caught too. They found out about Nana Ferdows. You can't rely on your sister for help... and you can't even trust your very own eyes.\"\n\n\"Who's Nana Ferdows?\" asked Sohrab. \"The mother of this pretty maidservant here?\"\n\nHamid laughed and said, \"She stole your heart, too? When I used to tell my dear mother that this girl literally sends off sparks which go straight to the heart, she wouldn't believe me!\"\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh invoked God's name out loud and hurriedly clapped her hands over her ears. Either she was going to say her evening prayers, or she was paying penance for her previous debts.\n\nSuddenly Sohrab remembered. \"Mirza Agha Hannasab's wife did tell me that one of your people had been caught, but I didn't know her name was Nana Ferdows. She also told me her husband had managed to get away in time. Before we make any other decisions, we must send Mirza Agha's wife and children to him at the tribe. Hamid, go to Singer first thing tomorrow morning or even tonight and tell him that it was while helping to carry out their plans that you were caught. You can tell him from me that they have only twenty-four hours to keep their word. If they don't deliver, they'll be risking their very necks. As God is my witness, I'm going to round up a few of my bravest men, and they know what we can do... to think we've done all these things just to protect their precious oil pipe-lines!\"\n\nZari was beginning to understand. If a crime was committed successfully, then it wasn't such a crime after all, but if it met with failure, it was a sinful thing and had to be paid for. She was about to voice her thoughts, but she stopped herself in time. Who would pay attention to her? Hamid had no interests in life besides women, whisky and pigeons. Sohrab was blind to everything but ambition. And Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was wrestling it out with God that instant. As for Ameh, all she dwelt on was her departure for Karbala or giving up her opium addiction.\n\nSo Zari merely advised, \"Sohrab Khan, it's not too late yet... why don't you go and join Yusef now like your brother Malek Rostam?\"\n\n\"Everyone has a different nature,\" replied Sohrab. \"My brother has a settled farmer's disposition, but I'm a nomad. I don't like being patient and attaching hopes to the distant future. I want to seize the future right now. I want to die in combat, with bullets and axes, not in bed. I want to be the last person to surrender. But not on my own feet. I want them to drag me out and shoot me point blank and chop me up with an axe. I want to stare my executioners in the eye so they can envy me and wonder at my indifference to life or death!\"\n\n\"It's his tribal blood again...\" Hamid said.\n\n\"You were always fearless,\" Zari said, \"even as a child. But you were quite a poet too. I remember for your first wife...\"\n\n\"And what we need now is a fearless poet,\" Sohrab interrupted. Turning to Hamid, he asked, \"I wonder if you've ever gone to Semirom from Shahreza in a south-westerly direction?\"\n\n\"No, but if you remember, once we crossed the north-westerly foot of the Denna Range to Semirom,\" Hamid answered. \"We were going to the wedding of Esfandiar Khan Khashkouli's son. I remember we stopped at the Semiron spring. A strikingly beautiful girl there gave the driver some water from her pitcher and poured some into the car radiator, too. The way she walked, that girl! Tall as a cypress, yet graceful as a deer... she seemed to bless the ground with each delicate footstep...\"\n\n\"Is this the time for that sort of thing?\" Sohrab asked.\n\n\"It's always time for 'that sort of thing'!\" Hamid replied. Then he sighed and turning to Ameh, said, \"My dear aunt, you really should not have sent Ferdows away. Call her. You call her. I'm dying for a glass of gin and lime.\" After a pause, Hamid looked at Sohrab and said, \"You know, brother, your tribal ambitions can only lead you to more trouble and bloodshed. Personally, whatever I do is for money so I can possess the beautiful things of this world: women, wine, the most exquisite Fastoni cloth from Manchester...\"\n\n\"Just a minute!\" Sohrab interrupted, placing a hand on Hamid's knee. \"Isn't that the telephone?\" He stood up. Someone must have answered because the ringing stopped and then Ferdows came into the garden. All eyes were on her. Sohrab was standing expectantly. Ferdows said, \"Khanom Zahra, Khosrow Khan wants to know whether you will be home for dinner or should they go ahead and eat?\"\n\n\"I'll be there right away,\" replied Zari, and turning to Ameh added, \"Would you mind if we go?\"\n\nSohrab sat down again on the edge of the takht and said, \"Those sly foxes are not going to get away with it!\"\n\n\"Now, now! A great man shouldn't bend under a straw,\" said Hamid.\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh shouted, \"Ferdows, bring my sister's chador! Are you deaf?\" She couldn't have dismissed her guests more obviously. Ameh's chador was in front of her in the wrapper.\n\n\"But the night is young,\" said Hamid. \"Why are you going so soon? I know we've depressed you with all our talk about killings and war. Let me tell you the story about Sohrab's famous fox hunt, it'll cheer you up.\"\n\nZari felt too embarrassed to mention that she had already heard the story several times from Malek Sohrab himself. So she waited patiently while Hamid told it with gusto once again.\n\nApparently they had wanted to catch a fox that was attacking Hamid's hens every night, but each time the fox had outwitted them. One winter night they put a dead hen on a mound of snow so that Malek Sohrab could get a good aim at the fox when it climbed to the top of the mound, and shoot it. But the fox, sensing a trap, didn't head straight for the hen. Instead, it burrowed its way through the mound of snow and grabbed the hen from underneath. Of course they only discovered the creature's trick later, when they saw that the fox had disappeared along with the hen.\n\nZari wondered all the way home why Hamid had been so insistent on telling that story. Was he trying to remind Sohrab that he would never succeed in outwitting the clever British foxes? And it occurred to her that while Hamid made every effort to appear the pleasure-loving simpleton, he was in fact a very shrewd and cunning fellow.\n\nWhen they reached home, Zari switched the radio on in the hope of hearing some news of the fighting. But although she kept trying until dinner-time, she was unable to tune into the Persian newscast of Radio Berlin. They had bought the radio recently, but because it was in the parlour where it was usually hot, they didn't listen to it very often. Besides, the set was too heavy to be moved about frequently. When Yusef was in town, he would always go into the parlour at this time regardless of the heat, and play around with the radio, making some earsplitting sounds until finally he managed to find the Berlin station and the voice that carried on a stream of insults at the regime. The voice accused all influential people of being Jews and, as Yusef said, cursed them so whole-heartedly you thought it had a personal grudge against them. In the mornings, Yusef would listen to Shir-Khoda and enjoy his readings from the Shahnameh. On Fridays when Yusef was in the village, Zari tried to engage the twins in listening to Sobhi's stories on the radio. But they were too restless to stay still for half an hour.\n\nThat night after dinner, she tuned in to Iran and the World programme for international and domestic news. There was no mention of an incident in the south. She tried searching the local newspapers, but the most significant items seemed to be the obituaries. She turned to a stack of the newspapers which were sent to them from Tehran and which she collected to take to Khanom Fotouhi every other week. She opened the first newspaper. The Ministry of Provisions will be dissolved', it read. Then another headline: 'Lump sugar and sugar rationing... henceforth the ration for lump and granulated sugar will be as follows: three hundred grams of lump sugar, four hundred grams of granulated sugar\n\nIn the second newspaper there was only one item of news which vaguely interested her: 'The Fars Society will be composed of Fars residents in Tehran', followed by 'Shutdown of _Man_ _of_ _Today_ newspaper' and many more such commonplace articles. But she didn't want to give up. So she continued to search carefully through the papers every day until finally, several days later, she came across a short news item on the third page of a recently published newspaper. It read:\n\n'Reinforcement of the Semirom and Abadeh Garrisons: According to some reports, Boyer-Ahmadi and Qashqai insurgents have raided trucks carrying provisions, ammunition and clothing which were despatched by the army for the Semiron garrison. The garrison itself was attacked on 29 June, and a number of officers and soldiers were killed. The matter is currently under investigation in Tehran, and fortification of the Semirom and Abadeh garrisons is being considered.' \n\n# _16_\n\nWhen Kolu left hospital, he was too weak to be sent back to his village as Zari had vowed. They had shaved off his hair, and hung a copper crucifix around his neck which now seemed barely strong enough to support his head. His eyes were deeply sunk into their sockets, and his legs wobbled. He had been discharged too early, so Zari confined him to bed at home.\n\nKolu kept talking about a bearded man with a long black robe who always carried a book with him, and who wore a 'charm' around his neck like the one he had given Kolu, except that the chain on his was much longer. He had appeared on the day Kolu's Indian neighbour was in the throes of death. He had passed by Kolu's bed, and then Kolu had heard him chanting out loud. Kolu understood neither the bearded man's chanting nor the Indian. Actually, there, no-one understood anyone else's language except\u2014yes, except that woman with the fang-like teeth and the bearded man when he wasn't reciting verses, who both understood Kolu's language.\n\nThe Indian had walked over to Kolu one night, kissing him and crying over him as if Kolu were his own son and had kept repeating \"Sandra! Kitu! Kitu!\" In fact all he could say was Sandra or Kitu. Or did he think Kolu was called Sandra or Kitu? On his last night, Kolu had tiptoed over to him as he lay snoring, and saw the man moving his eyes and jaws in the same way his father had done before he died.\n\nBut the bearded man in black seemed to be living at the hospital because he appeared every day. At first Kolu had thought he was the prophet Hazrate Abol Fazl come to cure the sick. But when his Indian neighbour died, he was sure the man was not the prophet. At any rate, it was he who gave Kolu the 'charm' and told him to kiss it every morning, and then to go and fetch his uncle from the village so that he could get a 'charm' too.\n\nThe man in black had read Kolu three stories from the book he always carried with him. Kolu only liked one of them, the one about a shepherd boy who played the reed, just like Kolu. That boy had been friends with the King's son and had killed a giant with a slingshot. The man in black kept repeating that Jesus was everywhere and he had paid for everybody's sins with his own blood. Then he had taken Kolu by the hand and led him to the house of Jesus, which was just a very big, dark room, and Kolu had been frightened. But no matter how hard Kolu had peered around, he had not found Jesus in the room. The man in black had shown him a picture of their host, and their host's mother. She was holding a baby in her arms and sort of looked like Goldusti, Kolu's aunt.\n\nKolu had really wanted to find Jesus. But when he discovered from the man in black that Jesus was a shepherd too and was looking for his lost lambs, he felt sure Jesus had gone off to the plains and it would take him an age to find those poor creatures!\n\nEarly on Wednesday morning Yusef returned from the village. When Zari heard the knocking, she never imagined it could be her husband at the door. But she remembered that just recently he had gone to great lengths to obtain a night-pass. As she stepped out of the mosquito net to welcome him, she saw him dismount and come towards her. He was not alone. There was a man sitting astride the chestnut horse, his eyes closed. Zari had to rub her eyes to make sure she wasn't dreaming. The man was wearing Yusef's coat over his naked body. At first he appeared to be dead, since they had tied him to the saddle with ropes. But after Gholam and Yusef loosened him and lowered him gently to the ground, it was obvious he wasn't since he opened his eyes and tried to focus with an unseeing look. Blood had clotted on his right temple and his unshaven beard was white with dust. His underpants had dark red stains on them.\n\n\"Is the bathwater hot?\" Yusef asked.\n\n\"No, but we'll soon heat it up,\" replied Zari.\n\nBy the time Gholam was ready to take the stranger to the bath, Yusef had examined his wounds in the changing room, washed them with soap and water, and applied some tincture. The wounds were superficial but the man kept his eyes closed all this time.\n\nWhen they sat down to breakfast on the back verandah, Yusef explained to Zari how he had come across the man at dawn by the stream next to the Zarqan city gates. \"There he lay naked, except for his underwear and a pair of torn socks. At first we thought he was an animal or something. But when I shone my torch, I realized it was a human being who'd probably been robbed by some bandit. I dismounted, and he immediately begged to be taken into town. He said he knew of me and was on his way to our house, but his legs had given way and he'd collapsed on the ground. I told him he could still travel to the house with Seyyid Mohammad, our steward, on the back of his saddle. Then he could leave for town when he felt better. But he kept on insisting that I should take him home myself. He said I would realize later why it was so important to take him to town myself, and that if I didn't want to do it I should just let him lie there until someone else would. Well, since I'd invited a few guests for this morning I agreed to take him. At first he galloped right alongside me. But by the time we got to Baj-Gah, he couldn't even hold the reins anymore and I had to tie him to the saddle. I think he's either very tired or very frightened. We'll be seeing a lot of this sort of thing these days. He kept talking about a truck which caught fire. Maybe he's a truck driver or something.\"\n\nKolu came up to greet the master and kiss his hand. His legs still seemed a little shaky, and Zari was hoping he wouldn't fall. Yusef absently patted him on the head, as if he didn't recognize him.\n\n\"This is Kolu,\" Zari reminded him. \"He's had a narrow brush with the Angel of Death!\"\n\nWhen Kolu left, Yusef said, \"I really didn't know him at first. He's lost so much weight! I guessed this child would catch typhus too because a messenger from Kowar told me all his family had caught it. You were right, Zari. Our shepherd had typhus. It's spread through all the villages in that area. Imagine it\u2014in this heat... The messenger said our village looks abandoned. But the people haven't gone away. They're just lying sick at home. As well as all the other things I have to do, I must get a doctor and medicine to them.\"\n\n\"I doubt if you'll be able to find a doctor,\" Ameh Khanom said.\n\n\"I'll get one of Dr Abdullah Khan's assistants,\" Yusef said. Then turning to Zari he said, \"Go and wake the children, dear, I want to see them. Bring the past two weeks' newspapers for me to read, too.\" As she was getting up to go, Yusef added, \"Zari, we have a few guests today. When they come, don't let anyone disturb us. Tell Gholam to leave the garden gates open. They're coming by car.\"\n\nPassing the pantry, Zari came across Gholam carrying a plateful of fresh pistachios and hazelnuts. The outer green skin of the pistachios had a rosy blush, while the fresh hazelnuts looked like little buds severed from their leaves. Gholam told her he had found them in the mare's saddlebag. She had guessed right away that Yusef was preoccupied, otherwise he would never have returned empty-handed from the village. Each time he would bring her a seasonal offering which, when he handed it to her himself, seemed to evoke the very scents of the village with its harvests, streams and orchards.\n\nShe could hardly wait for Yusef to ask her for news so she could tell him some of the stories she'd been saving up. She noticed that Yusef was cutting sections of the newspapers and putting them aside. Soon he would be coming across the 'Semiron and Abadeh garrison' news, and she hoped he would ask her something about it. But although Yusef saw the news item, he only cut it and put it aside, without asking anything.\n\nOn Yusef's instructions, Gholam took Mina and Marjan for a ride on the mare around the gardens of the Verdy Mosque, with Khosrow following on Sadar. Although Yusef insisted that Kolu should go too, Khosrow refused to make Sahar carry two riders, so Kolu, too weak to walk so far, was told to lie down on Gholam's bed in the stables and not come out unless he was called. Khadijeh was very busy that morning and was quite happy to let Khanom take care of the guests herself. Ameh disappeared into the howzkhaneh where she planned to finish stitching in the rest of her gold dinars inside her one remaining coat. As for the stranger, he was sleeping soundly in the pantry. From time to time, Yusef would look in and listen to the sound of his breathing or would send his wife to check on him. If he woke up, Zari was to give him some food and clothing and send him on his way.\n\nYusef was pacing about anxiously in the garden, glancing towards the gates at the slightest noise. Finally a green car drove up with its headlights on. Obviously the driver had forgotten to switch the lights off, for the sun had outstripped the guests and was already caressing the tree-tops. The car stopped in front of the house by the pool. The driver stepped out, but went back to turn his lights off as soon as he noticed they were on. Zari recognized him. It was Majid Khan, one of her husband's sworn companions in the plan to take over the town's bread supplies. The other passengers were a man and two women with black chadors. Zari recognized the man as Fotouhi because of his resemblance to his sister. The 'women' she recognized as soon as they climbed out of the car to greet her. Malek Rostam and Malek Sohrab were relying more and more on the protection of the veil these days.\n\nIt looked as if they all had some important business in hand. As Zari was bringing them some tea in the parlour, she heard them shouting at each other, and she could tell from their expressions while she served them that they were not going to come to an agreement soon, either. At first all five of them paused while they took their tea pensively and without thanking her. Sohrab and Rostam had thrown off their chadors in a bundle at their feet. She picked up the garments and began to fold them with deliberation so as to listen to their talk, putting the chadors on one of the seats. Sohrab was saying, \"Khanom Zahra was a witness. She knows what I went through that night. The massacre has turned into a real nightmare for me. Now I'm ready for anything. I'll pay for the blood we shed with my own blood. Isn't that enough? I'm prepared to go on a suicide mission and destroy one of their oil docks\u2014I'll swallow gunpowder and blow myself up with gasoline next to it. I'm not afraid of death. I'm just afraid of our plan failing. Yusef Khan, why don't you devise a plan that has at least a thirty percent chance of succeeding...\"\n\nTurning to his wife, Yusef said, \"Zari, will you look in on our new guest?\"\n\nZari realized she was being politely dismissed, even though she very much wanted to stay. She went out, but stood behind the door to listen. Malek Sohrab's voice could be heard pleading, \"My uncle is still hopeful. I'm even willing to trick him into giving us at least two hundred guns. But you, Fotouhi, you insulted me. You're just as dependent on others yourself. Otherwise why would you be so concerned about how they're getting on in Stalingrad and whether or not the Russians have received weapons?\"\n\nZari felt discouraged. With three children on her hands and one more on the way, what part could she possibly have in these schemes to be standing there, eavesdropping? The children had barely been gone an hour, and she was already worried about whether they had fallen off the mare, or whether they were getting sunstroke despite the shady paths of the Verdy Mosque gardens.\n\nWhile preparing the hookah for Yusef, she reflected that, regardless of her courage or cowardice, both her upbringing and her life-style made it impossible for her to participate in anything that would jeopardize life as she knew it. One had to be prepared, physically and mentally, for any action which smelled of danger. And she was ready only for those things which ran contrary to danger. She had neither the courage nor the endurance required. It might be different if she were not so attached to her husband and children. On the one hand were Yusef's caresses, the words and the loving looks; on the other, witnessing the miracle of her children... no, a person like that could never take risks. True, she turned the treadwheel of her household, endlessly, every day; and it was no less true that from morning to night she laboured like Hossein Kazerouni with her feet and did nothing for herself with her 'free' hands\u2014where had she read that \"hands were the means to all other means\"? But the smile, the look, the voice and feel of the people she loved was her reward. Each new tooth her children had, every new curl on their little heads, their voices chirping like birds, fashioning words which then trailed each other randomly into sentences; their angelic sleep, and the softness of their skin alone\u2014all these had been her gratification. No, there was really nothing she could do. Her only act of courage would be not to hinder others who wished to be brave, and allow them to accomplish things with their free minds and hands\u2014their means to all other means.\n\nIf only the world were run by women, Zari mused, women who have given birth and cherish that which they've created. Women who value patience, forbearance, the daily grind; who know what it is to do nothing for oneself... Perhaps men risked everything in order to feel as if they have created something, because in reality they are unable to create life. If the world were run by women, Zari wondered, would there be any wars? And if one loses the blessings one has, what then?\n\nShe remembered the time when Abol-Ghassem Khan first bought a car and they all went on a hunting trip. It was before the war, and the two brothers had not fallen out yet, although Abol-Ghassem Khan occasionally complained about Yusef's methods of management  as a landlord and that he let his peasants get away with too much. The driver accidentally ran into a fawn. The poor creature lay there like a pile of broken bones. They stopped and got out to drag that wretched pile to the side of the road. Suddenly the mother appeared with another fawn at her heels. She circled her dead baby several times and then rammed herself against the car, unaware that it was made of metal. She kept charging at Abol-Ghassem Khan and Yusef and Zari, dazed and confused, staggering about on those long hind legs and appealing to each one of them with her large, dark-rimmed eyes, as if to ask, \"But why? Why?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan began to cry. The game had walked up to them on its own feet. But they turned back.\n\nZari put the glowing coals on the hookah, and took a puff herself before taking it into the parlour. On the way she looked in on the stranger, who seemed to be sobbing in his sleep. She thought of waking him, but decided against it. He was a well-built man.\n\nIn the parlour the argument was still raging. From outside she could hear Sohrab urging Yusef, \"Now that I know what's going on and have decided what to do about it, why do you want to stop the others from helping me? Are you saying I'm ambitious and dangerous and you'd hate to see me succeed?\"\n\nZari entered the room and placed the hookah in front of her husband. The air in the parlour was hot and stifling with all the doors shut, and she could see the sweat-beads on the men's foreheads. Majid had removed his coat and opened his shirt collar. She went to the cupboard and took out some fans which she placed on the table in the middle of the room. Then she took out some side-plates and knives and forks and set them noiselessly on the table.\n\n\"I'll be the only one facing danger in this plan,\" Sohrab continued. \"I know my death will be just one step away. But if I don't do it, the nightmare of our massacre will drive me mad. You say this plan is yet another kind of show... my dear fellow, don't you see I'll be courting death of my own free will?\" He put a hand to his eyes and suddenly wept. Zari stared at him in amazement and offered him a fan which she put on his lap. Sohrab quickly composed himself and smiled at Zari, saying, \"Otherwise I'd have to wait for you every Thursday to bring me bread and dates in the asylum!\" Turning to the others, he added, \"Khanom Zahra is like my own sister. I revealed my plans to her before I told any of you. Unfortunately, apart from her and her sister-in-law, some undesirable people also heard. Still it's too late for all that now. Even if you don't help me, I'll go ahead and do it. My brother will have to provide me with gunmen, and Yusef Khan must give us provisions. I myself have thirty reliable men who are willing to risk their lives.\"\n\nStrangely enough, the two water-melons which Zari had just cut open were both yellow and unripe. She took this as a bad omen. The third water-melon wasn't too bad, and she was about to cut each slice in a zig-zag pattern when she decided that her guests were too preoccupied to notice. She placed the dish of melon slices next to the map of Iran which they had spread out on the table. They were all bending over it now and Malek Sohrab put his finger at a particular spot on the map.\n\n\"If we can reach Yasuj,\" he explained, \"it's not too far to Basht. Then we can go on to Gachsaran...\"\n\n\"It'll take a long time to get the locals on our side,\" Yusef said, \"but we have no choice. This is just a first step. Meanwhile Mr Fotouhi has to create some internal diversions...\" Then turning to Zari, he said, \"Please don't make so much noise.\" Zari realized she was being asked to leave again. As she was going out, she heard Majid's voice, \"I doubt, Fotouhi, if your army of comrades will approve of such a plan. If you agree to it yourself, that's a different thing.\"\n\nOn Yusef's instructions, she set the table for lunch in the parlour. They had all removed their coats and ties and were using their fans by now.\n\nAt lunch, Yusef asked for wine, and Zari brought out two bottles of red from the cupboard. She imagined they must have reached some sort of an agreement to be asking for wine in the mid-day heat. As she was pulling on the cork, half of it broke off and the other half fell into the bottle as a result of the pressure. Yusef must have been watching her since he told her not to worry and that the cork must have been rotten. She poured wine for everybody, and they all drank her health. But she could only think to herself, \"What use is health alone?\"\n\nThey were talking and joking together, ignoring her presence, her sole function being to pass the salt here, fill a glass there or make sure Majid got the giblets which she knew he liked best.\n\n\"It would've been easier for our fathers,\" said Yusef, \"but if we don't take action, it will be harder for our sons. Our fathers had to face one usurper who became Shah and unfortunately they gave in to him, so that now we have to face two usurpers. Tomorrow there will a third, and before we know it, even more the day after that... and they'll all be guests at this table...\"\n\n\"If we achieve nothing more than showing the way to our children, we will have done enough,\" Malek Rostam said.\n\n\"Even if it's me against a whole army, I won't show them my back...\" put in Malek Sohrab.\n\n\"And for thousands of years, everyone's blood will rise in our revenge, brother!\" Malek Rostam said, and added, draining his glass, \"To the blood of Siavush!\"\n\nYusef held out his glass to be filled, but Zari was seized with such fear of the things they were saying that the pitcher slipped from her hand and broke to pieces on the floor. As she bent over to clear away the glass, she felt her throat constrict from the tears she struggled to hold back.\n\n\"Oh Lord, what kind of men are these who know what they're doing is no use, but just to prove their existence and their manhood, and just so their children won't spit on their graves, go ahead and actually dig them\u2014God forbid\u2014with their own hands...\" She bit her lip.\n\nAnd what odd things women remember at the strangest moments, Zari thought, as her mind jumped back to one night when Yusef had sighed in his sleep, and she had woken up and put on the bedside lamp, only to gaze for the longest time at the soft down on his earlobe which had looked just like pink velvet brushed the wrong way...\n\nThe stranger slept until sunset, then came out into the garden wearing Yusef's pyjamas which they had given him that morning. He sat by the pool and washed his face, and then watched Majid and Yusef playing backgammon. The other guests had left earlier that afternoon despite the heat. It was obvious from the man's demeanour, his easy movements and his comments on the backgammon game, that he was no truck driver.\n\nKhadijeh brought him some food. He ate voraciously. By the time Zari brought him the spirits he had asked for, he had already finished his meal.\n\nThe stranger stood up and looked at the garden, saying, \"You have a nice life. But it's a pity you don't have any children. There should be at least ten or twelve of them running about in this garden.\"\n\n\"Do you have any children?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"I have two sons,\" the man sighed.\n\nIt was a long time before the man got round to talking about himself, confessing that he was a lieutenant in the army. Only slowly did he warm up to his tale of the events that had befallen him. In the middle of his story, the twins arrived. The man fell silent and looked at them with envy. Yusef kissed the children and ordered Khadijeh to take them to Ameh on the roof terrace, but to watch out that they didn't fall or touch the hot coals in the brazier. The man took up his tale again, by now more involved than his audience, and then finally became so engrossed that by the time Khosrow and Hormoz arrived, he barely replied to their greeting. \n\n# _17_\n\nI was the commander of a motorized convoy travelling from Shiraz to Abadeh. All in all, we had fourteen yellow provision trucks, forty-five soldiers and five non-commissioned officers for guarding the trucks. A third-lieutenant, just out of the academy, was my immediate subordinate. He was young\u2014no more than nineteen or twenty years old. We were carrying provisions in three of the trucks, and soldiers' uniforms, gasoline, and weapons in the others. We also had an ambulance. I had verbal orders to lead the convoy to Abadeh and wait there\u2014no one had given me any written instructions. In Abadeh I received a telegram telling me to clear the needs of the Isfahan division and then proceed to Tehran.\n\nAmong my men was a fellow called Rezvani-Nejad who had accompanied me on several other missions and whom I knew well. The poor man had fourteen mouths to feed, including his parents who were blind. His brother was with us too. Both of them were warrant officers.\n\nWe spent the night at Abadeh. Late at night when we were returning from a good time out on the town, I saw a light in one of the trucks, I got in and saw Rezvani-Nejad and his brother having a little tea and dry bread. I felt sorry for them. I gave them permission to go out together and have rice and kebab at the local inn. I told them they could get the best spirits there\u2014so pure you could set fire to it. But the man said, \"Sir, don't you think we'd thought of having a drink ourselves? We would have liked to have had a good time too. But we took on this mission just to earn a two-hundred toman bonus for our children, and take it home to them.\"\n\nIn the morning we started off again, and stopped on the banks of a river by noon. We were supposed to wait there for a tank. When I got out of the truck I noticed a few tribesmen nearby. They were wearing their felt hats and cloaks. Their unsaddled horses were being watered on the other bank of the river. As soon as one of them saw us, he jumped on his horse and galloped off in the direction of the mountains. We went to a nearby orchard to eat our lunch. A few more tribesmen were there with their felt hats, but these men were wearing thin cloaks. We didn't realize they were spies. We only found that out from the tank commander. When he arrived, he told us to get into battle-formation since we would be passing through a gorge surrounded by tribesmen. Up until then we had all imagined we were on a simple mission of delivering provisions, weapons and gasoline to the Semirom garrison and returning home safe and sound.\n\nI said to the tank commander, \"But my friend, we have only a handful of men! How can we possibly traverse a route surrounded by tribesmen?\"\n\n\"They won't attack in daylight, and that's when we'll be passing through. If we start off right now, we'll reach the garrison by late afternoon. We'll return then if we can, and if we can't, we'll just spend the night at the garrison and come back first thing in the morning.\"\n\nSo we started out. But we had no sooner taken the first bend to the left, than we realized the road had been sabotaged. Every twenty metres or so the trucks either fell into potholes and stalled, or else they got stuck in deep puddles. We weren't even doing five kilometres an hour. We didn't turn the headlights on and the trucks followed each other closely. Later we found out that the man responsible for planning the road obstructions had been one of our own officers. Sentenced to death by the government, he had deserted and taken refuge with the tribe. He had even drawn up their general strategy and combat-formation.\n\nEventually the tank engine overheated and after a few yards, it stalled. It was getting dark and we could see scattered bonfires high up on the mountain. Obviously they were Qashqai and Boyer Ahmadi entrenchments. We had just reached the Khorus Galoo Pass, and they were high up on either side of us, but they were leaving us alone for the time being. They only made shrill, frightening noises like a war cry.\n\nWe decided to open the hood of the tank to let it cool down. But as soon as we did, we realized the pump had sustained several holes. The decision was to repair it by the light of a lantern, so while this was being done, I gathered up the men to dig trenches around the trucks as a precaution, with some of the soldiers on guard and others patrolling. I told everyone that we neither had the right nor the possibility of turning back.\n\nAll our truck-drivers were sergeants. The senior sergeant came over and told me the soldiers were new conscripts and had no combat experience. I ordered him to distribute their weapons among the officers and sergeants. Each of us received one rifle and fifteen bullets. We left three light machine-guns to guard the tank: two on either side, and one at the rear.\n\nWe spread out in the individual trenches which the soldiers had dug, cocked our weapons and sat ready for the attack. I had a revolver hidden under my tunic. We had no food or water, the weather was very cold, and we could neither turn back nor advance. The tank commander and a few others were working on the pump, but they never managed to repair it. Meanwhile the tribesmen kept up their shrill cries until ten o'clock that night. But they were still leaving us alone. When the tank commander\u2014he was a lieutenant like me\u2014gave up on the pump, he became so frightened he got the runs.\n\n\"There must be two thousand of them!\" he said. \"A thousand Qashqais on this side of the Khorus Galoo and a thousand Boyer Ahmadis on the other. They're going to tear us into pieces! If only we could leave the tank...\"\n\nI didn't let him finish his sentence. \"You're ruining everyone's morale,\" I said. \"Get inside the tank for now and keep the hatch shut.\"\n\nIt was well after ten, and darkness engulfed us. There was no light, no moon, no lamps. We didn't dare strike a match. All we could see were their bonfires, dotting both sides of the mountain. I ordered the sergeants not to waste any bullets but to wait until their target came well into range. Maybe help would arrive in time from Semirom or Shahreza. When the tank commander had first joined us, he'd talked of another mobilized convoy leaving from Shahr Kurd for Shahreza.\n\nIt must have been after eleven when, from behind us, I heard the sound of horses trotting. There must have been ten or twelve riders. The senior sergeant said, \"Sir, here they are!\" From the sound of the horses, I estimated them to be about thirty metres away. \"Here they come!\" said the sergeant manning the machine-gun at the rear of the convoy. The darkness was vast, and so was the silence. They had come to test us\u2014to see if we were awake. Three or four of them let out a whooping cry as they fired a few shots that rang against the metal of the trucks. Our machine-gun fire drove them away.\n\nBy dawn I could see some horsemen appearing and disappearing on the skyline. Suddenly they started down the mountain. The soil inside the trenches still felt cold from the morning air. Shots rang out against the body of the trucks. I ordered the men not to fire back. \"Shoot only when they're all the way down the slopes,\" I told them.\n\nThe sergeant who drove the last truck was an old man. Suddenly he cried out and fell. I rushed to his side. An Isfahani sergeant called to me, \"Sir! Get down! Lie flat! They're still shooting!\" I dragged the old man towards the ambulance and stretched him out on the bed inside, hoping for the best. Three minutes later, another soldier was wounded in the shoulder, and then another in the stomach and in the thigh... the men dragged those two to the ambulance and stretched them out on the beds as well. There were only three beds in the ambulance\u2014it was one of those old brown Fords with the lion and sun emblem on it.\n\nThe tribesmen crawled and slid down the mountainside. They took up positions behind the brick wall of a garden about a hundred and fifty metres from our trenches. We in turn opened fire as soon as they came within range. One Turkoman sergeant who drove the first truck volunteered to take a short-cut up to the top of the mountain and check out the enemy's situation. I refused permission because it was too light. It must have been seven, seven-thirty in the morning.\n\nFrom the top of the mountain came the sound of about sixty or seventy of them whooping and chanting: \"Army men, weapons down! Hands up! Army men, weapons down, hands up!\"\n\n\"They can go to the devil!\" I said. \"We will not surrender.\" By around nine-thirty, twelve of our men had been wounded. We heard the shrill cries again, followed by \"Attack!\" and then they swarmed down the mountain. We jumped into our trucks, and two of the drivers desperately tried to turn round. There was no other choice. The tank had to be abandoned so we could at least try to save the trucks carrying fuel and weapons. I'm ashamed to say that we had to leave the wounded behind, even though some of them were crying out...\n\nThey charged. There were about a thousand, maybe more, of them. The Turkoman driver managed to slip out from behind the steering wheel in the nick of time, but the driver of the truck in front was shot so our way was blocked. We were forced to get out then. The tribesmen were crawling forwards on their bellies, firing away all the time. I had only one bullet left. Now they were just ten steps away. Rezvani-Nejad raised his head to shoot, and fell. He cried out, \"Khandan!\" as he rolled to the ground. I imagine it was his child's name. The poor man had fourteen mouths to feed. The bullet had blown his brains out\u2014I saw the white of his brain with my own eyes. His brother ran to help him, but they shot him too. The bullets seemed to nail the two brothers together. I kneeled and aimed with my one remaining bullet at the man who had killed them. I got him in the middle of the chest. His friend ran to him, wailing, \"Did he hurt you, Zargham?\"\n\nI crawled underneath the weapons truck, and gradually managed to pull myself into one of the trenches. The sergeant inside the trench was dead. I stretched myself out on top of the dead man like another bloodied corpse. The Boyer Ahmadis were coming at us at a gallop, and once or twice they jumped over my head, covering me with dust. Then the looting began. First they took our weapons, and then I could hear their women ululating and repeating the shrill war-cry. I heard that chant so many times, I learned it by heart:\n\n\"Up the pass, down the pass, there's a camp, Sohrab Khan, look ahead, look ahead, how many thousand are there?\"\n\nAnd:\n\n\"Drunken drunken through and through\n\nI hold the army in my hand.\n\nDrunken drunken through and through\n\nI hold a rifle in my hand.\"\n\nA Qashqai loomed over my head and dug his heel into my shoulder. \"You dog, you're alive! Get up, I saw you lie down. Give us the new gun, get up, get up!\" A short, dark Boyer Ahmadi arrived just then. As I handed my gun to the Qashqai, the two men began to fight each other for it until the Boyer Ahmadi killed the Qashqai and grabbed the gun. Again I stretched out on top of the dead man in the trench, close to passing out from thirst and fatigue, and trembling with anger. By this time the Qashqai and Boyer Ahmadi women had arrived and were throwing out the sacks of provisions from the trucks. They tore them open and poured the tea, sugar and rice, beans and peas into their own sacks. I saw a Boyer Ahmadi take the gun belonging to the third-lieutenant, the one who had just graduated from the academy, and make him undress. Stark naked. The boy grabbed a piece of canvas to cover his genitals, but one of the women immediately snatched the rag from him and used it to collect some onions. Finally the women and children of the nearby village arrived on donkeys and filled their saddlebags with whatever remained.\n\nWe had left three wounded sergeants in the ambulance which was clearly marked with the lion and sun emblem. But they didn't realize, and set the ambulance on fire. You could smell the burnt flesh for a long time. And then they set the fuel truck on fire.\n\nAgain a Qashqai came along to where I was lying and kicked me in the shoulder, saying, \"Get up! Take off your jacket!\" I gathered all my strength and threw him bodily on to the burning fuel truck. But almost immediately another rider came towards me. He was a thin, dark man, carrying a baton spiked with a knife. His gun was fastened to his belt. He too, wanted my uniform. He said he wouldn't kill me so the clothes wouldn't be bloodied. He took my uniform and gold medals and army boots. Then he ripped off my watch with his knife, and with the same knife cut loose the revolver at my waist. Finally, the tribesmen drove away in the two undamaged trucks which contained military uniforms and ammunition. Later I heard they used those uniforms as disguise for a surprise attack on the Semirom garrison.\n\nI ran off in the direction of the mountains. On the way, I heard a moaning in the distance. I decided I'd find the person and steal his clothes. It turned out to be one of our own sergeant-drivers. He was spattered with blood. I asked if he was shot, and he said he'd managed to escape in time by giving up his gun. \"Get up and come with me, then,\" I told him. He pleaded, \"Captain, I beg you, my suitcase, my souvenirs from Shiraz...\" I interrupted him, \"From now on, we're equals.\" And we started up the mountain. We passed the tribesmen's entrenchments, made of white stone and each taking four people, but now littered with empty cartridge shells.\n\nWe were heading towards Abadeh by way of a side-track, and we had just passed the mountain ridge when we noticed a Qashqai rider approaching us at a gallop. We threw ourselves on the ground beneath a bush. Before long he was standing over our heads and saying, \"Hey you army dogs! Get up! I saw you.\" Eyeing the sergeant he said, \"Is it you, Mirza Hassan, you bastard? Where's your gun?\" The sergeant sat up, and started to undress of his own accord. Standing in nothing but his underwear, he took off his army boots and handed everything in a neat bundle to the Qashqai.\n\n\"How fat you've become, Mirza Hassan, you bastard!\" said the Qashqai.\n\n\"You'll be wasting two bullets if you kill us,\" I told him. \"Don't shoot us. On the other side of the mountain they're looting truck-loads of goods\u2014rice, chick peas, beans, lump sugar, tea, onions, oil, military uniforms, ammunition and guns. If you hurry you'll get there in time.\"\n\n\"Is he telling the truth, Mirza Hassan?\" he asked the sergeant.\n\n\"Yes, brother.\"\n\nThe Qashqai took out a pair of delicate women's slippers from his saddlebag and said, \"This piece of softskin is for you, Mirza Hassan.\"\n\n\"Keep them, I can't use them. Give them to Sister Golabtoon and greet her for me.\"\n\n\"I'm taking a flowery tunic for Golabtoon. And a gold necklace and mirrors, I don't need these.\"\n\n\"Then hurry so you can take her some provisions too,\" I said to the tribesman.\n\nWhen he had left, I asked the sergeant, \"Are you related?\"\n\n\"Yes, we're cousins. But my name isn't Mirza Hassan. That's the name they give to thieves.\"\n\nBy then I think it was almost two o'clock in the afternoon. A government airplane buzzed over our heads and circled around the remains of the convoy. There were a few retaliating shots from the Qashqais and Boyer Ahmadis, and then it roared away again. So much for aerial military reinforcement!\n\nNow the two of us were left thirsty, hungry and barefoot, wearing nothing but underwear, and holding on to a pair of women's delicate sandals which didn't fit either of us. We made our way down the ridge of the mountain until we reached the valley where we found a spring and washed our faces in its muddy water. The sergeant announced that he couldn't go on anymore and lay down wearily right there. \"As you like,\" I told him. \"I'm carrying on without you.\" But I walked on very slowly. I hadn't gone a hundred metres before I heard him call me. \"Captain,\" he said, as he caught up with me, \"I wanted to go to sister Golabtoon's tent. It isn't too far from here. But to tell you the truth I felt too ashamed.\" I didn't say a word. Soon we had left the valley and we could see several villages ahead of us, with crowds of people milling about.\n\nWe caught up with an old man, a pedlar, following a child riding a donkey. He had a small piece of bread, and gave us half of it, but no water. We said we were truck drivers, that bandits had raided us and had set our trucks on fire. He told us that the river was only a kilometre away but that we should be careful because the Qashqais and Boyer Ahmadis had taken to the mountains, and had been fighting government men on the other side.\n\nIt was early evening when we reached the river and drank some water. I told the sergeant not to drink too much because he would get bloated. We rested for about ten minutes, and then waded across the river. On the other bank we saw two Boyer Ahmadis sitting around a fire, having some tea. They asked us who we were and where we were going. We told them the Qashqais had robbed us and that we were truck drivers. The sergeant asked one of them who was smoking a pipe to give him a puff. When we gave the pipe back to him there was nothing left in it, and the man dumped it on the ground. He gave us a drink from his water-skin, and then sent us on our way.\n\nWe joined a few peasants headed towards the village. Again, we were asked who we were, and again we told them we were truck drivers. After a long trek, we finally reached Abadeh at eight o'clock in the evening. We found the police-sergeant who'd been left in charge of the garrison. He told us the deputy chief was at the teahouse, but the garrison chief himself had gone to Shiraz. We were taken to the deputy chief at the teahouse, and I told him how they had set up a fine trap for us\u2014looting, killing and burning as they went. We had some sweetened tea before going to the garrison. There the deputy chief called his assistant and said, \"This is the lieutenant. Come and listen to what he has to say. It's not as simple as we were told\u2014it was worse than Judgement Day! Their soldiers didn't even know how to shoot, and they were crying from fear in front of their lieutenant.\" Then turning to me, he said, \"When your convoy left Abadeh I was relieved, thinking that the poor colonel at Semirom won't be begging for help behind his wireless anymore. You'd be taking them reinforcements. But now... God help them!\"\n\nHe instructed his assistant to bolt the tower door, issued orders for protective measures, and went behind the wireless himself to report the situation to the gendarmerie and ask for help. He was quite sure they would be attacked that night. They did their best to find some us clothes from here and there, and then scraped together some money to give us. Those old clothes and shoes felt like a great blessing to us. The deputy chief said, \"Wash yourselves and then go to the village headman's house for the night, but whatever you do, don't tell them you're officers. If they find out, they'll kill you before morning.\" A gendarme accompanied us, past the local sheep-fold, to the headman's house. The headman, who had a red beard, came out of his room and led us to a bare, mud-built room. He took two old quilts from the top of a wooden chest in the corner of the room and spread them on the floor. He asked us if we'd eaten and we said no. So his daughter brought us some dirty-looking milk in a black bowl, and two loaves of brown bread which she took out from the wooden chest that was kept under lock and key. We slept like logs till the morning. They never found out we were officers. In the morning they gave us more brown bread and hot tea before sending us back to the deputy chief at the garrison. He was even kinder than the night before, allowing us to wait around until noon while he tried to get me permission to go back to Tehran. By then, five more people, wounded and half-naked, had straggled into the garrison at Abadeh with the aid of some peasants. They were patrols from the Semirom garrison. They told us that the real battle had begun only yesterday evening.\n\nFinally the deputy chief managed to contact the gendarmerie. He was instructed to help us out, but we were all to return immediately to Shiraz. The deputy chief agreed to find us two or three donkeys so we could head off to Deh Bid, hitching a ride as soon as we found a car that would take us. We treated the wounds of the injured as much as we could, and the deputy chief found some civilian clothes for us to wear. He also gave me eighty tomans. Meanwhile our Turkoman driver showed up, riding a Qashqai mare. He was the only one to have escaped safe and sound. Apparently a Qashqai had taken his gun, then left his horse in his care to go off looting. As soon as the Qashqai's back was turned, the driver had jumped on the mare and galloped straight to Abadeh. He had spent the night in a safe place, and been given rice and stew and a yoghurt drink. He'd even gone to the baths in the morning and been regaled with a massage and refreshments.\n\nThe injured rode on the donkeys while we followed on foot, taking turns on the Qashqai mare which the Turkoman driver had brought us like an unexpected blessing. We had some bread and cheese and a jug of water with us, and managed to reach Deh Bid by ten o'clock that night. At the town gate, we came across an officer with a riding crop and high boots. I looked him over and told him I was an officer too. His crop, shiny boots and officer's uniform were all brand new. I told him briefly what had happened to us and asked him for a car to take us to Shiraz. He said, \"The whole area has been taken over by bandits. No cars can pass through.\" He took us to the gendarmerie, where their chief welcomed us and said he'd been expecting us since he'd had news from Abadeh. They served us roast chicken, yoghurt with cucumber, and spirits to drink. We had just sat down to our meal, and the chief had gone to use the wireless, when the tribesmen arrived. But this time they weren't Qashqais or Boyer Ahmadis, they were Doshman Ziaris. The chief was shot right there behind his wireless. If looting and raiding was profitable for two tribes, why not for a third too?\n\nI haven't seen the others since then. I managed to escape on my own from the back of the garrison tower, running down the mountainside until I reached an open field. After a while I came to a walnut tree, and I wanted to lie down right there to sleep, but it was cold and dark, and I could hear shooting going on all around me, so I decided to pace about or jog to keep awake. There was no moonlight, no stars, no lamp. I didn't have any matches, but I had the eighty tomans that the deputy chief had given me. If I'd had matches, I would have made a fire with the bills and gone to sleep next to it.\n\nIn the morning two shepherds came along with their flock. I greeted them and told them I was a truck driver, I'd been robbed and I was hungry. The shepherds made a fire and one of them milked a sheep and gave me the milk in a dirty bowl. His son, a seven-or eight-year-old, showed up just then holding a loaf of bread. He told his father, \"I ran all the way. It's still piping hot!\" He was right, the brown bread was still warm. Suddenly we heard shots being fired and a bullet pierced the milk bowl. It was the tribesmen from the night before. Some of them went for the sheep which they herded off, shooting the two sheep dogs on their way down the mountain. A few others came towards us and tied us up, though they left the child alone. They made us walk ahead of them all the way to their tents. The tribal chief was sitting on a chair in front of his tent.\n\nOn the way, I had whispered to the shepherd boy to throw himself, on our arrival, at the chieftain's feet and beg him on the life of his children to spare his father and uncles. I told him I'd give him a reward when they freed us. The boy did as he was told, and the tribesmen spared our lives, but we were held for six days and then they stripped us naked before letting us go. They had taken my eighty tomans the very first day, and again I found myself trudging along, on and on, until I managed to reach Zarqan, where you found me.\n\nJust imagine what happened to those poor bastards in Semirom! That's where the real massacre took place\u2014at the garrison and on the Semirom plain. Those patrol soldiers whom we bandaged at Abadeh, told us that they'd had only one day's ration for four days. I knew they weren't equipped to put up any kind of resistance for long. They had guns, but no bullets. And of course we never managed to get any to them. The same officer at the Deh Bid gate with the riding crop and the boots, told me that the Boyer Ahmadis and the Qashqais had sent a letter to the colonel at Semirom saying he'd been sentenced to death and that he should surrender. The colonel had written back that he would sooner die than do such a thing. The poor colonel had given up on the Isfahan division, and had resorted to the Abadeh garrison. Now the Semirom wireless was dead.\n\nOne of the fellows from Semirom, whose arm injury I treated myself, told me on the way to Deh Bid that they'd seen the approach of the tribesmen through their binoculars, spotting three mules carrying machine guns. I asked him whether he'd seen the military tank they'd stolen from us. He said, \"They'd set the tank on fire, and we could see it burning as we ran away. We warned our poor colonel of their approach. He first made us pitch tents on four sides of the stream, so we wouldn't be hard up for water. Then we dug trenches all around the tents. He'd planned a circular defence, you see. The poor man kept urging us to resist. He believed we could mow them down with the crack of our machine-gun fire. He was certain help was on its way since the Abadeh wireless had said that the convoy had set off in our direction. To those of us on patrol, he promised a good reward for sighting the first vehicles of the convoy. He said to us, These people have no heavy arms and their firing range isn't more than four hundred metres.' When we told him the tribesmen were advancing with three machine guns on their mules, he paled. He realized then that the reinforcement convoy had been attacked. As soon as he lost all hope of your arrival, he was forced to change his defence tactics. Guessing that they would probably approach by way of a back-road following the Khorus Galoo Pass, he ordered combat formation, with the soldiers taking up positions on top of two high promontories on either side of the back-road. But those poor soldiers only had one bullet each. On the promontories there was a half-decayed brush made up of thorn-bushes, almond and lotus trees. The soldiers lay in ambush under this shelter. At the foot of the hills, we rapidly set up first-aid and food tents. But what food and what first aid! One day's ration for four!\"\n\nThe fellow from Semirom described the attack for me. He said the tribesmen charged from three sides, with a blare of trumpets and drums which echoed awesomely in the mountains. The Boyer Ahmadis had headed down from the north-eastern parts of Semirom, while the Qashqais charged from the north-west, with another group descending from the heights of the Denna mountains. They had approached through the orchards and vineyards, gradually tightening their circle. \"A mounted captain, the first lieutenant of the artillery, and some other non-commissioned officers as well as myself, had gone inside the Semirom garrison tower to dissuade the colonel from fighting back. We wanted him to put up the white flag. But the colonel was obstinate. He just sat behind his desk, hand under his chin, and after hearing us out, merely shook his head and asked if anyone had a cigarette. The captain begged him, 'This isn't a battle anymore; we're just waiting to be butchered.'\n\n\"'Maybe help will arrive at the last minute,' the colonel had said sadly.\n\n\"'But sir, you've been trying for ten days behind that wireless\u2014where on earth can the reinforcements be? Why are you putting up such a brave front and getting us all killed in the process? For whom?'\n\n\"'I'm not forcing you to stay. I'm staying myself. But you must forget about the white flag.'\"\n\nNo sooner had those men come out of the garrison tower than the shooting began. One of them, the same fellow who told me all this, was wounded in the arm. He tied a handkerchief around the wound and managed to get himself to the village of Semirom. There he was told by the villagers that groups of Qashqais and Boyer Ahmadis were turning up all the time, picking up military uniforms. Apparently, the plan was for the disguised tribesmen to penetrate right into the garrison and mingle with the soldiers, who probably rejoiced for one short instant that the long-awaited help had finally arrived!\n\nWhen the lieutenant's story was finished, Majid stood up, yawned and said, \"What a small world it is!\"\n\n\"There is no escaping one's deeds...\" Zari said pensively.\n\n\"My dear, you're beginning to understand quite a lot of things, aren't you?\" Yusef observed with a laugh.\n\nThe next day, the stranger, who was no longer a stranger, left for the army headquarters, wearing Yusef's ill-fitting clothes. They heard no more of him until a week later, when his letter arrived from Tehran thanking them and telling of his forthcoming court-martial. There was a whole file of trumped-up charges against him and, he said, it was not unlike the story of the famous coppersmith in Shushtar having to pay penance for the crimes of the infamous blacksmith in Balkh. He was resolved to resign from the army and go to Switzerland by whatever means, with his wife and two sons. But he made no mention of the two hundred tomans he had borrowed from Yusef. \n\n# _18_\n\nOn Thursday afternoon Zari went to the asylum. The warden was not there, so she set out on her rounds with the head nurse. She knew Khanom Fotouhi would be angry when she saw that parts of the newspapers had been cut out. In the women's ward, only the paralysed woman, who hugged her givehs every night, and Khanom Fotouhi remained out of all the others. But there was no shortage of new patients. Four strangers were sitting on the other beds, and a folding screen hid another newcomer. In the middle of the room three patients sat around on a straw mat, playing a children's game called \"Away flies the crow\". As soon as Zari walked in, one of them said, \"Away fly the bread and dates!\" Zari smiled at them. Fortunately she had brought bread and fruit which Gholam placed on the floor. One of the women said, \"Away flies the princess!\" Then they started to fight amongst themselves and played another game.\n\nThe head nurse didn't let her go near the bed which was protected by the folding screen.\n\n\"This patient has already received a lot of flowers and fruit,\" she whispered. \"Only she can't swallow any food. Right now she's on a drip. They're setting up a private room for her. Her relatives say it's all the strain and overwork in this heat, but the doctor says it's both from stress and typhus. May the Lord cure her!\" She added,\n\n\"There's a woman who comes here late at night after everyone's gone to sleep, does her ablutions and says a special prayer to Hazrate Fatemeh for her. Ezzat, the nurse who was on night-duty last night, said the woman stayed praying with her forehead glued to the ground for so long, she became worried. Ezzat went closer and was relieved to hear the woman repeating, \"O Fatemeh save her! Save her!\" She repeated it fifty, a hundred times, pleading with God. The woman had to sleep here last night as it was well past the curfew. Now Dr Abdullah Khan has prescribed donkey's meat for the patient... if they manage to find it, that is. They have to make her meat patties for dinner tonight; maybe she'll be tempted to eat.\"\n\nWhen she had finished distributing the food, Zari went up to Khanom Fotouhi who was sitting with her back to the patients, staring out the window. Zari said hello to her, left the papers by the bed and stood a little distance away. She knew that the moment the woman opened the newspapers, the incident of two weeks before would be repeated. Khanom Fotouhi suddenly jumped up from her bed. \"My brother!\" she exclaimed. \"I had a feeling my brother would come and take me to our hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden!\"\n\nZari looked out of the window, but could not see anyone. Khanom Fotouhi brushed past her and left the room saying, \"The rudeness of it all! You stupid fools, I'll show you what I mean!\"\n\nBefore long she was back in the room accompanied by her brother who had truly arrived this time. Khanom Fotouhi sat on the bed and started to cry.\n\n\"Why did you come alone, brother?\" she asked. \"Why didn't mother come? After all this time, you've come empty-handed!\"\n\nMr Fotouhi greeted Zari who was about to go out and leave the brother and sister by themselves.\n\n\"Khanom Zahra,\" he said, \"I have something to tell you.\"\n\n\"Tell her to get lost,\" shouted Khanom Fotouhi furiously. \"Every week she comes here with a lot of fuss and bother to show off for me!\" And she asked again, \"Why hasn't mother come? Take me to the hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden... my heart is withering in this cage. What kind of brother are you? You should at least get a private room for your sister...\"\n\nShe clutched her brother's hand tightly, kissing it and rubbing her tearful eyes on the dark, veined skin, asking over and over again why her mother had not come. She worried about whether her enemies had confiscated their garden... those enemies who constantly put electric currents through her body, her hands, her feet, her heart, making her heart beat backwards. She placed his hand on her heart and said, \"You see!\"\n\nThe head nurse and Gholam and all the other patients were staring, even those who had been playing \"Away flies the crow\" a moment ago. Fotouhi kissed his sister on her fair, tousled hair, and said, \"My dear, you know very well our mother's dead. I've told you that a hundred times.\"\n\n\"But you see, brother, I know my mother isn't dead. She's tricked you. When you put her in her coffin, she slipped out quietly and went into hiding. All this time she's been hiding somewhere in the hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden and you haven't even tried to find her.\" She swallowed and said, \"I swear to God they came in the middle of the night last night and dug out my liver with a knife and stuffed some straw in its place. Since this morning my mouth tastes like straw.\"\n\n\"My dear, since when do we have a hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden?\" Fotouhi said impatiently.\n\n\"Take me away,\" Khanom Fotouhi begged. \"I'll be like a servant to you. We'll live together, all by ourselves. We'll plant wheat in that huge garden. We'll plant mulberry trees and cucumbers, keep beehives, and I'll bake bread myself. We'll keep hens and a rooster and hatch chicks. We won't let anyone in, either... we'll buy narcissus bulbs and wrap them in cotton wool in our Kashkouli pot...\"\n\nA nurse came in and whispered something to the head nurse, who then said out loud, \"All right, arrange the flowers around the room, and put the fruit on the table. No, come back. Help me take the patient out. Wait a minute, take the suitcases first.\"\n\nThe nurse went behind the screen and came out with two new suitcases. Gholam helped her with one of the suitcases, and they left the room together.\n\nZari and Mr Fotouhi went outside too. They stood under a dust-covered pine tree in the flowerless courtyard of the asylum.\n\n\"I came here to see you,\" Fotouhi said. \"Yusef Khan probably told you I would come today to inform everyone of my decision using you as intermediary.\"\n\nNo, Yusef had not told her anything. Perhaps he had wanted their meeting to look as natural as possible.\n\n\"Since yesterday, I've investigated every aspect of the plan,\" Fotouhi said, \"and this morning I discussed the matter at the party leaders' meeting. Of course without mentioning any names, and more as a suggestion of my own. Everyone opposed it.\" He seemed nervous, shifting from one foot to the other, and talking in clipped phrases. \"You know we haven't officially announced the existence of our party yet,\" he continued; \"we're waiting for the right moment. But how would it look if I were to leave the comrades and go south to Khuzestan with a group of like-minded friends in a plan the comrades oppose... you realize I'm responsible for my students too. In my group... with a group of young boys, what can I do?\"\n\n\"So they were right,\" Zari said bluntly, \"they shouldn't have asked you to join in their plan. You don't care about your own friends, any more than you care about your sister.\" She was amazed at her own harshness, although she had been harbouring resentment against Fotouhi for some time now. Yet Fotouhi answered her without the slightest appearance of being upset.\n\n\"We must build our society in such a way that no-one's sister ends up having a mental breakdown. My sister's condition is the symptom of a social disease. When we eventually organize the masses and come into power, we will see to it that justice is carried out.\" Then he added after a pause, \"In my opinion the time is not ripe for their plan, and the only result will be chaos and anarchy. It's not as easy as Malek Sohrab thinks. I don't believe they should allow themselves to be led by a hot-headed fellow like him. And I'm sure they won't. After all, Yusef Khan has more experience than any of us, and even he said that without a forty percent chance of success, running the risks they have in mind is tantamount to suicide.\"\n\nThe words had hardly left his lips when Khanom Fotouhi appeared, coming towards them wrapped up in a white sheet which kept tripping her as she walked.\n\n\"Kill me and let me have some peace!\" she shouted. \"Take out your pen-knife from your coat pocket and kill me! I've put on my shroud and I'm ready!\"\n\nShe let go of the sheet when she reached them, exposing her stark naked body underneath. The nurses immediately rushed to her, but she fought them off, hitting one nurse sharply with her elbow.\n\n\"You bastard!\" she shouted, shaking a fist at her brother. \"Meeting under the pine-tree, is it?\" She held her own against all the nurses as they struggled to pin her down. \"You stole my property! You sold my hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden to pay for this whore...\" Then she ran around the empty pool in the courtyard, dodging everyone and screaming, \"People, I want you to know I'm the greatest woman of this nation! I'm a poet. I've composed fifty thousand verses. This whore has stolen my verses...\" She gasped for breath for a moment, then went on, \"This whore has given my verses to the _Red_ _Aurora_ newspaper under her own name. I'm the Prophet's daughter, Hazrate Fatemeh... I'm pure and chaste like Hazrate Fatemeh herself. My brother's stolen my possessions... he executed my mother and father... all these flowers you see... springing from their blood... put these flowers in a bunch on my grave\u2014\" And she cried with abandon. \"Oh the fatherless wretch that I am! How wretched...\" she sobbed, and she went on and on until she started frothing at the mouth and collapsed. The female nurses covered her naked body with a chador and a well-built fellow came forward and picked her up to take her to the office.\n\nZari was tired and her head was aching. Telling the head nurse so, she began to take her leave.\n\n\"Thank goodness our new patient, Khanom Massihadem, is feeling much better,\" the nurse said. \"We've transferred her to a private room, and she can have visitors now. Why don't you go and wait there while I bring you a pain-killer or something.\"\n\nSo the patient who was getting such special treatment was the new midwife! Zari knocked and went in. Khanom Massihadem was sitting on the bed and shaking her head from left to right, sending a mass of black curls around her head and letting them sweep her face from side to side. The room was filled with flowers. Some of the bouquets had obviously been arranged by the caring hands of a lady gardener, and some of the others were made up of rare wild flowers which someone must have searched for in distant fields or plains. Khanom Massihadem went on shaking her head from side to side, and paid no attention either to the flowers or to the crystal bowls arranged tastefully on the table in the middle of the room. The bowls were covered with lids, and Zari guessed that they must be filled with all kinds of home-made sweets, painstakingly prepared for the patient in that heat.\n\nEventually Khanom Massihadem tired of shaking her head. She noticed Zari for the first time. Zari said hello, while Khanom Massihadem stared at her with a vacant gaze. Despairing eyes, set in a young but skeletal face. Her collar-bones stuck out from underneath her thin white night-dress. Her breasts sagged, and her complexion had a jaundiced look, paler than the sunshine touching the last row of bricks on the opposite wall.\n\n\"I hear you're feeling much better,\" Zari said.\n\n\"I've heard this voice somewhere before!\" replied Khanom Massihadem, biting her nail and staring at her hard. Then suddenly she burst out laughing as recognition came into her eyes. \"I know you! I know you! You're Tal'at Khanom!\" She clasped a hand to her heart as she said, \"How frightened I was! So you're alive. I knew God would answer my prayers. I asked God to take six months off my life, but to keep you from dying at my hands. Come closer so I can see you with my own eyes.\"\n\nZari knew Khanom Massihadem was mistaken, but she kept quiet. If the poor woman could smile and her eyes brighten up at thought of some friend or sister or patient being alive, why should that joy be taken away from her? Zari sat next to her on the bed. Khanom Massihadem took Zari's hand in hers and pressed it. Then she explained in a surprisingly sane manner,\n\n\"When it's born, if its complexion is pink as a petunia, if it screams until the mother can hear it, or if it pisses\u2014\" she put her other hand to her mouth and suppressed an innocent giggle, \"then all the tiredness seems to go out of your body. And you feel so satisfied, as if you yourself created the baby! But when your child came out, your first one too, dear oh dear, he had no colour. There was no blood in the umbilical cord. I hit him, I hit him hard, but he wouldn't scream. I felt the weight of a mountain on my shoulders. It was the first still-born child I had delivered. Suddenly I noticed you weren't bleeding either. I knew the blood would be running somewhere into your stomach, filling it up until it stretched out like a drum. I palpated your belly. But oh God, your eyes turned up, your pulse disappeared, your heart stopped. I heard the front door slam. Your mother had gone out into the street. Your husband came in and said, 'You killed them both? You murderer!'\" And she pressed Zari's hand even harder, complaining, \"But if you hadn't died, why were you pretending? Why?\"\n\nZari didn't reply, and Khanom Massihadem continued, \"You know, we doctors have to get used to death. We mustn't be afraid of the signs. But I panicked. It was as though a storm was raging inside my head, tearing out all the wires of my nerves and brain and jumbling them up in a heap. It was as if my heart had sunk down to my feet. These people think I've gone mad, but I haven't. I'm just very, very unhappy.\"\n\nZari tried to get up, but the young woman would not let go of her hand.\n\n\"I saw the ceiling part with my own eyes,\" she was saying, \"and a black-robed, winged person came down and took you away under his wings. But they won't believe me. I begged that black-robed person to spare Tal'at and take away my life instead. But he said he was taking her to heaven, under the Tuba tree. 'Take me instead,' I said... Now, for goodness sake, Tal'at, tell me how come he brought you back? Do you mean to tell me there was no room in heaven?\"\n\nShe was squeezing Zari's hand very hard and carrying on rapidly, \"Now, will you do something for me? You know that I've promised to go away in your place?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Buy a few grams of good opium,\" she whispered in Zari's ear, \"and crush it well. Bring it to me before this evening, before the old man comes. But don't tell anyone anything. If the old man is here when you come, just drop it quietly in my lap and go. All right?\"\n\nZari bit her lip. Khanom Massihadem burst into tears and said, \"When the sun starts going down, I get so depressed... it's as though they're piling a ton of steel on my heart.\"\n\nAgain she began to shake her head. The long hair brushed Zari's face as she tried to pull herself away and free her hand. But she couldn't manage it. And all this time, Zari felt her head was about to explode with pain.\n\nFinally a white-haired old man leaning on a cane entered the room. Zari guessed with relief that it must be Dr Abdullah Khan. The old man went to the patient and placed a hand on her shoulder.\n\n\"But my dear, you've started it again!\" His voice was not authoritative, but infinitely soothing. The patient stopped her head-shaking and smiled at him.\n\n\"I kept her here so you could see her with your own eyes,\" she said. \"Do you see? There wasn't any room, so they sent her back...\"\n\n\"Has she been talking a lot of nonsense?\" the old man asked Zari softly.\n\n\"On the contrary,\" Zari replied quietly, \"she made a lot of sense.\"\n\n\"You see how the old man is going senile?\" shouted Khanom Massihadem abruptly. \"Why don't you ask Tal'at what goes on on the other side? What happens after the end? Because she's been there and back, you know. I thought she'd disappeared into that pitcher of water and I was too frightened to drink. Or I'd think she's gone inside the flowers and I wouldn't look at them. It's all the rubbish you've been saying, you daft old man, and now my brain's out of order.\" Then she mimicked the old man, \"'Only death is true, the rest is a lie.' Tal'at, for God's sake tell him that Death had wings and took you away. He keeps telling me I've tired myself out and I'm just imagining things.\"\n\n\"I have to go now,\" Zari said.\n\nThe old man accompanied her to the door. \"I've brought a pair of scissors to cut her hair,\" he whispered; \"she can't stand to see her mother and relatives, and won't let them near her. Do you know how to cut hair? It really gets in her way.\"\n\n\"I know how to do it, but it's getting late and I'm expecting guests tonight.\"\n\n\"Can't you spare five minutes?\"\n\nMaybe the patient heard the old man's whisper or had guessed what he was saying. \"Have you gone mad?\" she screamed, clutching her hair tightly with both hands.\n\n\"Your hair will grow out thicker than ever in less than a month, my dear,\" he said. \"By then you'll be healthier yourself and have a little more weight on you. I want to throw sugar-plums over your head with my own hands at your wedding. But hurry up and get well, my dear. I'm an old man.\"\n\nWhat a soothing voice he has, Zari marvelled. He could tame anyone with that voice\u2014a person with delusions, a person in a hurry...\n\nKhanom Massihadem motioned to Zari, saying, \"Come closer, I want to tell you something in your ear.\"\n\nTurning to the old man, she said, \"You go to the end of the room and shut your ears.\"\n\nZari was forced to bring her head close to the woman while she whispered, \"When you cut my hair, plunge the sharp end of the scissor into my artery, will you?\"\n\nThen she sat obediently while Zari wet her hair, combed it, and cut it short like a boy's. When she'd finished, Zari handed the scissors back to the old man. For a minute their eyes met; Zari looked into his bright and lively gaze which belied his age. The old man nodded knowingly and Zari realized he had guessed her secret. The old man put the scissors back in his pocket and Zari said goodbye, not certain whether the sparkle in those eyes was somehow a reflection of the snowy-white eyebrows or whether it was from his new-found knowledge. Khanom Massihadem, who had been staring at them, suddenly shouted, \"Get lost! Go drown yourself. Go to the other side...\" And again she started to shake her head.\n\nZari was about to step out of the room when the head nurse arrived with a pill wrapped in some paper. She gave it to Zari.\n\n\"I had to go out and buy it for you,\" she said. \"The warden went to the Department of Health this morning for our supplies of medicine, and he's not back yet. We've no drugs at all. If we don't get some by tonight, with all these lunatics...\" She didn't finish her sentence, but walked over to the pitcher of water in the corner of the room. She took the glass from the top of the pitcher while Zari unwrapped the paper to take out the pill.\n\n\"Wait, Khanom Zahra. Pain-killers are not too good for pregnant women,\" said the doctor.\n\n\"Do you know me?\" Zari asked in amazement. After a pause, she said, \"I recognized you too. You're Dr Abdullah Khan.\"\n\nAnd again she stared at him. The man looked as if he had knowledge of all the secrets in the world. \"If only his fingers would touch my forehead...\" she thought, \"this is a man who's healed people all his life; he has comforted them, guarded their secrets and only brought them to their attention for their own good.\"\n\nBut Zari was in a hurry. She had to get home as quickly as possible. Her headache was getting worse, and her heart felt no lighter than Khanom Massihadem's. McMahon was coming to dinner, and she kept praying he hadn't arrived yet so she could at least rest for half an hour in a darkened room.\n\nOutside, Gholam was sitting in the droshke next to the driver, smoking a pipe. When he saw her, he jumped out, emptied his pipe, and helped her to get in. The droshke seemed to move along so slowly, the horses shying each time they passed a car, and Zari began to feel as if they would never get home. But they did, finally.\n\nYusef and McMahon were sitting in the cane chairs on the pavement in front of the house. Mina and Marjan were sitting on McMahon's lap, leaning over the table. With one hand he was holding the children and with the other he was turning the pages of a book they were looking at. When Zari reached the twins, they laughed and clapped their hands. The men and the children seemed very cheerful. But Zari knew that if she sat down next to them, some of the sadness in her heart would infect them too. With her splitting headache, she hadn't the strength to smile and put on a pleasant face. When McMahon saw her, he carefully lowered the children to the ground and rose to his feet. They shook hands.\n\n\"I'm sorry I'm late,\" Zari apologized. \"I'll go to the kitchen for a minute and then I'll be with you.\"\n\nShe went straight to the bedroom and threw herself on the bed fully dressed, burying her head in the pillow and with it the pain that was radiating from her eyes, ears and left jaw. \"If this pain doesn't go away,\" she thought, \"I'll ruin their evening.\" She decided for a moment to take two aspirins, then she remembered Dr Abdullah Khan's words and changed her mind. The old man had not spent a lifetime treating people for nothing! He was wise, and held the key to many a secret. How quickly he had managed to guess her condition with those bright eyes of his!\n\nSomeone came in and switched on the light.\n\n\"Put it off!\" Zari ordered.\n\n\"Are you sleeping?\" It was Yusef's voice.\n\n\"Please turn the light off.\"\n\nYusef did as he was told and went to her side, sitting on the floor.\n\n\"Has something happened?\" he asked.\n\n\"I have a headache,\" said Zari.\n\nYusef removed his wife's shoes and put them quietly on the floor. Then he came closer and massaged her neck and her temples.\n\n\"Would you like me to get you some vinegar to smell?\" he asked gently.\n\n\"You go to your guest. When I feel better I'll come too.\"\n\n\"I can ask him to leave.\"\n\n\"No. But I'll feel more comfortable if you go to him.\"\n\nYusef left, and it was a while before he came back again. Switching on the bedside lamp, he said, \"Turn your head towards me so I can begin my treatments. I bet you'll feel better.\"\n\nZari turned around. Yusef was holding a tray which he placed on the vanity stool. On the tray was a bowl of steaming hot water. He dipped a small towel into it, wrung it and put it on his wife's face. He repeated that several times, then holding her head in an embrace, tried to make her take some hot lemon and honey. He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her ears, and said soothingly, \"Close your eyes and go to sleep now.\" He put two cotton wool swabs moistened in rose-water on her eyes, and said, \"Why do you tire yourself out like this?\"\n\nZari suddenly burst into tears. \"Why should there be so much unhappiness?\" she sobbed.\n\nYusef picked up the wads of cotton wool which had fallen on the pillow, dipped them again in rose-water, squeezed them and placed them on Zari's eyes. \"You're not responsible for all the unhappiness, you know,\" he said.\n\nZari sat up abruptly and the cotton wool swabs fell into her lap again. \"And you're not, either!\" she exclaimed. \"So why do you put yourself in danger?\" And after a pause, \"I saw Fotouhi. He's decided against collaborating with you.\"\n\n\"Now I understand. That frightened you, and it gave you a headache.\"\n\n\"That wasn't all. His sister attacked me, Khanom Massihadem took me for one of her patients who died in childbirth... Oh God! So much misery! So much loneliness!\"\n\n\"Someone has to do something...\"\n\n\"If I beg you not to be that someone, will you agree?\"\n\n\"Listen my love, if you start getting restless and impatient, it will distract me from what I'm doing.\"\n\nZari threw herself into her husband's arms and said, \"We have three children and one more on the way. I'm so frightened, Yusef!\"\n\n\"Would you like me to read you a Hafez poem and see what he predicts for us?\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\n\"Would you like me to bring the radio in this room and play you some music?\"\n\n\"No. Just promise me you won't be the one person to change things. I know you people want to go down to Khuzestan and do something dangerous there.\"\n\n\"I have a good idea. McMahon's story has been published. I'll ask him to come here and read it to you. I know it will make you feel better.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Zari agreed. \"Prop up the pillows behind me. I'll sit up. I feel better already.\" But she was only pretending.\n\nKhadijeh came in first. She had come to take away the tray. \"May all your troubles be on my head!\" she exclaimed. \"The master was frightened out of his mind, thinking you'd caught this disease that's going round the town.\" She went away for a few minutes and reappeared with a small round table from the parlour on which she arranged some glasses and drinks. Zari had given her instructions for everything that morning. She had even prepared the stuffing for the chicken herself that afternoon before going to the asylum, telling Khadijeh to leave it in a basket over the cistern to keep it cool.\n\n\"Ameh Khanom hasn't returned yet?\" she asked Khadijeh.\n\n\"No, she hasn't,\" Khadijeh replied, adding with a sigh, \"If only it were God's will for me to go on a pilgrimage too! Perhaps she might think of getting me a fake dashport or whatever they call it, from that fellow. I'm not about to go to Karbala yet, but I would hide it until the Imam is willing to receive me, his humble and sinful servant.\" She paused, then continued, \"I broke an egg as an augury to find out who had fixed the evil eye on you, and it turned out to be the master himself!\"\n\nWhen Khadijeh had left, Khosrow and Hormoz came in. Khosrow threw an arm round his mother, saying, \"Hello, mother dear! Would you like me to fan you a little?\" Then, \"What can I do to make you better?\" Hormoz was smiling, and asked after Zari's health as he stood politely by the bed. Khosrow put his face next to his mother's and said, \"Mother, please can Hormoz and I have our dinner in my room?\"\n\n\"Why, dear?\"\n\n\"We've decided never to speak to English officers again from now on. We're not even going to have anything more to do with their Indian soldiers.\"\n\n\"But McMahon isn't English, he's Irish.\"\n\n\"What's the difference?\" asked Hormoz.\n\n\"He's not even an officer, he's a reporter,\" said Zari.\n\n\"Well he's probably a spy,\" said Hormoz, \"otherwise why shouldn't a young man like him be wearing an officer's uniform in wartime? He's younger than Singer, isn't he? I'm sure Singer sends him here to find things out from my uncle.\"\n\n\"You shouldn't judge people like that when you don't know anything about them,\" Zari reprimanded gently. She was about to go on and tell them that McMahon even dreamed of independence for his country and wrote revolutionary poetry, but she decided against it and just gave them permission to have dinner in Khosrow's room. She wasn't in the mood for explaining or defending.\n\nAs the boys were leaving, Zari said, \"Khosrow, tell Khadijeh to give the twins their dinner and put them to bed.\"\n\nWhen Yusef came in, he switched on the light, even though the bedside lamp was still on. The bright light bothered Zari's eyes, but she didn't complain. When McMahon came in, he reached out and put on the dressing-table light, and sat on the stool in front of it. Zari had not noticed until then that the middle finger on his left hand was missing. He had gained weight, and seemed to have more wrinkles on his forehead.\n\n\"I hear your story has been published,\" said Zari. \"I'm glad.\"\n\nMcMahon smiled. \"I'll read it to you, even though I'm afraid your headache might get worse!\" He said. Turning to Yusef, he added, \"Are you rationed for drink?\" He was speaking English distinctly that night. Maybe he was trying to modify his thick Irish accent or perhaps even to hide it.\n\nHe took a sip and began. His voice was like a lullaby and Zari closed her eyes. Yusef sat next to her on the bed. \n\n# _19_\n\nThe old Charioteer gathered up his flowing white beard, a souvenir of millions and millions of years, and used it to dust the Golden Chariot of the Sun. Then he reached for the gold key which was dangling from his belt and headed for the East. Yes, it was time now. The Sun would be arriving wearily on his way. The old man opened the gate to the East with his key. The Sun was late today. But finally he showed up, yawning and dusty from his travels. The Charioteer brushed off the dust from the Sun with his thick white beard, and polished his beams. The Sun climbed into the Chariot, ready to begin his journey across the sky. But he didn't start right away, and the Charioteer waited.\n\n\"The Master sent you a message,\" said the Sun, \"that's why I was delayed.\"\n\n\"His wish is my command,\" replied the old Charioteer.\n\n\"He sent His regards and said He wants you to clean out the Celestial Attic right away, throwing out or burning all the odds and ends. But His most important instruction is for you to take out the stars belonging to His subjects from the attic and send them down to Earth. He wants everyone to take possession of their stars from now on.\"\n\n\"Do you think cleaning out the Celestial Attic is such an easy thing to do?\" grumbled the old Charioteer. \"We've stored things in there for over five hundred thousand years; you can hardly find anything for all the rubbish.\"\n\n\"You know the Master,\" said the Sun. \"When He gives an order, He means it.\"\n\nWith that, the Sun took off, and the old Charioteer was left to clear out the Celestial Attic, mumbling under his breath as he went, \"Why doesn't He just wipe out the whole species from the face of the Earth and be done with it! They'll never be up to any good, these humans! What a waste to have blessed them with a spark of His own spirit! After all, they go back to that unruly creature, the ape. When He was watching over them Himself, they never stopped bringing disasters upon each other; now He wants to give them a free rein over their own lives! How he spoils these earthlings! How He lets them get away with things. Ever since they managed to stand on two legs, He has become very excited and talks of nothing but the 'noble human race'! I know all about that noble race. From what I hear, they have few talents besides slaughtering and oppressing one another...\"\n\nGrumbling, he walked on until he reached the Celestial Attic. There, he first reached for the Tablets of Destiny, stone and clay tablets which had the fortunes of people predicted and written out in an outlandish script. He broke up all the tablets and threw them away into space. He also disposed of the remaining odds and ends like old wings belonging to angels and cherubs, burnt-out stars and meteors which had never reached their destinations... Then he started on the files belonging to ancient gods. What a huge pile! He collected them all in a corner of the attic and went to the adjacent hall where replicas of the ancient gods were stored. There were all kinds of gods... tree gods, serpent gods, star-, fish-, and sun-gods, and finally, both winged and wingless human gods. In a corner of the hall he spied a battle-axe, which he used to chop down Ashur and Shiva.\n\nHe had had his fill of these gods. Suddenly he caught sight of Gilgamesh, the legendary hero. \"How dare you!\" He exclaimed in surprise. \"Posing as one of the gods...!\"\n\nIn a twinkling, the old Charioteer turned him into dust and blew him away.\n\nWhen he got to the beautiful, shapely goddesses, the old man stood gazing for a while and reminisced. He thought of those days when Ishtar and Isis and Nahid and Aphrodite used to tease him with playful remarks. Every so often they would wink at him or perhaps Nahid would let him have a drink from her pitcher of water to refresh him. He had to push back the tears as he broke the replicas of the goddesses, but he couldn't bring himself to break Nahid's pitcher. Actually, he felt a pang as he destroyed Merduk, Mithra, Quetzalcoatl and Apollo too. In their heyday, these gods had never been too hard on their subjects. They even showed them some compassion from time to time. But the god Benu seemed to have somehow disappeared at the very moment the Charioteer was breaking up the Tablets of Destiny which Benu himself had inscribed.\n\nBefore long, the old man began to feel hot. He came out of the hall to look at the sky. The Sun, in his Golden Chariot, had reached the mid-point of the heavens. The Charioteer returned to the attic and pulled out the papers concerning the holy cities and mountains... records of the cities of Ur, Nineveh (later named Karbala), Benares, Chichen Itza, Jerusalem and other holy places, as well as records of the Himalayas, the Zagros mountains, Mount Olympus, the Andes, Mount Sinai, the Calcutta Hill, Mount Hera and any other mountain frequented by the ancient gods or used by them for their rendezvous with a favoured mortal. All these records he put on top of the files of the ancient gods.\n\nThere was almost nothing left now in the Celestial Attic except for one file containing several pages on the sacred trees... the Tree of Knowledge, the Lotus Tree, and others. On the rest of the pages were lists of talismans, prayers and other palliatives which the Master had created over the past five hundred thousand years for his noble human race. The old Charioteer picked up all the papers and records and existing files from the Celestial Attic and piled them in one corner of the sky. Then he rubbed his hands together and made a spark which he held out to the pile, setting everything on fire.\n\nThe old man didn't wait to watch them burn. Instead, he went to the cupboard where he stored and locked away all the stars which he had swept up with his celestial broom from the sky every dawn. After all, if he didn't stow away the stars somewhere for safe-keeping, they would be scattered all over the sky and anyone passing through might choose to play marbles with them. Anyone, even the Sun, or the idle angels and cherubs. He removed the gold key to the cupboard which hung around his neck, opened the cupboard and called out, \"Children! Come along and give me a hand!\" His voice echoed round the heavens, and from every corner of the sky, millions of cherubs rushed to his aid. In a twinkling, they had prepared all sorts of sacks and bags sized according to every city, town and village of every earthly country, and they also made a variety of ladders with sun-beam rungs to go down to Earth.\n\nThe cherubs were having a field day. One of them would read out the list of people in order, another would hold the sack open, and the third would throw in the stars as the name of each owner was announced. When the sacks had been filled up, the old Charioteer tied and sealed them one by one, and then handed them to the cherubs. Each cherub was given one sack with a list of people whose stars it contained, and in return they gave a receipt. The Charioteer appointed one supervisor and five assistants for them, and ordered the ladders to be lowered to Earth.\n\nIt was a sight worth seeing. Imagine! Millions of sun-beam ladders, with millions of cherubs carrying sacks full of stars, rushing down those ladders. The old man had seen many interesting sights in his lifetime, but never anything like this. He had witnessed the day Lucifer stood up to the Master, quarrelled with him and left; he had seen Gabriel's wings burn away, and had been there the day the Master commanded the lotuses in every earthly lake to open while He sent the Light of Wisdom to that man sitting cross-legged beneath the tree...\n\nThe young cherubs were to knock at every door on Earth, and give each person his or her own star. \"From now on,\" they were to say, \"it's up to you!\" Actually, they were free to phrase that message any way they chose.\n\nNow the old Charioteer went to the West to see the Sun off on his course. Climbing out of his Golden Chariot which he left to the Charioteer, the Sun said, \"Well done!\"\n\n\"I'll have to think of a solution for the Master's cloak,\" said the old man. \"From now on there will be no more stars on it at night until He has time to create some new ones.\"\n\n\"Why should that be up to you?\" replied the Sun, before bidding the old man a chilly goodbye.\n\nThe Charioteer was glad his task was over. He ran a hand over his thick, woolly beard and thought, \"Well now that I've got the chance, I might as well clean up too!\"\n\nIt seemed a shame, but he decided to chop off that impressive beard which reached all the way down to his toes. As he did so, bit by bit, he covered the whole sky with the shavings. Then he broke Nahid's pitcher and poured the water over his head and body, washing himself thoroughly in the process. He looked quite a bit younger in the end. With all this water, the heavenly river of the galaxy swelled. Meanwhile, the sky over Earth was looking very cloudy. There was even some thunder and lightning and much rain, but the cherubs were not in the least frightened. They knew the old Charioteer had broken Nahid's pitcher of water.\n\nThrice the Sun came and went, and there was no news of the young cherubs, their supervisors or their assistants. Every day the Charioteer would sit in a corner of the heavens, gazing on the planet Earth as it spun like a top around the Sun in space. Little by little, he began to worry. \"What if they've lost the way,\" he thought. \"What if their sun-beam ladders have got soaked in the water from Nahid's pitcher and then burned to cinders in the lightning?\" The heavens were empty; empty of stars, empty of cherubs... and still there was no message from the Master.\n\nOn the morning of the fourth day, he heard some noises in the distance. It sounded like the beating of wings, and the rustle of a breeze. Then the noises became more distinct. It was like a cosmic ringing, a melody which arises from the orbiting of planets and galaxies. Ladders were hoisted skywards, and soon enough the cherubs appeared. The Charioteer smiled. How the little cherubs had grown in this short time! How tall they had become!\n\nHe came forward to welcome them, all the while looking out for the supervisor and his assistants. Most of the cherubs didn't recognize him at first, but those who did said at once, \"Why do you look like that? We came back because we missed playing with your beard.\"\n\nThey all began talking at the same time about their experiences on Earth, and there was such a din no-one could be heard above the others. The Charioteer suddenly thundered out in a voice which penetrated the noise, \"I've had enough!\" Then, when everyone had quietened down, he asked, \"Where is the supervisor I sent with you?\"\n\nA cherub who was taller than all the rest stepped forward and said, \"He didn't come. He stayed behind, and asked me to replace him.\"\n\n\"What happened to the assistants?\" asked the Charioteer.\n\n\"They stayed too,\" said the new supervisor; \"you know, one hundred and eighty thousand, three hundred and twenty-five cherubs stayed on Earth. With the supervisor and assistants, that makes one hundred and eighty thousand, three hundred and thirty-one.\"\n\n\"Why?\" interrupted the Charioteer. \"What was happening on Earth?\"\n\nAll the little cherubs shouted together, \"The Earth is so interesting, everything is alive there!\"\n\nThe Charioteer clapped his hands to his ears. \"You're deafening me!\" he said. \"One person at a time! You, supervisor, you tell me.\"\n\n\"You see,\" said the new supervisor, \"the Earth is genuine. It's real. It's not imaginary or illusory. It's not nebulous, fleeting, or chimeric. It is solid. Your feet are on firm ground, and everyone and everything isn't floating.\"\n\n\"What do humans look like?\"\n\n\"They come in all shapes and sizes. None of them look alike, but they are all real, made of flesh and blood. You know, down there everything grows, everything is in a state of flux. Everything is subject to the laws of creation, evolution and decay. There, nobody and nothing is eternal.\"\n\n\"I gathered that when I saw you. Now tell me about your mission.\"\n\n\"We really enjoyed ourselves. We celebrated their festivities. They had wars too, as well as poverty and disease. We wept for them.\"\n\n\"What did you do with their stars?\"\n\n\"We gave each star to its owner, from the young to the old. The assistants gave me a report of their work on every continent. I've summarized all the reports for you here.\" And the new supervisor took out a folded piece of paper from underneath his right wing, and read out loud, \"As you had instructed, the cherubs were to hand each person his star, with the words, 'We now entrust you with your own star so you know you are henceforth free. You must be your own support and refuge.' The reaction of the earthlings was the following: the children's eyes sparkled upon seeing their stars, and they quickly took them and started to play with them. When we left, they were still playing. The old people merely said, 'It's too late now' As for the youth and the middle-aged\u2014and they are the ones who run most of the affairs of Earth\u2014their reactions were mixed. All the people in this group received their stars, but most of them, no matter how much we explained, could not grasp what the Master meant. Some of them almost immediately lost their stars. Others hid their stars in their pockets, smug with the knowledge that they had a star tucked away. Only a few amongst these people understood very well. Some of them said, 'This is the way we have always been. We had no expectations from any celestial or earthly stars, as we neither believe in destiny nor in complaining about being born under a good or bad star.' This group of people used complicated words, and the cherubs didn't always understand. Even their fellow earthlings had difficulty understanding them. Then again, one or two others from this group said, 'What a good thing it is that each person has found his own star.' These were an odd group, and in every country we came across a few of them. Some had beards, but not quite as long as yours used to be. These people immediately went to work on their dictionaries, striking out a lot of words from the vocabulary; words such as destiny, fortune, chance, fate, pre-determined and pre-ordained and all the other synonyms or equivalents. They were trying to replace these words with new ones rooted in 'freedom' and 'liberty' as we were leaving.\"\n\nThe Charioteer smiled. \"One of these days I shall have to visit Earth,\" he said. \"From what you tell me, it sounds very interesting.\"\n\nMcMahon fell silent. Zari opened her eyes. It felt as though she had just woken from a pleasant dream.\n\n\"What a story!\" she said.\n\n\"Did you understand all of it?\" asked Yusef.\n\n\"Whatever I didn't understand I pieced together with my imagination.\" Then turning to McMahon, Zari said, \"Actually, at first I was expecting to hear a children's story.\"\n\n\"You see,\" he explained, \"your daughters planted the germ of this story in my mind... the first images I had were those of someone sweeping the sky and a sackful of stars inside a dark cupboard. But to tell you the truth, no matter how hard I tried I wasn't able to write a story for the children themselves, to pay back my debt to them. It turned out as you heard it.\"\n\nYusef laughed; he got up to pour some wine for McMahon and handed him the glass. McMahon took a sip and said, \"It's good wine, where can one buy it?\"\n\n\"You know,\" Yusef said, \"now that I've heard your story again, it occurs to me your favourite theme is that same one you keep repeating in your poems.\" McMahon didn't say anything, so Yusef continued, \"You're trying to atone for the sins of others.\"\n\nZari no longer understood what her husband meant. She was about to ask him, when she heard Abol-Ghassem Khan's voice from the parlour.\n\n\"Where's everybody hiding?\" he called out. Then he appeared in person. He blinked and said, \"I heard there was a feast in this house tonight, so I got myself here on the double!\" \n\n# _20_\n\nAs Kolu began to regain his strength, he made himself a slingshot with which he pestered the sparrows in the garden until they could have no peace on any branch. There was still room to be grateful, however, since of all the window panes in the main building, only the pantry's had been broken. That day Zari had given Kolu a hard slap on the back of his hand, saying, \"I've had more than enough of you!\"\n\nAnd Kolu had sat underneath the orange-blossom tree, crying and sobbing loudly to be taken back to his mother and brother.\n\nEvery Sunday before dawn, Kolu would get up, undress, and jump into the pool with the copper crucifix around his neck, waking Zari up with the noise. Then he would get out of the pool and, according to Gholam, dress in his new clothes, gulp down a little breakfast and rush off to see the black-robed man at the Missionary Hospital. Just before noon, he would return home and instead of his usual hello, announce, \"I am a Christian.\" By lunch-time, though, he had clean forgotten it, and reverted to swearing by Hazrate Abbas again.\n\nThat last Sunday, Kolu had come home later than usual. Zari was in the kitchen, preparing provisions for Yusef's trip, so they could have some dinner ready when they reached Zarqan that night. Kolu came into the kitchen and eagerly preached to Zari and Khadijeh about Jesus Christ. He also mentioned Judas and asked Zari whether that ungrateful scoundrel was to be found in the Jewish quarter. Then he said with a sigh, \"I am a lost Iamb of Jesus.\" He clasped his hands in prayer before his lips and continued, \"O Jesus who art in heaven. Let's see if you can find me and take me home to my mother!\"\n\nKhadijeh scolded him. \"You stupid boy, repent before Allah! Go wash out your mouth!\"\n\n\"Leave him alone,\" said Zari quietly.\n\n\"Every night from now on I'll talk to Mr Jesus and pester him until he comes to me. After all what kind of shepherd is he to abandon all his lambs and go and sit up in the sky? If he's true to his word, let him come down and take me... if he takes me with him then I'll give him my father's flute which I've hidden under the bedclothes. But if he doesn't, may Hazrate Abbas strike me down if I don't hit him one in the middle of the forehead with my slingshot when I come across him!\"\n\nHe dug a hand into his coat pocket and brought out three copper crucifixes which he showed to Zari. \"The fang-toothed woman gave me these charms,\" he said. \"One is for my mother, one for my uncle, and the other for my uncle's wife\u2014I'm taking these for them as souvenirs.\" He held one of the crucifixes in front of Khadijeh and said, \"Kiss it!\"\n\nKhadijeh shoved his hand away. \"You idiot!\" she snapped. \"Go back to your mother!\"\n\nZari thought, \"None of them have ever accepted him as a son in this family. Not even myself or Ameh Khanom.\"\n\n\"The fang-toothed woman told me Jesus is everywhere\u2014in our village too,\" Kolu went on. \"She said any child who calls out, 'Mr Jesus!' He immediately says, 'Yes, my child.' But I'm too old now so I can't hear him.\"\n\nThat evening Yusef decided to take Kolu with him to the village. Zari couldn't help thinking, \"What does the poor boy imagine now? That Jesus found him?\"\n\nKolu couldn't keep still for joy, so much so that he left his slingshot behind, even though he knew he wouldn't be going straight to his family. First he was going with Yusef to Zarqan until someone could be found to take him to the lowlands. Clearly the poor lad felt that every step away from Yusef's homestead was a step closer to his own village...\n\nThey departed, and Zari found herself alone during the long, turbulent nights, filled with nightmares. Nights so long, it seemed they would never be followed by morning. As time drew on, her thoughts became more distressed and her dreams more agitated.\n\nAmeh was an expert at interpreting dreams. Everyone\u2014even strangers\u2014acknowledged this. Sometimes total strangers would telephone her and recount their dreams. She would greet them politely, and then proceed to give her interpretation, in the hope of doing a good deed. She also had a handwritten manual of dream interpretation which she would refer to in case of difficulty. But even Ameh was unable to unravel two of Zari's dreams. She leafed through her book carefully, but she still couldn't find the key to those two dreams. And it was for this reason, according to Ameh, that of all Zari's dreams, those two were constantly repeated.\n\nZari would dream that she stood stark naked in the middle of an unfamiliar square, surrounded by thousands of staring men and women. She also dreamt that it was exam-time at school, and a dark-skinned, scowling examiner was standing before her. Yet no matter how hard she tried, she didn't know any of the answers. She racked her brains and sweated and her pulse raced, but still she was unable to answer the questions. In the morning, she could no longer remember what the questions were.\n\nAmeh instructed her to beg a piece of bread from a beggar and then eat it so she would remember the questions.\n\nOne night Zari dreamt that a two-headed dragon swallowed her husband whole, as he was galloping along on his mare. When she looked closely, she realized that the two-headed dragon looked like Captain Singer, dressed in a Scottish tartan kilt with embroidery all around the edge. This particular dream Ameh interpreted easily. She said it meant that Singer would become a public laughing-stock, but Yusef, like Jonah, would learn patience and endurance in the whale's stomach. The darkness inside the whale would enlighten him so that he could understand the secrets of the universe.\n\nA few nights later Zari dreamt that the Governor had tossed Yusef into the furnace with his own hands. Yusef had burnt to a cinder, but nevertheless managed to grope his way out. Ameh interpreted the fire as the biblical one which had descended upon Abraham and then turned into a flower-garden. Yusef's coming out of the fire meant that he had passed his ordeal. And although Ameh's words reminded Zari of Siavush's story, she kept quiet. Because that night, in the tent of the tribal chief... that night when Malek Sohrab took a bet with her over a Brno gun, and she had lost but never paid up... that night they had talked of Siavush the whole time, and teased Zari because she knew about John the Baptist and not about Siavush, and they had explained to her that Siavush had passed through the fire and come out vindicated...\n\nAmeh went on with her interpretation. \"The furnace is clearly the same one in which the wicked Khuli woman hid Muslim-ibn-Aqil's children. Burning to a cinder signifies being purified and vindicated because, as you know, the meaning of a woman's dream is always the reverse of the dream itself.\"\n\nAnother night just before dawn, Zari dreamt that Kolu had struck Yusef right in the middle of the forehead with his slingshot. Ameh didn't bother to interpret this one saying that dreaming just before dawn has no significance.\n\nTen days after Yusef's departure, it was rumoured that Malek Sohrab had become an outlaw. Everyone who came to the house had something to say about it. Gholam told Zari that Malek Sohrab had taken to the mountains with a thousand gunmen and was hiding in an inaccessible spot.\n\nOne day Khosrow told her excitedly, \"He's close to Yasuj now, with two thousand fighting men. And he still hasn't come down the mountain\u2014what a man!\"\n\nA few days later, Hormoz showed up and commented, \"Auntie, you know how much I admire bravery, but I think brave men should also have a sense of timing.\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan often came along in a hurry to pick up Hormoz and take him off to his highness the Governor, but each time Zari would coax him into staying awhile, plying him with some of Tavuus Khanom's oldest and best wines, and pressing delicacies on him until she managed to draw out some news.\n\n\"I hear Bibi Hamdam, Malek Sohrab's mother, went to Army Headquarters,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan told her. \"She barged into the captain's room without permission and threw herself, in those wide breeches of hers, at the major-general's feet. She begged immunity for her son, and promised to bring him to the authorities herself. The major-general advised her to do that as soon as possible, at which point Bibi Hamdam pulled out a Quran from her bosom and tried to make him swear not to harm her son. But the major-general only kicked the old woman's hand away.\"\n\nThen Sakineh, the woman who came to bake their bread, told them, \"Bibi Hamdam has hired forty people to read the Quran and chant the An'am verse every day. It's hair-raising! Oh Lord, I beg you by the purity of the saints, to spare the life of Bibi Hamdam's son, and meanwhile to spare this poor, sinful servant's son from the military draft too!\"\n\nIn despair, Zari took up her old addiction of reading newspapers. But she couldn't find even the slightest mention of Malek Sohrab's name in any newspaper. Her habit did, however, lead her to a certain news item in one of the leading local papers. She had been alone in the garden that evening when the newspaper arrived and she had taken it from the delivery-boy herself. It was two weeks since Yusef had left. The item read like this:\n\n\"In Gratitude\"\n\n\"The gracious Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, one of the charitable and kind-hearted ladies of this town, has been appointed by the Women's Society to visit and inspect the houses of the Mordestan District, as well as the women's prison. All the houses of the above-mentioned district have been cleaned and disinfected under her supervision, and this charitable lady, out of boundless generosity, has bailed out and set free one inmate of the prison who, out of ignorance, had engaged in earning an illegal livelihood. The Governorship of Fars extends its gratitude to this humanitarian and benevolent lady for her services.\"\n\nAlthough Zari was not surprised to read this piece of news, it still depressed her. She crumpled up the newspaper and threw it away. She took refuge in the orangery, pacing about under the orange-blossom trees, feeling unequal to any task that might require concentration. She decided to go to the stables to find Gholam and ask him whether he had any more news of Malek Sohrab. But she changed her mind, knowing that the poor man might be half-undressed or even naked in the heat, or perhaps having a quiet smoke. For a moment, she thought of going to visit Bibi Hamdam, but decided against that too. She wasn't in the mood for the loud chanting of Quran reciters, and she knew that the instant Bibi Hamdam set eyes on her she would begin to wail and press her for a solution to her problem. And of course, if Zari had any idea what to do, she would not be feeling so distraught. Everyone knew that Bibi Hamdam's existence was tied to that of her son, and everyone knew too that Malek Sohrab, despite his size and stature, was nothing more than a child before his mother.\n\nShe thought of following Ameh Khanom and the children to Mehri's house, but she realized she didn't feel like putting on a long-sleeved dress and a head-scarf in that heat. Mehri's second husband, Mohsen Khan, was a very strict man.\n\nZari knew her restlessness and depression had much to do with sheer fatigue. Every summer she would spend at least two or three weeks at their village where a change of air, long walks and horse riding prepared her for the autumn and winter ahead. But this summer, with its disease, famine and war, and her own unexpected pregnancy, had made a prisoner of her, confining her to the house, the prison, and the asylum. She decided to arrange a weekly reunion with her former classmates... an afternoon reunion, perhaps... first at her house, then at Mehri's. Of course Mehri herself would be willing, if only Mohsen Khan would allow it. Their husbands didn't get along, otherwise she and Mehri, regardless of how often they saw each other, were still the same steadfast friends.\n\nShe went to the bedroom and searched in her drawers for knitting needles and wool in order to knit away her anxiety and depression. But neither knitting needles nor wool could be found. Her glance fell on a box full of glass beads. She picked it up, along with her sewing kit and went out on the verandah to string the glass beads. She looked out towards the garden which seemed to have lost its bloom. Dust had settled on all the trees, smothering the yellow, burnt-out leaves. For an instant she thought the trees were staring back at her. Then she saw them shiver and nod and then quieten down again. \"They're getting ready for their sleep,\" she mused, \"but the sparrows are awake on the branches, complaining to each other like a bunch of mother hens at the public baths!\"\n\nThe sun had completely left the garden when, suddenly, she heard the neighing of a horse. It was the mare, not Sahar. Thank God! Yusef was back from the village. It was true what they said about hearts that talk to each other. Whenever she began to miss him desperately, Yusef would somehow turn up all of a sudden. She decided not to complain about how long he had been away this time, how anxious and wretched he had made her, how endlessly he had abandoned her to imaginings and nightmares and frightening rumours and unjust expressions of gratitude!\n\nGholam came out of the stables. Seyyid Mohammad, Yusef's steward, entered riding the mare, with the roan horse in tow. Zari felt a pang. She stood up. The box of glass beads in her lap fell to the ground and broke open, scattering the beads all over the rug. Well, perhaps Yusef had got off along the way, gone somewhere on an errand. Seyyid Mohammad dismounted and gave the horses' bridles to Gholam, whispering something in his ear. Gholam threw his hat on the ground, and Seyyid whispered something more to him. Slowly, Gholam led the horses away to the stables. Zari ran toward Seyyid Mohammad, out of breath.\n\n\"Where's the master?\" she asked.\n\n\"He's coming in Malek Rostam's car. Don't panic, nothing's happened,\" he answered.\n\nGholam and Seyyid started to behave mysteriously. Gholam ran out of the garden hatless, while Seyyid came to the pool to wash. He took out a comb from his pocket and combed his thick moustache. Then, taking a stone from the driveway, he washed it and placed it on the ground as he stood to pray. But Seyyid wasn't one for praying. Besides, what kind of prayer was this? Without a proper ablution and, although the sun had set, without the evening call to prayers?\n\nThen Ameh arrived. It was very odd. Wordlessly, she stood to pray on the verandah still dressed in her outdoor veil. Without her prayer-mat. And without bringing the children. It was a long time before the car carrying Abol-Ghassem Khan drove in. Zari was certain something had happened but she didn't want to ask. She didn't have the courage. They began themselves, brother and sister, to tell her.\n\nBy the time Malek Rostam's green car drew up to the poolside and stopped, she knew what had happened, but she refused to believe it until she saw for herself. Malek Rostam and Majid got out and she knew her husband would not be stepping out. She knew he would never again climb in or get out of a car... where had she read that so-and-so was riding on a wooden horse? Yusef was sitting stiffly on the rear seat, covered with a cloak and his hat pulled over his eyes. She heard Ameh's voice saying, \"Welcome, brother. So you've come home...\" and Ameh began to sob. Abol-Ghassem Khan was wailing at such a pitch that he must have been heard in every corner of the house. Zari placed a hand over Yusef's ice-cold one, with those long stiffened and separated fingers. She looked at his ashen face, his chin which had been bandaged with a blood-smeared handkerchief, the blood which had already congealed. She took it all in, but could not believe it.\n\n\"Without saying goodbye?\" she asked in bewilderment. Gholam let out a wail. Zari asked again, \"All alone?\" And now everyone wailed. She wondered where from within their throats they managed to bring out those sounds? And why couldn't she? She could see that Ameh had torn open her collar and was sitting on the stone ledge of the pool. Zari kept asking, \"But why?\" And then the car, and the trees and the people and the pool all swam around and around and went away from her.\n\nWhen she opened her eyes, she found herself stretched out on the rug on the verandah. All the garden lights were on. Did they have guests? There was an odour of mud-plaster in the air. Ameh Khanom was massaging her shoulders, and her body, neck and face felt moist. There was commotion all around. They had propped Yusef up on a wooden bed by the pool. A hatless Gholam was sitting behind him, rocking gently back and forth and repeating, \"My master!\" Haj Mohammad Reza the dyer, with his arms dyed purple to the elbow, was unsuccessfully trying to remove Yusef's boots. Abol-Ghassem Khan was standing over them.\n\n\"Haji, cut the boot open,\" he said. And he shouted for a knife.\n\nYusef didn't have his cloak on. He wasn't wearing his hat either, and Zari thought she must be dreaming. Lately she had had nothing but nightmares\u2014perhaps this was yet another bad dream. She thought she was dreaming of a man they had forced to sit on the wooden bed, and they were cutting open his boots with a knife, but she couldn't see his face. She dreamt that Malek Rostam was holding the torn boot in his hand and shouting, \"O woe is me, woe is me!\"\n\nShe thought, \"What do they call this kind of shouting from the guts? Bawling? Bellowing? Hollering? No, there's a good word for it, but I can't remember it now.\" Then she imagined she was dreaming that Majid had put his head on Yusef's cloak by the bed, and was sobbing out loud. But maybe she wasn't dreaming, since her eyes were wide open.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan came to the verandah. He took out a white handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose as though he had a cold. His eyes and his long nose were bright red. He blinked and said, \"Sister, how quickly you've been widowed! And not even thirty yet! Oh my! Oh my!\"\n\n\"Control yourself, man! Don't frighten a pregnant woman more than she is,\" Ameh said.\n\n\"Pregnant?\" Zari knew she was pregnant, but her mind simply refused to acknowledge what had happened.\n\n\"How did you know?\" she asked Ameh.\n\n\"From your eyes.\"\n\nAgain Zari had the feeling she was dreaming. A man seemed to be sleeping, sprawled over a bed, and despite the heat they had covered him with Yusef's cloak. But she didn't recognize the man. She dreamt that three men were sitting on the children's bed, talking about the man who was laid out on the other bed.\n\nShe managed to distinguish the voices: \"My sister is right,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan was saying, \"it wasn't time for his ideas. Brother, if your spirit is present, forgive me. I envied your intelligence and understanding and education, but as I didn't have those things, I'd make fun of you. Brother, you had the freedom of a cypress, reaching out\u2014\"\n\nThen Majid's voice, \"Yes, but don't be upset now. He knew himself that it wasn't time for his ideas. But he used to say\u2014many times he told me himself\u2014that our duty is to hasten the time for those ideas.\"\n\nAnd Malek Rostam's voice, \"I know that any day now they'll get my poor brother Sohrab, as well. They'll set up a gallows in the Mashq Square and everyone will go to watch.\"\n\nThe voices mingled with the sound of crying.\n\n\"Don't you think one wants to say and do the right things? But when you've started on a downhill course, the only way to go is down and then you're sunk...\" Whose voice was that?\n\nFootsteps could be heard on the gravel of the driveway. But they stopped when they reached the verandah and then resumed again. Zari closed her eyes, feeling as if all her life-forces had been drained and spent, like a squeezed fruit. It was as though a snake had slithered down her throat and coiled itself around her heart, with its head erect, ready to strike, and she knew that for the rest of her life this snake would stay coiled right there around her heart, so whenever she remembered her husband it could sink its fangs into her bosom.\n\nAt Ameh's insistence, she got up and let herself be led by the arm to the parlour. Women were sitting all around on chairs or on the carpet, most of them fanning themselves and whispering together. The men were in the other rooms. She could hear their voices. It was as if they had all been waiting outside the garden gates for her husband's corpse to arrive, with its fair locks bloodied beneath the hat, all the way down to the fair moustache where the blood had clotted, and then they could all come in... the women stood up at the sight of her, but Zari couldn't see anyone clearly enough to recognize them. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was the only exception. Zari's gaze locked for an instant into her cobra-like face, framed by the gaudy hair, and then some sparkling yellow, red, blue and black glass beads took form and danced before her eyes. Most of the women peered at her carefully, shaking their heads and crying. From the other rooms, the men's voices could be heard, topped by Abol-Ghassem Khan's loud weeping.\n\n\"If anyone knows, please tell me too... I'm at a loss...\" he was saying.\n\nBut Zari's eyes and tongue were dry. Not a tear, not a word. She went out to the verandah and sat on the rug. Khosrow, riding Sahar, came through the garden gates and cantered straight to the verandah. He let Sahar go and rushed to his mother.\n\n\"Is it true?\"\n\nZari bent her head and busied herself collecting the glass beads from the rug.\n\n\"Did you pass your exam?\" she asked. All the lights were on. How could he not have seen his father's sprawling corpse beneath that cloak? Why did he keep asking if it was true?\n\n\"Why are you so late?\" Zari asked.\n\n\"Those of us who'd passed treated the others to paludeh ice-cream. But then the janitor came and told me uncle had called to say father was shot but he was just wounded, and he'd come straight home on horseback. Is it true? Where is he now? At the hospital?\"\n\nShe suddenly hugged her son and kissed him, and then the tears began to flow.\n\nBefore long, a lot of people were embracing her and weeping aloud over her and her fate\u2014to have been widowed so soon, to have to raise four orphaned children. Already everyone knew about the fourth. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh came forward too, but she neither embraced her, nor did she cry. She just said, \"I hope this will be the last of your sorrows. At least he's left you enough to raise your children in comfort.\" Hardly saying goodbye, she went away, hobbling down the stairs with a hand to her back. She headed towards Malek Rostam who was sitting on a cane chair by the pool. Malek Rostam stood up and gave her his seat. You could tell Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was talking and Malek Rostam listening. She seemed to shed a few tears too, since she kept dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. A voice announced: \"The droshke is here.\" Ezzat-ud-Dowleh rose and, on Malek Rostam's arm, walked down to the end of the garden.\n\nA few hours later Zari found herself lying on the bed in the cool basement with Khanom Hakim standing over her head. The fountain was on, and she could feel a cold, wet handkerchief on her forehead. She felt the sting of a hypodermic needle. Once, twice, three times... she could see Khanom Hakim placing the cold wooden ear-trumpet on her belly and listening.\n\n\"The baby be all right,\" she said. \"Tonight be best for the burial.\"\n\nZari heard Ameh Khanom reply, \"Why don't you keep to your doctoring! Do you think my brother was a criminal to be buried at night?\"\n\nAnd again Khanom Hakim's voice asking, \"Why be so unpleasant? All three children be delivered by me. So will be fourth.\"\n\nZari realized she was being questioned. \"Why you be not coming sooner to me?\"\n\nZari gave no answer, and Ameh replied rather harshly, \"It's all your 'be this' and 'be that' which has driven everyone mad! If only...\"\n\n\"If only you would get lost.\" Someone had said that in Zari's mind, because Ameh Khanom didn't finish her sentence. Nevertheless, Khanom Hakim seemed to have heard the voice in Zari's mind.\n\n\"Be this the reward for service and self-sacrifice?\" she complained indignantly in a trembling voice. \"We be in strange town with dry air, away from brother and sister and friends... medicines be free, treatment free.\"\n\nThis time the voice in Zari's mind shouted, \"Get lost! Everyone get lost!\"\n\nKhanom Hakim had gone, and Zari could see Khosrow with a fan in his hand. She felt a cool, gentle breeze on her face...\n\n\"Khosrow,\" she murmured.\n\nKhosrow brought his head closer.\n\n\"Do something for your mother... go to Dr Abdullah Khan early tomorrow morning... tell him what a disaster\u2014tell him to come by and visit me for a moment.\"\n\n\"I'll go right now,\" Khosrow said, getting up.\n\n\"No, my love, go tomorrow morning.\"\n\nAmeh came in and Zari heard her say, \"Get up, son, go and eat your dinner. Then to bed. For your late father's sake, be a good boy and go right away.\" How quickly they beseech you by your late father, thought Zari... and sometime after that Khadijeh's voice announced, \"There's a man at the door. He says he's come to give us a hand as an act of charity. He says he dreamt last night that one of Imam Ali's devout servants had just entered the kingdom of God...\"\n\nZari knew they had set up a tent around the pool, and were about to wash her husband's corpse in the pool-water. She knew the pool would be emptied and the water drained that very night, channelled quietly into the garden. The water that had cleansed her husband's body and washed away the dried blood would irrigate the trees. And Hossein Kazerouni would work the treadwheel from midnight to refill the empty pool by morning.\n\nHer ears perked up at the sound of Seyyid Mohammad saying, \"What can I say? Better left unsaid.\" Whose question was he answering? Zari opened her eyes. Seyyid was squatting by the door of the basement, rolling a cigarette. Ameh was sitting on the bed at her feet. Abol-Ghassem Khan and Khosrow were there too. Seyyid licked the thin cigarette-paper and striking a match, said, \"What can I say, really? No-one knew how it happened. The peasants were ready to die for their master. I don't know. Maybe it was the work of the gendarmes, or some others... this business about Kolu's uncle rushing all the way from Kavar to shoot the master and then racing back home is a load of nonsense. It's trivializing the matter; it's even an insult. Whoever had a hand in it, started this rumour themselves. When I got on my horse to come down to the plain, Kolu stopped me and said, 'I shot the master.' I said, 'What did you shoot him with?' He said, 'With my slingshot.' Later I heard he'd said a gun. Then he'd said his uncle had done it. I know they've told him what to say. They think they can fool us. We couldn't find a single trace of Kolu's uncle having been at the village, no matter how carefully we investigated. How could he possibly have gone there without being seen? Yes, he does have a rifle. The master bought if for him himself after Kolu's father died.\"\n\nSeyyid broke off to take a puff. Then he continued. \"Early that morning we'd gone to the store-rooms. The master broke the seals on the doors with his own hand and distributed pulses and dates and flour among the peasants. He teased them and joked with them. He told the women that if they sold their share to buy gold bracelets or go on a pilgrimage, he would disown them. He told the men that if they dared convert their provisions into money to buy new bedclothes and new wives, he would know what to do. Everyone was happy. The master was the happiest of all.\n\n\"Before lunch we went up to the upstairs room in the old fortress. The master sat on his cushion. We'd rolled away the mosquito-net. Elias brought the hookah and set it down next to the master. I asked, 'Shall I remove your boots?' He said, 'No, I'll smoke a pipe and we'll go down to the plain.' Then he asked, 'Has the camel-driver come?' 'Yes,' I answered. Elias said, 'Sir, this agent of Singer's is back again.'\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan's voice interrupted Seyyid's narrative. \"Everyone who came here tonight told me to hush up the matter completely, that the situation is very dangerous. The whole thing comes from the very top\u2014\" And Zari wondered how a man who had been howling with grief only a moment ago could possibly speak like that now.\n\nAmeh's irate voice didn't let Abol-Ghassem Khan finish his sentence. \"Bless my soul!\" she exclaimed, \"Now they want to blot out the blood that's been shed! Brother, listen to me. Hire a lawyer. If you don't, I'll do it myself.\"\n\n\"Sister, I thought you were about to leave for Karbala?\" said Abol-Ghassem Khan sarcastically.\n\n\"Now my Karbala is right here,\" said Ameh with a cry in her voice. \"Happy is the martyr whose blood is one night old. For us, it hasn't even been one night yet.\"\n\n\"Sister, you women are not aware of the things that are going on here,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan said gently. \"Let's say I engaged a lawyer. Who do you think they'll charge with the murder? I'll tell you: Kolu and his uncle... or some other miserable peasant, or perhaps even this very Seyyid here. They'll manipulate things so that eventually we forgive the scapegoat ourselves, or else Kolu will turn out to be the murderer, and he's a minor. Isn't that so, Seyyid?\"\n\n\"If any court decides to act so unjustly,\" replied Seyyid, \"I'm willing to go out there and rouse all the peasants, single-handed. In the whole village, the master was\u2014\"\n\n\"But what's the use? The little money my brother's orphans have left to them will be wasted. Besides, what if they arrest you first? Do you think they can't?\"\n\n\"Uncle,\" Khosrow said, \"in that case Hormoz and I will go and round up the peasants for action. Mr Fotouhi will help us too. And if our money is wasted, it doesn't matter. I'll earn my own bread. Of course I can't do that now. For the time being our mother might have to sew for a living until I grow up\"\u2014and suddenly he broke into tears.\n\nZari wanted to come down from her bed and embrace her son so that they could cry together, but she couldn't. She wasn't even able to open her mouth to say, \"Don't cry, my love.\" What had Khanom Hakim's shots done to her?\n\nAmeh cursed away. \"O Lord,\" she said, \"why did you create me a wretched, veiled female? If I were a man, I'd show them the meaning of manhood.\"\n\nZari expected Abol-Ghassem Khan to lose his temper, but he merely complained quietly, \"All right. Go ahead and insult me by saying I'm not a man. But what else can one do besides surrender and consent?\" After a pause he added, \"Well, all right. These are problems for later, anyway. Give me some time to see what I can do.\"\n\nKhosrow turned to Seyyid Mohammad and asked, \"Isn't Singer's agent that fat man with the pock-marked face?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's him,\" Seyyid answered. \"After Elias announced him, he came up to the top room of the fortress. First he conveyed Captain Singer's greetings, then he said, I've been told to ask you to be sensible. What's the use of distributing wheat among the peasants? Peasants don't think of tomorrow. They go and sell it for several times the price on the black market.' The master laughed\u2014that was the last time he laughed\u2014and answered, 'Go and tell Singer that instead of him and his sort getting fatter by the day, let our peasants get a little richer.' The agent said, 'Captain Singer thinks your best interest lies in not touching the rest of your provisions.' The master answered, 'Since when do I ask Singer about my interests?' I remember every word of that conversation. The agent then said, 'Captain Singer says they can break the locks on the storerooms and take the wheat. Not only the wheat, but also the barley, the pulses and dates that they need. They have a written mandate from the Governor too. After all, they'll be paying you cash. Is that such a bad deal?' The agent went on, 'At a stretch they'll buy the provisions second-hand from the peasants, and they won't be losing on it either. The government has doubled the exchange rate of the pound.' Then the agent bent over and whispered some things in the master's ear which we couldn't hear. But the master lost his temper and shouted, 'To hell with all of them! Don't threaten me with gendarmes either, I'm not afraid of them. If you dare, go and break the storeroom locks with your gendarmes. You have the mandate.' Then he calmed down and said, 'At this point in time provisions have nothing more to do with their war. It's fallen in the hands of their trading company, and the trading company deals in food supplies.' The agent wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, 'Sir, I beg of you, don't be stubborn. Don't fall out with these people, they'll harm you.' Then he asked, 'Aren't we from the same town?' The master replied, 'Yes, unfortunately we are.' The agent said, 'These people aren't really in need of your provisions, but they're afraid of the example you'll be setting.' The master said, 'Actually, that's precisely my intention. In Hamadan people closed their shops and didn't allow a grain of wheat to leave the city gates. Here they've wrecked the Darvazeh Quran gate...' Again the agent whispered in the master's ear for two or three minutes. When he'd finished, the master went deep into thought. He seemed upset, but stayed resolute. He just said, 'Tell Singer I give Sohrab provisions, not weapons.' I was about to go. I had barely crossed the threshold when I heard a gun fire. I turned around, saw the pipe fall over and the master tip to one side. Blood started to gush. Mohammad Mehdi and Elias ran inside... they gave a hand, but the agent didn't budge. I yelled at him and told him to get lost.\"\n\n\"Maybe it was Singer's agent who shot him,\" said Khosrow.\n\n\"No, that man is such a coward, he would fall over if you said 'boo' to him!\" Seyyid said. \"We moved the master off the cushion. I lifted it. They had dug a hole under it the size of my hand. The master was still conscious. He opened his mouth to talk, but he couldn't. I brought my head close to his. He said, 'Kolu... Kolu... take him... to his relatives... Zari... Zari... my children.'\" Seyyid paused, then continued, \"I sent a messenger to Kavar to tell Malek Rostam, and I sent Kolu along with the messenger before any fools got their hands on him to tear him limb from limb. I took the camel-driver and Mirza Agha Hennasab with me down to the plain and I waited until they loaded the camel with provisions. I got a receipt from the Mirza Agha and came here. Here's the receipt. I don't know if I did the right thing. But I know if the master were alive, that's what he would have done.\"\n\n\"What was Mirza Agha Hennasab doing there?\" It was Ameh's voice.\n\n\"He'd come with the camel-driver from Malek Sohrab,\" answered Seyyid.\n\nWith an effort, Zari managed to sit up. \"I wanted to raise my children on love and non-violence,\" she said. \"Now I'll raise them on revenge. I'll give Khosrow a gun.\"\n\n\"I don't blame you,\" said Abol-Ghassem Khan. \"What they've done is unforgivable. But you can't wash away blood with more blood. We have to wait and see what happens.\"\n\nZari lay down again and fell asleep. She began to dream that a strange tree had grown in their garden and Gholam was watering it with blood from a small watering-can. \n\n# _21_\n\nZari was awake. In her mind, someone seemed to be talking. Saying nonsensical things. Things that Zari knew she had heard or read somewhere. Sentences followed each other, but she was not expecting them. Where had they been suspended in her memory to be appearing now?\n\n\"My, but all our wise men have abandoned this town...\"\n\n\"O Dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon... it's me Eilan-ud-Dowleh, it's me Veilan-ud-Dowleh... I'm burning, burning, burning. There's enough fire within me... but because you're younger, you can't take it... how this painted dome, the world, reeks of mischief...\"\n\nShe squeezed her eyes together to block out the flood of sentences plaguing her, but that only made it worse. Now the painting that one of the mental patients had done in the asylum kept appearing before her eyes. The painting depicted a butcher's shop. An icon of the Imam Ali and the image of the young butcher with his hand cut off could be perceived against the shop wall. The shop itself was filled with giant hooks as far as the eye could see, but instead of mutton, there were people hanging by their feet from those hooks, and blood was dripping from their throats.\n\nShe opened her eyes. It must have been well after midnight because there was no electricity and they had lit candles. She saw Abol-Ghassem Khan sitting on the carpet, hugging his knees. Ameh was sitting across from him. Khosrow was there too, as well as Malek Rostam. Seyyid Mohammad was standing in the doorway of the basement. The smell of opium, cigarette smoke, alcohol and charcoal mingled in the air. She could hear the steward's voice in her state of semi-consciousness. He was talking about the funeral and his voice seemed to have gone hoarse as if he had just come down the Mortaz-Ali mountain carrying a jug of wine to go to the grave of the Seven Sufi Saints. Now he opens the tap of the jug and starts to drink. Red drops spill from his thick moustache on to the nameless graves. He puts the jug under the cypress tree and sleeps on a cold slab of stone. When will the jug of wine turn into holy wine? By dawn? By the time the sun rises? \"Gone are the days when people could find a purified drink to use for attaining a mystical state of mind like Hafez,\" Zari thought in her reverie. \"Now they have to swallow gunpowder instead. Gone are the days when they sat humming by a stream and reflected quietly on the passage of time, content just to be with a rosy-cheeked young lover. Now they have to stand next to the dam of life, with its flood charging straight at them, slapping them so hard in the face, they're left reeling for good. By the way, what was the word for shouting from the guts? There was a good word to describe it... but it had to somehow convey piercing or boring. You see, if __ a person can't let out a certain kind of scream when they're hit with the flood, the thunderbolt, or the thrashing of life, their heart is punctured instead, and then all those people with riddled hearts go for each other's throats trying to destroy one another until they're sent off to prison. Or else it goes to their heads, and they lose their minds. Meanwhile, a spoilt, silly, pampered young woman is taking bread and dates to prisoners and lunatics every Thursday. She has a vow to fulfil. But that woman herself is perhaps struggling on the verge of lunacy at this very moment, which is why her mind is ticking so. So fast, she can't stop herself...\" And suddenly Zari was seized with fear. \"Am I going mad?\" She tried to sit up, but it was as if she had been nailed to the mattress.\n\nWhen she lost consciousness, she would dream. Awake, either someone would be talking randomly inside her head, or she would intensely relive bygone incidents drawn out from the recesses of her mind. She no longer distinguished past from present. Sometimes random events materialized before her which she didn't recollect ever having seen or heard. She strained to keep her eyes and ears open, to assure herself that Ameh and Khosrow and the others really did exist, and she could recognize them and hear them. But her eyes and ears would only stay at her service for a short while, and then sooner or later they would drift away from the present reality again.\n\nShe could hear Ameh's voice, \"How did Ezzat-ud-Dowleh manage to get here with those leg-pains of hers? I suppose she came to satisfy her curiosity and see what's going on. Her eyes really lit up whenever she looked at Zari. I told myself how happy poor Zari had made her enemy.\" And she broke off, crying.\n\nThen Malek Rostam was saying, \"Ezzat-ud-Dowleh asked after my brother Sohrab. At first she said she'd heard he was under siege. 'Where did you hear that?' I asked her. She seemed taken aback. 'Well they'll get him anyway,' she said, 'and then Lord have mercy on poor Bibi Hamdam. Whatever you suffer, it's at the hand of your children!' And she burst into tears. Because of her connections with the Governor's family, I thought she might know something, and I tried to prise out of her where she'd heard that Sohrab was surrounded. But she eluded me and said, 'When did I say such a thing? I just said his friends gave him away...' Anyway, she changed her story a hundred times... she said Malek Sohrab was tired, that he had no food or water, that he's turned himself in. When I was helping her into the cab, she said, 'I've heard Bibi Hamdam has begged the Governor for mercy for her son, and now she's gone to bring Sohrab on his own feet to be executed!' I nearly tore off her wig, I was so angry, and wanted to beat her up as much as she could take. But all I said was, 'Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, if you have any specific information, please tell me.' I even made her swear by her darling son Hamid, but she denied knowing anything and pretended it was all rumours. I got into the droshke with her and afterwards rushed to Bibi's house. No-one would answer the door. What if the major-general's promise of a pardon was only words and he'll go back on it... what if\u2014\"\n\n\"Forgive me for saying this,\" interrupted Abol-Ghassem Khan, 'but considering the hell Malek Sohrab raised in the battle of Semirom, I doubt if they would give him a pardon. It's like the story of the husband who said to his wife, 'I told you to dance, but I didn't mean you to overdo it!'\"\n\nYet all Zari could see, clear as day in her half-awake state, was a vision of people coming at dawn to the Baq Takht square, carrying rolled-up rugs on their shoulders. The women were wearing ordinary chadors with face veils, or the large, wide chador with a thin face-cover. The men were crawling on all fours. O Lord, have the townspeople gone stark raving mad? Wasn't this Shiraz, the town where angels bent down to kiss its very soil? I must remember who it was who wrote a eulogy of Shiraz... Sounded like... Mohammad-ibn-Yusef Saqafi. I memorized the title. Yes, this is the land which will nurture many thousand men of bounty. It's the seat of the Sufis, the wellspring of our country, the essence of our Imams' spirituality... oh my, oh my! So where have they gone? Where are these people that are not coming forth now? I've heard a hundred times myself that all our wise men have abandoned this land... they asked a sparrow why he didn't come in winter; he replied, \"What good did you do me in summer that I should come again?\"\n\nAnd now here's Nana Ferdows. There's a small rolled-up rug inside the bath bowl she's carrying on her head. And here's Ezzat-ud-Dowleh leaning on Ferdows, limping along. Oh dear, look! Ezzat-ud-Dowleh sits down on the rug in front of all those people without her veil, and her gaudy hair is showing. No. It seems as though she's wearing a wig like a turban. Here's Hamid Khan, her son. The bastard reaches out and pulls at Ferdows's breast. He's pulling very hard. Ferdows gets up to go about her business. Her legs are tapered and shapely in those transparent stockings. Everyone is staring open-mouthed at Ezzat-ud-Dowleh and her son and Ferdows. Then they burst out laughing.\n\nWhere has Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's husband been all this time and why is he arriving only now? Maybe he's escaped from the grave. He's been dead for a long time, you know. Oh look, he's wearing a cashmere brocade cloak and a brimless hat in this heat. His hat is very, very tight and it's squeezing his forehead. There's a perforated hole in the corner of the hat too... Oh I know! He's back to kill Massoud Khan all over again. He reaches under his brocade cloak and brandishes a long pistol which he aims at Massoud Khan and bang... bang... bang... he drags the corpse on the ground and abandons it on the green by Seyyid Abol-Vafa's shrine. But it seems as if Massoud Khan isn't dead. He rolls in the grass among the cucumbers and the pumpkins and eggplants. He opens his eyes and stares at all the people who've come to watch him. \"Water!\" he moans. Soon there's pandemonium in town. Massoud Khan is dead. He died in Haj Agha's arms in the droshke. There's no-one to calm down the crowd. They're about to raid the Jewish quarter. They're charging into the houses. People are running to the roof-tops and hoisting a British flag to proclaim that they're under the protection of His Majesty's British government. What chaos! The men who are on the roof-tops jump down quickly to the ground. Each man is carrying a basin on his head. They put the basins down on the ground. In each basin is a severed head dripping with blood. What a lot of noise they're making!\n\nThey've tied Malek Sohrab's hands behind his back, but he's laughing so hard he could fall over. He staggers to the left and right. Children follow him, clapping and chanting, \"Bring him here! Bring him here! Give him to the bride!\"\n\nNow they're erecting a gallows in the middle of the Baq Takht. What a loud hammering! Why didn't they do all this earlier so Malek Sohrab wouldn't have to wait? The men's eyebrows have grown so bushy, they cover their eyes. The men push back their eyebrows so they can see better. The women, sitting on the rugs, are straining to see what's going on. There's room for everyone. But they all have a problem with their eyes. How the eyeballs spin around! Maybe their eyes have rolled to the back of their heads! No. The men had their eyes under their eyebrows, didn't they? But the women are so wrapped up in their veils, you can't tell where their eyes are.\n\nThey bring Malek Sohrab to the gallows, but instead of putting the noose around his neck, a soldier with a gun on his shoulder comes and ties him to the stake. Malek Sohrab gives the soldier a surprised look and says, \"Gently! Not so tight\u2014you're hurting my foot.\" And then he says, \"That's better now.\" And he laughs. He laughs so heartily, it echoes all around the Baq Takht. The same soldier tries to blindfold Malek Sohrab with a black handkerchief but Malek Sohrab says, \"There's no need for that! Pull the trigger as quickly as you can. On the temple, between the eyes, in the heart, aim wherever you please. It doesn't make any difference if you do it sooner or later. I'll be standing right here. I've been waiting here for you for a long time. You can even chop me up with an axe.\"\n\nOh no, the ropes have turned into such snakes! Thank goodness Haj Mohammad Reza the dyer has arrived. He's wrapped some felt around his hand, takes the snakes' heads one by one, and thrashes them to the ground.\n\nAnd here comes Bibi Hamdam in her wide breeches. She shouldn't have come. Why should anyone come to the hanging of her own son? Maybe Malek Sohrab's first wife is being avenged this way. Weren't Sohrab and his wife madly in love? Yes, they were. But Bibi Hamdam wouldn't stop talking about infertility and childlessness. Wait! The Quran reciters are here too. There's no need to count them. They'll arrange their voices in unison and chant the Al-Rahman verse... Malek Sohrab's poor wife used to say, \"Bibi Hamdam, if you wouldn't plague us about having children every minute, we wouldn't worry about it ourselves and ruin our happy life together.\" And she'd told the story of another barren woman. What a night that had been! They were in the village and Zari was pregnant with the twins. Her pregnancy had reminded Bibi Hamdam of her desire for grandchildren. None of them could sleep a wink. It was so hot. Zari's hands and feet felt as if they were on fire. If she tried going outside the mosquito net, mosquitoes would attack her... She was parched with thirst. Further away, Malek Sohrab and his first wife were sleeping under their mosquito net. Bibi Hamdam had stayed indoors. There was a lot of noise; first the chanting of religious mourners, then the barking of dogs, next the tinkling of sheep-bells as the sheep stirred in their sleep, even the sound of crows quarrelling about whether the sun was coming up or not... and all Zari could think of was the story Malek Sohrab's wife had told:\n\n\"A woman who desperately wanted children went to a dervish. He told her to fast for forty days and on the fortieth day to go up on the mountain and wash her body under a waterfall. But there was one condition. She was not to think of monkeys. She was allowed to think of all sorts of things, but not monkeys. Five times the woman went up the mountain and stood under the waterfall, each time after forty days of fasting. Yet she could not rid herself of the thought of monkeys. Each time the one thing that crossed her mind was the image of a huge, hairy monkey. Finally she went back to the dervish and said, 'Your remedy didn't work. If you hadn't mentioned monkeys, I would never have thought of them in a hundred years. But now that you have...'\"\n\nAnd here's Captain Singer with his short, pleated tartan kilt which he has embroidered all along the edge himself! He sits behind the Singer sewing-machine and sews away... But this is no time for sewing! How fast he treadles the machine! His eyes run from one end of the fabric to the other. He does a zig-zag stitch. No, it's lattice-work. The material is as full of holes as a sieve. Now he's standing up to make a speech.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen,\" he says, \"Give alms! We have brought you civilization as a gift.\" His eyes fall on Zari, and he says with a smile, \"When madam gives you hand, you kiss madam's hand.\"\n\nPeople are clapping, but not for Singer. They're clapping for the little cherubs who are coming down sun-beam ladders with sacks full of stars. The cherubs come amongst the people and give each person his own star. Zari receives hers too. The cherub tells her, \"Now it's up to you. Our heavenly Master is weary. Very, very weary.\" But Zari loses her star. Now she's searching everywhere, rummaging in every cupboard, and throwing out all the rubbish from the attic. She hunts in every trunk in the store-room, but nowhere can she find her star. She is wandering in the garden. She looks on top of the brick walls and under the trees. She asks Khadijeh, \"Have you seen my star?\"\n\nA tearful voice says, \"Now that you haven't found any saffron, make some halva from chalk instead.\" It's Ameh.\n\nA doleful voice sighs, \"You can make halva with chalk, but you can't eat it.\" This time it's Malek Rostam.\n\nAnd again Ameh's voice which sounds stronger, \"Khadijeh, make some yellow-rose halva for my young flower who died... alas! alas! The tears dry up, but the sorrows remain.\"\n\nThe door slammed and someone entered. Zari opened her eyes. Seyyid Mohammad said, \"They answered the telephone. His Holiness the head of the Sufi dervishes said we could have the memorial service in the House of Ali. The Imam's house is open to everyone.\"\n\n\"Fancy being parliamentary deputy of this town and not being able to hold your own brother's funeral in the Vakil Mosque! Ah! well, write it down, Khosrow... what date is the day after tomorrow?\" Abol-Ghassem Khan had been speaking.\n\n\"The thirty-first of Mordad.\" It was Khosrow's voice.\n\n\"Write down, 'On the occasion of the tragic passing away of our dearly beloved young...'\"\n\n\"Passing away?\" interrupted Ameh's voice. \"Put down, 'martyrdom'!\"\n\n\"Sister, I'd be grateful if you'd let us do what we have to do. I persuaded him with a great deal of difficulty to print the announcement, but the man set down a thousand conditions... one of his conditions...\"\n\n\"I think you should write martyrdom too,\" said Malek Rostam.\n\nWhat a foul odour there was in the air! If only a passer-by would throw out the charcoal brazier. If only he would ask, \"What's wrong with your patient here; why is he lying like a corpse, like a dead body, on the bed? Let me take him to the garden underneath that grafted fruit-tree. Outside, the sky is full of stars.\"\n\nZari's heart would race away and palpitate, then race away again. She would close her eyes and see a truck on fire, burning away. An officer comes and stretches out on top of a dead soldier in a trench.\n\nAnd again Ameh's voice, \"It's cat-shit. They've left the top of the coal-bin open and the cat's dirtied inside it. Khadijeh, come and take away the brazier. I don't want it, after all.\" Then she went on, \"Have all the rooms been cleaned? Did they drain the pool? Did Gholam sweep the garden?\"\n\nAnd now Zari sees a little girl with braided hair tied up in ribbons, standing by the herbalist's store on top of the Moshir Hill. She needs seven ingredients to make black shoe-polish, by order of her physics teacher. Actually, that shoe-polish will never turn out properly; she'll make a gel like black frog-spawn and no-one knows whose fault it is\u2014the girl's, the physics teacher's, or the herbalist's? The herbalist has gone to the back of the shop to look for the seven ingredients. It's late afternoon and the girl is in a hurry to get back to school to make shoe-polish during the fourth lesson. Suddenly a man on horse-back approaches her. The rider is Prince Charming himself; he looks so handsome and erect on his horse. He has green eyes... they shine like emeralds in the sun. And now as he stands in the shade, they look moss-green.\n\n\"Do you know how to get to the Sang-e Siah, my dear?\" he asks. The girl panics. There is no-one around that afternoon. Still she ventures, \"Do you want to go to the Sibavayh grave?\"\n\n\"No, my dear. I want to go to the house of Sufis, the Khan-i Qah.\"\n\n\"Are you a dervish, then? You want to go to the House of Ali?\"\n\nThe rider laughs and his white teeth glisten. \"No, I'm not a dervish,\" he replies. \"My steward is a dervish. He's ill and he's staying at the Khan-i Qah. I'm going to visit him.\"\n\n\"Well then, go straight ahead. Then turn right. After that, turn left, and another left... But you can't go on horseback. The little back-alleys are full of bumps and stones.\"\n\nNow that she's given him directions, why isn't the rider going away? Why is he looking her up and down? Yes, I understand. He's wondering why she, of all women, should be without a veil.\n\n\"I must explain,\" she thinks to herself, \"or he'll think I'm Armenian.\"\n\n\"My father was Mirza Ali Akbar Khan Kafar,\" she says out loud; \"he stated in his will that I should never wear a veil.\"\n\nThe rider takes off his hat. It's a strange-looking one with a brim, but it's not the new pahlavi hat. He bows to the girl and says, \"I never asked why you're not wearing a veil.\"\n\nAnd he leaves.\n\nBut what will? As if there had been anything to bequeath! That very afternoon, with the shoe-polish gel still on her hands, there is news of unrest in town. The English headmistress lines up all the girls and tells them to put their face-veils in their satchels and that heavier veils would be brought for them from home. But unlike other times she doesn't nag and say, \"This country doesn't deserve to be civilized.\" Her glance falls on the girl with braided hair and ribbons, and she asks, \"Zari, do you know how to wear a chador?\"\n\nWhether or not she knows how to wear a veil is irrelevant, because there's no-one at home to bring one to her. Khanom Hakim has been cutting up her mother's breast at the Missionary Hospital, and that's where they're keeping her for the time being. Who knows how long it will take for her to get better? Her brother's away doing his military service and he won't be back for a long time. Their old maid-servant is too feeble-minded to find out what is going on in town and to bring her a veil. Well, everybody is leaving the school now. Nazar Ali Beg the Indian janitor agrees to fetch a chador and face-veil for her after all the other pupils have left. But it would take so long for everyone to leave.\n\nServants arrive to take the girls home, bringing them the veils which they put on before leaving. But there she is still, all by herself. Now she is alone with Nazar Ali Beg and it's getting dark. She's afraid. Nazar Ali Beg has a long moustache which droops lower on one side. His face, too, is slightly crooked. He explains that ruffians have poured into the streets and alleys, tearing away at women's face-coverings or men's brimmed hats, and that eventually they'll get to the school too, and break all the windows. She's afraid of Nazar Ali Beg because he keeps saying in his funny Persian, \"Khanom, good Khanom!\" But at the same time, she doesn't want him to go fetch her a chador, leaving her all alone in that vast school-building.\n\nSuddenly she has an idea. She decides to call the house of the head dervish and ask Mehri to send her a chador. She's glad she's had such a good idea. She prays the rider she saw that afternoon is still at the dervishes' house. She telephones and then sits by the pool and daydreams. She dreams that she's riding with Prince Charming on his horse; they're galloping towards Baba Kouhi, the mountain dervish, and she's singing for him:\n\n\"The lips of the Turkoman maiden should not have been created so perfectly...\"\n\nThey're knocking at the school-door. Yes, it's him. The girl smiles when she sees him. But this time he's on foot and hatless, and is carrying a parcel wrapped in newspaper. He holds out the parcel and says, \"Here, put it on. I'll take you home.\"\n\n\"Sahib, good Sahib!\" says Nazar Ali Beg.\n\nThe girl doesn't know how to keep the veil on properly, and it keeps slipping off.\n\n\"Do you have a safety-pin?\" the man asks Nazar Ali Beg. Nazar Ali reaches behind his coat collar and produces an ordinary pin.\n\nThe girl walks off with the man, though she can't really see where she's going and nearly trips.\n\n\"Why did they bother you...?\" she manages to ask.\n\n\"There wasn't anyone else. The dervishes had disappeared into their little cubicles. Mehri Khanom, the niece of the head of the dervishes, asked me to deliver this chador to you on my way. She said your name is Khanom Zahra. My name is Yusef.\"\n\nThe headmistress of the English School had taught them, on being, introduced, to extend a hand, smile and say, \"How do you do!\" But how could she? Both her hands were taken up\u2014one with her chador, the other with her books. The man continues, \"I knew your father. I used to study English with him, until I went abroad. He was a great man, in his own right. He inspired noble ambitions in his students.\"\n\nThe girl remains silent. \"Mehri Khanom has been telling me that your mother enjoys going under the surgeon's knife,\" the man says. \"She enjoys having part of her flesh cut off and thrown away. Apparently every day she finds an excuse to go to the Missionary Hospital\u2014one day it's a bruise on her big toe, another day it's a lump in her breast...\"\n\n\"You mean to say Mehri doesn't think my mother has cancer and she's wasting her time with all this surgery? I hope to God that's true.\"\n\nThe girl is looking at the man's shoes. She stops abruptly and says, \"Your right shoe-lace is undone.\"\n\nThe man bends over and ties his shoe-lace. How quickly she's become familiar with the stranger! It's as if she's known him for years. And what does the man think now? That she's the kind of girl who comes away with him easily and even confides in him! Thank God she's wearing a veil and face-cover, and no-one will recognize her. Thank goodness there isn't a soul in the Jewish quarter. What if the man thinks she planned all this to catch him? Well, in fact she had. Mehri had realized this too and tried to help her.\n\n\"Mehri's face is as lovely as a flower, isn't it?\" she asks. The man smiles and says, \"I didn't see her face. She was wearing a veil.\"\n\n\"We were classmates up until the sixth grade. Every day we'd gather round the stove and she would teach us the Quran and religious law. Then she would tell us the stories she'd read in the Thousand and One Nights. She has a good voice too. She sang us Masnavi poems... the one that goes, 'I sight the King in any guise...' I've forgotten the first part.\"\n\n\"I want an eye to sight a King\n\nTo sight the King in any guise.\"\n\nThe girl has to make an effort to control herself. She's about to say, \"I sight you!\"\n\nThat was really why she quoted the verse in the first place.\n\n\"Has anyone ever told you your voice is as soft as velvet?\"\n\nThe girl doesn't make a sound.\n\n\"You were talking about Mehri Khanom...\" says the man.\n\n\"Anyway, she left school to get married... I don't know why her husband divorced her after a year. The husband died soon after. They say her uncle, the head of the Sufi dervishes, had cursed him...'\n\n\"Do they stuff your head with these superstitions at the English School?\"\n\nThe girl is hurt and stays silent.\n\n\"What class are you in?\" asks the man again.\n\n\"Eighth grade in Persian and ninth in English,\" answers the girl, still hurt.\n\nThere is no-one in the back-alleys. No-one has lit the street-lamps. The girl wants to lift her face-cover but she doesn't dare. It's a good thing she knows her way home by heart and is familiar with all the bumps and ditches. She could walk home with her eyes shut.\n\n\"Mehri Khanom talked about you all the time,\" says the man. \"She said you once dealt your headmistress a severe blow by reciting the poem about Samson's blindness in front of the Oriental Missionary Council...\"\n\n\"The poem just happened to come to my mind. I didn't mean to be cheeky or anything.\"\n\n\"You're modest, too!\"\n\nNow they've reached the bazaar and they're both quiet. In the bazaar they have lit a few oil lamps which they've placed on stools in front of the shops. But all the shops are closed. There are seven or eight policemen roaming around. There's quite a din but it's coming from the sword-makers' section. In the main bazaar itself, a few people are going on their way.\n\n\"They've blamed it on them again!\" mutters the man. The girl doesn't understand what he means. Or maybe she didn't hear correctly.\n\nThey reach the vaulted passageway which is darker than anywhere else. The man takes the girl's arm, and the girl flushes. Her whole body seems to be flushed, in a way she has never experienced before... Now they reach the girl's house. She politely invites him to come in and have a drink, but she's praying he won't accept. He doesn't come in.\n\n\"I remember you had a winter-sweet bush in your house in those days,\" says the man.\n\n\"We still do.\"\n\n\"They're hard to grow, but when they take well, they flower every year... and what long-lasting, fragrant flowers!\"\n\nShe both wants him to go and yet she doesn't. She asks him out of the blue, \"Have you done your military service?\"\n\n\"I'm going this autumn.\"\n\n\"It takes two years, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"Try to grow up as soon as you can.\"\n\nAnd again Zari doesn't understand his meaning. Later when she tells her mother the story, her mother agrees that God had sent the stranger to save her girl... and then... three years later, when that same man comes to ask for her hand...\n\nWhat pandemonium in the garden! She had been having good dreams. Obviously she must be getting better if her nightmares and delirium have left her in peace. Someone was roaring in the garden: \"Ya Hu, Ya Haq, Ya Ali.\" It was Seyyid Mohammad's voice.\n\n\"Khadijeh, what happened to the lemon juice?\" Gholam asked.\n\nZari thought he must be drunk. \"Take him to the Seven Saints,\" she said out loud.\n\nAmeh came towards her. \"Did he wake you up?\"\n\nZari opened her eyes. Only Ameh was left in the basement with her. \"They'll wake the children with their noise. They'll frighten them,\" Zari said.\n\n\"Don't worry. Mehri is keeping the children tonight; she'll keep them tomorrow too. I sent Khosrow up to bed on the roof after a thousand pleas.\"\n\nThe noise in the garden abated for an instant. From somewhere, the monotonous chanting of the Quran could be heard like a hum. Someone was retching. Retching. Someone else was cursing out loud and saying, \"You're sitting up there watching, are you? Why don't you step down here for a second, taste your own broth which you've been giving our folks... I spit on the bloody\u2014\"\n\nSomeone started to sing:\n\n\"A houseful of drunks already\n\nMore drunks have now arrived!\"\n\nAmeh put a hand to Zari's forehead and said, \"They've been sitting around together drinking so much spirits, they're all drunk now.\" And she added with concern, \"You try to sleep.\"\n\n\"What if Khosrow wakes up and falls off the roof? I wish you'd sent him off to Mehri's too.\"\n\n\"Hormoz is sleeping on one side of him, Majid Khan on the other.\"\n\n\"Ya Hu, Ya Haq, Ya Ali!\" It was Seyyid Mohammad's voice in the distance. Close by, a man's incessant weeping broke the thread of her fantasies, and Zari felt as though that sound would never end. She opened her eyes. She saw Malek Rostam sitting with his head in his hands, sobbing out loud. Abol-Ghassem Khan was sitting there too, pale as a corpse, as if he were the one who had died.\n\n\"Malek Rostam Khan, please stop crying for this poor woman's sake. She'll wake up,\" said Ameh.\n\n\"I told Khanom Hakim to give her a shot that would put her to sleep,\" said Abol-Ghassem Khan. \"I said if she stayed awake she wouldn't last till the morning. This blow will shatter her by dawn. I wish she'd given me a shot too.\"\n\nThe weeping hasn't ceased but Zari's mind has fled all the misery and sorrow... and sees herself hand in hand with Yusef crossing a field of wheat. The golden wheat is ripe and bends its head to the twilight breeze. Zari and Yusef come to a stream of water and sit down until it gets dark... they're sitting in the dark and holding hands, and Zari feels as though there's no-one else in the world besides herself and Yusef. She puts her head on Yusef's shoulder and listens to his heartbeat. How long did they sit in the darkness without talking?\n\nThat night they sat by the window in the darkness and stared out at the garden... that night Baba Kouhi told their fortunes, reading from Hafez, \"The harvest of our work in this world is not so important!\" And he recited the ode to the end. Then he predicted, \"It will pass in the twinkling of an eye. It's as close as the mouth to the lip.\"\n\nBaba Kouhi went to his own room while Zari and Yusef sat in the darkness and stared at the town-lights. They came down the mountain holding hands in the blackness of the night. That night, in the twins' bedroom, Yusef took the keychain from Marjan's pillow and put the lights off. He held Zari's hand while they stood still in the darkness, listening to the children's breathing. Then they slept together stark naked under the mosquito net, waking Khosrow up with their noise, and he called out to his father. Yusef hurriedly pulled on his night-clothes and went to him, saying, \"Go to sleep, son, it's nothing.\" He came back and they both sat up in the mosquito net, their hearts pounding so loudly they could hear it, and they waited for Khosrow's breathing to become even again. And all those days and nights which came and went...\n\nAgain Ameh's voice, but Zari didn't want to hear it. She was having pleasant dreams, yet the voice imposed itself, \"I have a black scarf and dress myself, but Zari doesn't. My poor brother disliked black. When Zari's mother died, he didn't let her wear black for more than forty days. I had to give a scarf and dress of hers tonight to Haj Mohammad to be dyed black. I gave all the bed sheets to be dyed black also. He said he would stay up the whole night to do the clothes and sheets. The weather is warm; they'll be dry by morning.\"\n\n\"The sheets?\" asked Abol-Ghassem Khan.\n\n\"I want to cover all the rooms in black. I'll throw black sheets over all the seat-cushions around the room.\"\n\nBut Zari is in the village now, not in the basement of their house. She is in the village, and she knows that they are reaping the last field. She knows Yusef is waiting for her by the mill. She is supposed to reach him before the sun leaves the fields, and it's a long way there. She comes out of the landlord's house. The village women in their chadors are squatting, washing their tea-things in the stream of water which issues from the landlord's house. They greet Zari when they see her, and she stops to chat with them. She points to Kolu's mother's rounded belly and says, \"You've filled your pot again!\"\n\nShe looks at Goldusti, Kolu's aunt who has just got married and is wearing heavy make-up. Zari says, \"You're having a good time of it, aren't you?\"\n\nKolu is there too, idling about. Zari pats him on his wavy hair and says, \"Run to Seyyid Mohammad. Tell him to saddle the horse and bring it here.\"\n\nKolu giggles and runs off.\n\nZari mounts the horse and rides through the harvested fields. The wheat has been piled around like so many heaps of gold. The men are stacking the hay, tying it in bundles with black rope and loading it on the mules. The men greet her as she passes by every field. She returns their greeting kindly and rides away. When she reaches the upper village, she is surprised. Just above the lowlands they have covered up the doors of all the houses with mud. It looks as if the village is deserted. Yes, actually there are a few people\u2014several tribal women going on their way. But the tribe has already migrated to its summer quarters. She saw them going away herself. They pitched tent for a few days in the upper village and then left.\n\nShe leaves the fields and the men and women behind. And she reaches the last field moments before the sun disappears. The men are still reaping. The women gleaners, wearing black scarves on their heads, sit in a row to one side of the field. She knows Yusef always tells the men to reap carelessly so the gleaners can pick up something for themselves afterwards. It's for this reason that the gleaners always bring two large woollen sacks with them. She spies Yusef sitting on a rug in front of the mill, smoking the hookah, a thin cloak thrown over his shoulders. Yusef sees her too, and comes forward to greet her still wearing his cloak. He sweeps her off the horse and puts her down on the ground. \"Come share my cloak,\" he says. \"You're sweating; I'm afraid you'll catch cold.\" Then he says, \"The sun was on your hair and made it look the colour of musk-willow in the distance.\"\n\nZari sits on the rug, wrapped under Yusef's cloak. The miller has planted three Marvel of Peru bushes in front of the mill, and now, at sunset, he is watering them from a tin watering-can. He is covered with white flour from head to toe. Even his eyebrows, eyelashes and hair are powdered white.\n\nThe miller brings a tin tray which he places on the rug before them. There are two loaves of round bread which he has baked himself, a bowl of home-made yogurt, and a bunch of fresh spring onions. He has also put salt and pepper for them on two bits of paper. Zari prepares a large mouthful of bread and yogurt which she offers to Yusef. Yusef laughs and says, \"I know you're hungry, coming all this way. Eat it yourself.\" And how hungry she is...\n\nBehind the mill is the landlord's summer-crop, watered by the stream which turns the mill. Yusef gets up and goes. When he returns, Zari sees that he has filled his cloak with something. The miller brings a brazier full of coal-fire. A blackened old kettle is sitting in the corner of the brazier. He places the brazier on one side of the rug. Yusef has picked a lot of corn-cobs. He puts them on the fire and fans them with the top of a cardboard box which the miller has given him.\n\nZari and Yusef go over to the gleaners. Their sacks are brimming, and they've tied them together with a piece of rope. The men help the women heave the sacks on to their shoulders before they start off. Zari falls in step with a middle-aged woman who is one of the last to leave.\n\n\"Mother, why are you wearing a black scarf?\" she asks.\n\nThe woman doesn't seem to hear. Instead of answering the question, she blesses Zari. \"May you live long, my dear. May Allah bring you health and prosperity.\"\n\n\"Why are you all wearing black scarves?\" Zari asks again.\n\nThe woman hears her this time. \"Bless you, my dear,\" she says, \"tonight is the eve of Savushun. Tomorrow is the day of mourning. If the Khan's guide has arrived, we'll be there by the cock's crowing... as soon as we arrive they'll start beating on the drums and the kettle drums.\"\n\n\"Where is this Savushun?\"\n\nAgain the woman hasn't heard. \"No, my dear,\" she answers, \"we'll be going on mules. Your servant Mohammad Taghi has brought the mules, and he's waiting for us under the Gissu tree. He'll be getting a whole sackful for the fare.\"\n\nThe woman stops. She's becoming talkative. She continues, \"When we arrive, we all sit around the arena in a wide circle. They bring hot tea, bread and gingerbread... as well as rose-water drink, sweet grapes... they hand out lunch and dinner on the eve of Savushun. In the middle of the arena they've put firewood which they set alight. All of a sudden you look up and you see the night has faded. But it's well before dawn when, God bless him, he appears high up on the mountain riding his steed. You'd think he was praying right there on horseback. He lifts a Quran to his brow and prays for all Moslems in the world. God Almighty. He is wearing black from head to toe. Even his horse is black. He comes down and jumps over the fire on horse-back. We women clamour and scream. The men cheer, the boys whistle, they play drums and kettle drums, and suddenly you see the sunrise, and the whole arena is now bright.\"\n\nZari enjoys listening to the woman's talk. \"Well, what happens next?\" she asks.\n\nThe woman has fallen behind her fellow-gleaners; she's following them with her eyes. Zari notices and says, \"No, you go ahead and catch up with them. You'll be late.\"\n\n\"By the time they pack their things and gather the children, I'll soon catch them up.\" And the woman adds, \"Bless you, my dear, you're our mistress and benefactor. Now you want me to tell you this story.\"\n\n\"All right, let's go together,\" says Zari. \"You can tell me on the way.\"\n\nAgain, they walk in step. The middle-aged woman continues, \"God bless him, he comes all alone towards the arena. He circles slowly. He's thinking. How can he fight so many of the accursed enemy single-handed? From one side of the arena the Princes of Earth come to the middle to see if he'll allow them to help him.\"\n\n\"Princes of what?\"\n\n\"One group are holding some soil in their hands and wear flowery brown headgear. They are the Princes of Earth. Another group have fans in their hands, and are fanning themselves; these are the Princes of Air. Others wearing black and holding torches are the Princes of Fire. They come to his aid from the three comers of the arena. Finally, from the fourth corner, a wandering dervish appears, chanting the name of Ali...\" The woman sighs. \"Ali, my saviour... don't abandon your humble believers... in justice,\" she says. \"The dervish's begging-cup is full of rose-water drink. He takes the horse's bridle and says, 'Drink a sip of this in the memory of Imam Hussein's thirsty lips.' But he throws the drink to the ground and dismisses the princes. All alone, waiting for the accursed enemy, the rider stays there on his horse. He has no sword, no bow and arrow. The sun has now spread from one end of the arena to the other... Suddenly the accursed enemy, riding their horses, charge from all four corners. Thirty or forty of them attack his holy person. They fight... the drums roll... they beat harder and harder on them... and now so loud and fast, your heart is about to explode.\n\n\"Finally they pursue his horse and drag him down from it. They tie the bridle around his blessed neck. They put the saddle on his shoulders. They tie his hands behind him, but he doesn't utter a sound. His bare black horse stands there neighing so loudly it echoes all around. One of those villains is dressed as the executioner. He comes forward and takes the horse's bridle which they've tied around his highness's neck. This man is mounted, but that poor, lonely captive is on foot. They drag him all around the arena, and he keeps stumbling and getting up again. He's bloodied, his black clothes are torn and covered with dirt. But he doesn't moan or show his pain.\"\n\nThe middle-aged woman is crying and she wipes her eyes with the corner of her black scarf. She blows her nose before continuing between tears, \"Then that villain dismounts and puts a sword to his noble throat. He covers his face like a sheep and places his head at the edge of a basin... He sharpens his knife before our eyes... Sharpens it like a razor. But by the will of God, the blade will not cut. Then he lays him face down and puts the knife to the back of his neck. The oboe plays so mournfully... oh so mournfully. Suddenly you see his horse covered with blood, just like that! His mane is dripping with blood. Our elders say that once, in Solat's time, his highness's black horse hadn't been able to bear it and had died of grief right there. I've seen the poor animal's tears several times with my own two eyes.\" She pauses and wipes her eyes again.\n\n\"We women put hay over our heads in mourning. Our men take two mud-tiles each which they beat together to shake dust and hay over their feet, and then they do the same over their heads...\"\n\nZari feels her eyelids burning. She nearly puts an arm around the woman and cries along with her. But they've reached the Gissu tree now. The woman says goodbye, blessing her again, and a man who is probably Mohammad Taghi comes forward to help the woman remove the sacks from her back and get up on the mule...\n\nZari and Yusef are riding their horses side by side.\n\n\"Do you know what Savushun is?\" Zari asks Yusef.\n\n\"It's a mourning ritual. All the people of the upper village observe it tonight.\"\n\n\"Is that why they've covered up the doors of their houses with mud?\"\n\n\"Yes, their trip will take a few days.\"\n\n\"A village where houses have no doors, and where the inhabitants meet under the Gissu tree to go to the Savushun together!\" Zari says sadly.\n\n\"In other words, the mourning of Siavush's death. The people of the upper village leave every year after the harvest and return in time for the corn-threshing.\"\n\nThey both fall silent. It's getting dark on the lowlands. They ride their horses and stare ahead. Zari's eyelids are burning as tears roll quietly down her cheeks. So quietly Yusef wouldn't know. But she is already sobbing. She cries with all her heart.\n\nA hand wiped away her tears. It was Ameh's hand.\n\n\"I beg you by Yusef's departed spirit not to cry,\" said Ameh.\n\n\"I was crying for Siavush,\" said Zari, sitting up. \"At first I didn't know about him, and I disliked him. But now I know him well and I feel sorry for him... I was standing under the Gissu tree, crying for Siavush. Pity I don't have long hair, otherwise I would have cut it off and hung it on the tree like all the others.\"\n\nWhat had she said to hush them up? Why were they staring at her? A silence and a stare you couldn't endure. Zari felt as though something fell and shattered inside her. Who had told her once, \"A storm raged within the folds of my body\"?\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan put a hand to his waist, stood up and came towards her. \"How many times did I tell that poor soul not to let this weak, fragile woman go so often to the asylum? But he wouldn't listen...\" he said.\n\n\"For heaven's sake, man, don't go jumping to conclusions,\" said Ameh.\n\n\"Someone was telling me the story of Savushun,\" said Zari. \"How he'd been all alone and the enemy numbered a thousand... of course, he couldn't overcome them single-handed...\"\n\nMalek Rostam spoke up from where he was sitting, \"Abol-Ghassem Khan, sir, please sit down.\" And he whispered something quietly.\n\nBut Zari managed to catch what he was saying. \"Don't worry,\" she heard him say, \"she hasn't gone mad. Why can't someone cry for Siavush?\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan beat himself on the head and said, \"Who's Siavush? What's the Gissu tree? The world is spinning and crumbling all around me... under the rubble... a pity, a thousand times a pity.\"\n\n\"I've attended Savushun many times myself,\" Malek Rostam said. \"When the Ta'zieh passion play was banned, that was stopped too. And the Gissu tree is famous all over the lowlands.\"\n\n\"The first time I saw the Gissu tree, from a distance I thought it was a wishing tree with all those bits of yellow, brown and black ribbons hanging from it,\" explained Zari. \"But when I went closer, I realized those ribbons were in fact braided locks of hair. Hair that belonged to young women who had lost their husbands... or sons, or brothers...\"\n\nWhy was Abol-Ghassem Khan frightened and listened to, but still didn't believe, whatever they were telling him? Why did Ameh too start to doubt and didn't say anything anymore, but Malek Rostam kept reassuring them it was all right to cry for Siavush? Zari put her head on the pillow again and thought, \"If only they would just let me be happy in my own thoughts, riding horses in my dreams, walking over reaped fields, sitting hand in hand with Yusef by the piles of wheat... I'd put my head in Yusef's lap and he would rub my temples with his fingers and say, 'I'm willing to bet you're going to be just fine.'\" \n\n# _22_\n\nFinally that bloated night of nightmares and terrors released its grip on Zari. At dawn, she got up. Her knees were shaky and her mouth had an acrid taste. She went out to the garden and listened to the sound of water pouring from the stone head into the pool. She washed her hands and face. The coolness of the air, the freshness of the garden, the smell of the moist earth, the chirping of the early sparrows, the clean water which had reached half-way up the pool\u2014all of these revived her somewhat.\n\nThey had left the wooden beds in the shade of the building next to the pool, and covered them with carpets. Khadijeh came out, carrying a tray which she placed on one of the beds.\n\n\"I knew you would feel better in the morning,\" she said, greeting Zari. \"Thank God! I broke an egg for you, I burnt some wild rue to ward off the evil eye. I tried all kinds of vows and prayers.\"\n\nShe spread a tablecloth on one of the wooden beds, and put some knives and plates on it. She went away to fetch the samovar and came back with it minutes later, boiling and ready for the tea. Zari sat down cross-legged by the tablecloth. Her stomach growled with hunger.\n\n\"We couldn't find your keychain last night even though we searched everywhere for it,\" said Khadijeh. \"There's probably some sugar, tea and saffron in the store-room. I know we have a bottle of sugar syrup... by the way, Khanom, we're short of fans, too.\"\n\n\"Where are they reciting the Quran?\" Zari asked. \"The voices seem to be coming from around the well.\"\n\nKhadijeh stood and stared at her. \"They've put the body in the cistern, between big sacks of snow. It was coolest there,\" she said, and looking Zari over carefully, began to say, \"You've changed so much overnight...\" but she finished her sentence, \"My poor mistress, what have you done to yourself! You've lost so much weight. Do you remember my uncle's wife who swallowed opium once? I was the one who saved her. She looked just like you do this morning.\"\n\nJust then Gholam came in through the garden gates followed by Haj Mohammad Reza the dyer. Gholam was carrying an iron in one hand, and Zari's black dress and scarf in the other. Haj Mohammad Reza, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, was balancing a large bundle on his head with hands which matched the colour of his shirt. Zari took her things from Gholam and went to the bedroom. She put the dress on with difficulty; it had become too tight. Digging a hand into the pockets of her dress, she found a crumpled and blackened two-toman bill in the right one. She glanced involuntarily in the mirror. She didn't recognize herself. She switched the light on and took a closer look. Several strands of hair had turned white, and her parched lips had lines around the corners. Her darkly-circled eyes seemed to have sunk in their sockets. She thought, \"It's not true when they say all of someone's hair turned white overnight.\"\n\nShe went to the parlour which had been stripped of all its decorations, even the radio. Gholam and Haj Mohammad Reza were spreading black sheets on the cushions arranged around the room. Haj Mohammad Reza stood up when he saw her. He averted his eyes awkwardly and asked after her health. Zari thought, \"Poor soul, he's been up the whole night dyeing all this material.\" It seemed as if he had read her mind because he surveyed the black cushion-covers with satisfaction.\n\nWhen Zari came out to the garden, Ameh had just finished her morning prayers, and Abol-Ghassem Khan and Khosrow were having breakfast. Khosrow was wearing a black shirt which hung over his grey trousers. Zari sat at one end of the table-cloth, next to the samovar. She poured herself and Ameh some tea, but her hands were shaking and her head swam. Ameh broke two eggs, carefully disposing of the whites in the bowl underneath the samovar tap. She dropped the yolks in a cup, added some sugar, and started to beat it. Zari followed Khosrow with her eyes as he got up and went through the garden gates. Involuntarily she spoke her thoughts, \"The poor man has been up the whole night dyeing all of us black!\"\n\nAmeh raised her head as she was beating the eggs and changed the subject. \"Sister, did you find your keychain?\" she asked.\n\n\"Keychain?\" asked Zari distractedly. Then she smiled and said, \"Khadijeh was shocked to see me a few minutes ago. She said I looked like one of those people who've eaten opium and been rescued in the nick of time. She said I'd aged a thousand years overnight. No, she didn't say that. I don't remember what she said... I didn't recognize myself in the mirror.\"\n\n\"Khadijeh had no business saying things like that to you!\" Ameh replied.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan looked at Zari. He stared and shook his head. \"Didn't I say so, sister?\" he said. \"Last night you said I was making things up about her because I was interested in her money.\"\n\nAgain Zari spoke her thoughts out loud. \"I think Khosrow's gone to fetch Dr Abdullah Khan.\"\n\nAmeh bit her lip and said, \"When time heals her wounds, she'll be all right.\"\n\nHurriedly she poured some milk over the egg yolks, stirred it and handed it to Zari. But suddenly Zari wondered what Abol-Ghassem Khan had meant? Blood rushed to her face. Her heart pounded in her chest and again she felt as though something had shattered inside her.\n\nShe felt she had to explain. \"In the asylum,\" she said, \"the first thing every patient says is that he's not mad and he shouldn't have been brought there. But Abol-Ghassem Khan, you can be sure I haven't gone mad... you see... well, it was all so sudden...\" She left her sentence unfinished. She was not entirely convinced herself. What if she really had gone mad and didn't know it? A fear more insidious than the terrors of her recent nightmares gripped her, larger than anything she had ever experienced. She felt chilled to the bone but the palms of her hands were sweating. She had to show Abol-Ghassem Khan, and, more importantly, prove to herself that she hadn't gone mad. She ate her breakfast delicately, even though her appetite had gone, remembering to thank Ameh for the milk and eggs which she had hardly been able to swallow. Then she got up and called Khadijeh and Gholam. She sent Khadijeh to borrow fans from the neighbours, and then to fetch her keychain from the children at Mehri's. Then she sent Gholam to find tea and sugar at any cost.\n\nKhadijeh returned with an armful of fans and said, \"Khanom Mehri and Mohsen Khan were quarrelling, so I didn't dare go inside for the keys.\"\n\nGholam came back and said, \"I went all the way down the street, but no-one has opened their shop yet!\"\n\nAll the time Zari's eyes were glued to the garden gate in expectation of Dr Abdullah Khan. At first Hossein Agha the grocer and his brother Hassan Agha the local corn-chandler came in, clad entirely in black. Then the two distillers from next door arrived, sweating from the loads on their back. They had each tied a black armband around their bare arms, otherwise they were dressed as usual in a pair of drawers and an undershirt. They put their loads down next to the pool, opened the burlap sacks at the top and rolled them down carefully. Holding their hands in turn underneath the mouth of the stone head, they caught some water with which to sprinkle the roses and the eglantine inside the sacks. Soon the fragrance of the flowers filled the area in front of the house. Zari looked at the flowers and thought, \"How far they went to get these... they've spent the whole night picking those flowers, and in the darkness too... how many thorns did they get in their hands? Why didn't the youngest son go with them? I hope he hasn't come down with typhus as well!\"\n\nGholam, still hatless, approached Hossein Agha and said,\n\n\"Brother, I came to you earlier, but your shop was closed. See if you can get us some sugar, tea and saffron, will you?\"\n\nHassan Agha, Hossein Agha and the distillers left. In the driveway, they came across the old distiller himself who had put on Gholam's worn-out suit and thrown a black shawl around his neck. They stood and talked to the old man who followed them back on the way he had just come.\n\nA droshke drew up at the garden gate and Zari wanted to rush forward and greet the long-awaited Dr Abdullah Khan.\n\nShe was longing to make him tell everyone, \"Khanom Zahra hasn't gone mad. She's had a shock, that's why she seems distracted. Don't watch her so closely, because then you really will drive her mad!\" But it was Ferdows who came out of the droshke, taking Ezzat-ud-Dowleh's hand as she stepped out. The old lady descended with a lot of difficulty, and giving her arm to Ferdows, limped slowly up the driveway until she reached Zari who was standing in front of the house in a state of disbelief. The sun had just risen, and before Zari could collect herself from the surprise of this early morning visit, the woman had thrown an arm around Zari and was saying, \"The news came so suddenly last night, I wasn't myself at all and I left without saying goodbye or realizing what I was doing. All night while everyone was fast asleep, I couldn't close my eyes. You're like a daughter to me, and your late mother was my twin soul. God forbid, she'd always say, 'Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, I'm a dying woman. I leave my child in your hands.' Alas! Alas!\"\n\nShe sat on the wooden bed\u2014the same one that Yusef's broken body had occupied the night before, but which was now covered with a carpet. Rubbing her leg, she asked, \"Where's my sister?\"\n\nShe was swathed in black, including the gloves, scarf, socks... when had she had time to dye her hair black? Come to think of it, why should she dye her hair black at all?\n\n\"I said to Ferdows, 'Get up, child, let's go there first thing in the morning',\" continued Ezzat-ud-Dowleh. \"'Maybe we can give them a hand or something.' After all, what good is our so-called sisterhood if not for times of need?\" It was lucky for Zari that she managed to hold her tongue. If this woman accused her of madness too then she would be done for. It would give Ezzat-ud-Dowleh a week's worth of gossip with the Governor's family!\n\n\"My dear child,\" said Ezzat-ud-Dowleh again, \"what kind of dress is this you're wearing? A dyed thing, and ironed to a shine, too. It's not nice in front of people, and it's too tight for you.\"\n\nZari, who had her eyes on the garden gate, didn't reply. But Ezzat-ud-Dowleh wouldn't let up.\n\n\"My dear girl, why aren't you paying attention? Now go along like the nice lady that you are and allow Ferdows to let out your dress for you. There's probably some room left\u2014she'll open it at the seams.\"\n\nZari noted silently that those beady eyes didn't miss a thing. But she made no effort to move.\n\n\"By the way,\" said Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, \"I nearly forgot. I've brought you something which I know will really make you happy. A keepsake from your late husband\u2014no, you're not paying attention to me at all... look!\"\n\nReluctantly Zari shifted her gaze from the garden gate. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh took out a small box wrapped in white paper from her handbag and gave it to Zari. Zari held it in her hand, not knowing what to do with it. Again she stared at the garden gate. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh gave a little laugh and said, \"Go on, open it!\"\n\nZari mechanically undid the wrapping. Inside was a black velvet box. She opened it, and saw her emerald earrings shining at her from their small velvet case. She felt depressed. The earrings which Yusef had put in her ears on their wedding night with his own hands. Yusef's eyes had shone like those very emeralds in the light.\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh smiled. \"I knew it would make you happy,\" she said. \"Last night I went straight from here to the Governor's house. I decided that since I'd been responsible for having my dear child's earrings taken away, I had to get them back myself.\"\n\n\"Do you think I can be fooled like a child?\" said Zari. And she closed her eyes. She felt dizzy.\n\nEzzat-ud-Dowleh neither scolded her nor complained. She merely said, \"Ferdows, my child is not feeling quite herself because of her grief. Poor thing! Take her to her room. Tight clothing is bad for a pregnant woman.\" She put a hand to her brow and cried a little. Then calming down, she advised Zari in a motherly tone, \"Zari dear, put the earrings in a safe place. It will get very crowded here today.\"\n\nZari walked off, feeling like a robot with rusty springs and loosened hinges. Ferdows took her hand to keep her from falling. They went to the bedroom together. Zari took off her dress, put the velvet box on her dressing table and stretched out on the bed.\n\n\"Where's the sewing kit?\" asked Ferdows.\n\n\"I don't know,\" replied Zari. She felt dizzy and nauseous. This must be the way madness begins, she thought.\n\nShe wished Ferdows wouldn't talk, but Ferdows kept on chatting.\n\n\"Khanom Zahra,\" she said, \"it's a good thing you and I managed to be alone. These people can get up to anything!\"\n\nIf only she'd shut up, thought Zari.\n\n\"Are you listening to me?\" asked Ferdows.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I want to put you on your guard. Last night mother and son were up the whole time, scheming behind your back. I stayed awake on the roof and listened. God Almighty! In the middle of the night she dyed her hair and put henna on it... actually it's a wonder she doesn't think she's the Almighty!\"\n\nZari didn't respond, though her interest had been kindled. Ferdows had found the sewing kit and was opening the seams of the dress.\n\nHow efficient she is, Zari thought silently.\n\nStill undoing seams and re-stitching them, Ferdows continued, \"When Khanom got home, Hamid Khan threw himself at her feet again, flattered her and played up to her and finally he said, 'Mother, I must have this woman at any cost'... God forbid, he said that every night he'd slept with his wife he'd thought of you. All three of his children had been conceived thinking of you... bless my soul! A grown man like that making up all kinds of verses and poems for you! If you only knew the kinds of things he said...\"\n\nZari didn't want to know, but Ferdows went on, \"Well, to cut a long story short... Khanom was not easily persuaded. She kept saying that you bring bad luck, that your brother-in-law wouldn't let anyone lay a finger on your money, that you're pregnant and no-one can wed a pregnant woman. Hamid Khan said he'd wait. Khanom...\"\n\nIf Gholam hadn't knocked on the bedroom door just then to announce Dr Abdullah Khan, Zari would have vomited.\n\n\"Ask the doctor to wait a minute while I get dressed,\" she said. And to Ferdows, \"Khanom Ferdows, please hurry.\"\n\n\"Right away.\"\n\nBut Ferdows kept on talking, and Zari didn't stop her because now Dr Abdullah Khan had arrived and would relieve her mind one way or the other.\n\n\"He pleaded with her until she gave in,\" Ferdows went on, \"so he asked her to get to work on you from the very next morning. What lies she strung together in front of me! Actually Khanom was a born liar. How she pretended to care about you! Don't be fooled, she's after your blood... there, I'm all done.\" And she handed over the dress which Zari put on with a sigh of relief. Maybe she had felt dizzy because of the tightness of the dress.\n\nAs she looked Zari over, Ferdows added, \"And she didn't go straight to the Governor's either. Hamid Khan made her telephone the Governor's daughter. Khanom sent a piece of her own jewellery in exchange for yours. My worthless husband Kal Abbas went and fetched it.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Zari. \"Now go and tell the doctor I'm ready.\"\n\nDr Abdullah Khan came in, leaning on his stick. He seemed older than on the day Zari had seen him in Khanom Massihadem's room. Or perhaps she hadn't looked at him closely enough then. The doctor sat on Zari's bed, took her hand in his and said, \"What's the use of reaching a grand old age like mine? When a precious young man like your husband dies, I begin to hate myself. Here I am clinging to life with both hands while our young men are taken...\"\n\n\"My husband didn't just die, he was killed,\" said Zari sadly.\n\n\"I know. Your son told me everything on the way. I congratulate you. A clever boy like him could take his father's place for you. May the Lord bring both of you prosperity.\" He paused and said, \"An old man like me shouldn't step into a house which has lost a young man of his kind. I'm old and useless now. His mourners must surely look at me, shake their heads and think, 'Old man, you're alive, and our young one has been martyred!'\"\n\n\"No-one thinks of you like that. You're the salt of the earth to all of us.\"\n\nDr Abdullah Khan raised Zari's hand to his lips and kissed it. Zari tried to withdraw it out of modesty. The old man sighed and said in a pensive voice, \"I don't know where I read that the world is like a dark room which we enter blindfolded. One of us may have his eyes open or others may try hard to open theirs; perhaps it's even destined that one person should be touched with a ray of light from above so he may see and understand all for an instant. Your husband was one of those rare people who'd never shut his eyes from the beginning. His eyes and ears were alert. More is the pity he had such a short time...\"\n\nHe spoke like one who had taken in everything there was to know. If there was a God, He had shown Himself for once to this man in the course of his long life...\n\nThe old man continued, \"I've told Khanom Qods-ol-Saltaneh many a time that that brother of hers was a genuine human being. He was an enlightened man.\"\n\n\"But you're enlightened as well, you're...\"\n\n\"Now tell me what's ailing you?\" interrupted the doctor. \"Your son begged me to come and visit you. I said to him, 'Dear boy, for the wife of such a one as he was, I'm ready to go to the ends of the world. Besides, I'm very fond of your mother herself... she is a queen among women.'\"\n\nZari had no fear or embarrassment in telling Dr Abdullah Khan the truth. \"I've been so distraught since last night,\" she confessed, \"I can't control my mind. I'm afraid I might be going mad... I feel tempted to imitate the lunatics I've seen.\" And she added in tears, \"All last night I was caught up in nightmares. Khanom Hakim gave me three injections but they didn't seem to do any good and I couldn't fall asleep. I kept seeing horrific scenes. I said nonsensical things. And I've been feeling dizzy all morning.\"\n\nThe old man stood up and went to the window, looking out on the garden. \"Don't let me hear you say things like that,\" he told her with his back to her. \"If you were distressed or even delirious, it was perfectly natural. Khanom Hakim couldn't have given you tranquillizers, either. She gave you a camphor injection to stimulate your heart and the other two shots were distilled water.\"\n\nAgain he came and sat down next to Zari.\n\n\"So you're saying I haven't gone mad?\" Zari asked innocently.\n\n\"Absolutely not.\"\n\n\"And I won't go mad either?\"\n\n\"I assure you you won't.\"\n\nHe stared into Zari's eyes and continued in a soothing voice, \"But you have a malignant disease that cannot be cured by my hand. You must get rid of it before it becomes chronic. Sometimes it's hereditary.\"\n\n\"Cancer?\" asked Zari.\n\n\"No, my dear; don't you understand? It's the disease of fear. Many people have it\u2014I told you it's contagious.\"\n\nAgain he took Zari's hand and said prophetically, \"I have one foot in the grave, so listen to the words of this old man, my dear. In this world, everything is in one's own hands. Madness, fear, even love. A human being can if he so desires, move mountains, dry up the waters, create havoc everywhere. A human life is a chronicle. It can be any kind of chronicle\u2014a sweet one, a bitter one, an ugly one... or a heroic one. The human body is fragile, but no force in this world can equal man's spiritual power. As long as he has a strong will and some awareness.\"\n\nHe paused and took out a green bottle with a white top from his pocket. He gave it to Zari. \"There's a special kind of salt in this bottle,\" he said. \"Keep it in your pocket and every time you feel unwell, open it and smell it. Drink a glass of sweetened willow-water too.\" He got up and said, \"I know you're a lady. A real lady. I know you're strong and brave enough not to run away from the bitter reality. I want you to prove that you are worthy of such a man as your husband was.\"\n\nHe picked up his stick which he had hung on the edge of the bed and said, \"Here is some news that will make you happy. Take heart. The day before yesterday, Khanom Massihadem was discharged from the asylum. She's much better and by the time you're ready to give birth, she'll be completely recovered.\"\n\nZari felt as if she'd been freed from a cage. A man of wisdom had given her hope and encouragement. Not one but a thousand stars were lit in her mind. She knew now that she feared no-one and nothing in the world.\n\nThey went out into the garden together. Abol-Ghassem Khan was sitting on the children's bed with Malek Rostam and Majid Khan. When he saw them, he got up and went towards them.\n\n\"Well, doctor,\" he blinked, \"what did you think? What did you find?\"\n\n\"If you ask me,\" replied the doctor, \"your sister-in-law must be very strong indeed just to be standing on her two feet. Her distress and anxiety are natural. It's no joking matter. But all of you around her must leave her in peace.\"\n\nZari saw the doctor all the way to the gate. She kept searching in her mind for a suitable word to express her gratitude but she couldn't find it. Maybe he felt her helplessness, or perhaps he just wanted to bid her to be patient, or maybe it was for his own heart\u2014at any rate he murmured the following verse:\n\n\"Be patient, o heart, that the Just One,\n\nWill not let such a gem fall to Evil.\"\n\nZari knew that Dr Abdullah Khan was a member of the Hafeziun group who held sessions in memory of the mystical poet Hafez at his gravesite. They recited his poetry, drank wine which they threw on the mystic's grave, and even played the tambourine and the lute.\n\nShe said quietly, \"Please recite some more. Verses which will give me strength to go on.\"\n\nThe old man smiled, and said:\n\n\"Let us do good deeds, lest we take our soul,\n\nIn shame to the other world.\"\n\nHe stood under the elm tree to catch his breath. \"I didn't recite that verse for you,\" he said. \"I said it for myself.\"\n\n\"You've done your work in this world,\" said Zari. \"Your life-story is a heroic one. But my poor husband's tale was tragic and unfinished.\" And without intending to, she leaned against the tree and wept quietly behind her hand. \n\n# _23_\n\nThey had arrived for the funeral procession. First came all the relatives and close friends. The women were shown to the howzkhaneh and the men to the parlour. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh took the seat of honour amongst the women. Ferdows had donned a tight black dress and a sorrowful expression as she lent a hand with the serving. Anyone who didn't know would have thought Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was next of kin, the way she was ordering everyone around. The minute she set eyes on a newcomer, she would talk effusively about Yusef's youth and tragic end, of his good looks and knowledge, of his faultless English, of the poor innocent widow and children he'd left behind... she would go on and on, sobbing loudly. Occasionally she would even beat her chest, but not too hard. Every so often Zari would take a whiff of the salts Dr Abdullah Khan had given her to prevent herself from crying at her words. Ameh was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, when Ezzat-ud-Dowleh started a lament, and talked of \"a tree which had been cut at the roots and felled to the ground\", Zari left too.\n\nIt was after eight-thirty in the morning when Abol-Ghassem Khan's friends arrived. But there was no more room in the parlour so they had to sit on the children's bed in the garden. Zari sat across from them near the sacks of eglantine and red roses which had been left at the edge of the pool. The pool itself was brimming with crystal-clear water.\n\nHossein Agha and Hassan Agha, each with a full sack on his back, passed by Abol-Ghassem Khan's friends as they made their way to the pantry. The distillers from next door, again without the youngest son, followed them, balancing pitchers on their shoulders. Then three other men arrived, carrying large empty vessels. Zari's eyes filled with tears on seeing them.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan came out of the parlour and joined his friends. A fat, dark man was saying something quietly while the others listened with worried expressions. The town's newspaper manager was shaking his head and the former parliamentary deputy was racing through his rosary.\n\nFerdows approached Zari with the tray of drinks. \"You help yourself first,\" she said. \"This one is willow-water sweetened with rock-sugar... Did you see the way she was play-acting? Now she's pretending to faint.\"\n\nZari took the glass from her and asked, \"How did you know I should drink sweetened willow-water?\"\n\n\"Khanom sent me to eavesdrop. Let her keep hoping you'll miscarry\u2014you're not unprotected and alone like me. She wanted to know what you and the doctor were saying to each other all that time. I told her I didn't understand a thing of what you were talking about because you were whispering. I just heard the doctor say that the world is like a dark-room with upside down pictures and we're all lost and wandering about in it... Khanom called me an imbecile and told me what a waste of time it had been for a distinguished lady like her to try and train me. Khanom Zahra, if I have just one day left to live, I'll take my revenge. When my mother was in prison it was a good chance to...\"\n\nZari cut her short saying, \"Take the drinks over to the gentlemen, the ice is melting.\"\n\nFerdows went to Abol-Ghassem Khan's friends. The notary, who was Chinese-looking, said something to Ferdows and she giggled. Gholam went to greet some men dressed in black whom Zari didn't recognize. They made way for two porters, one of whom was carrying an upright candelabrum on his head, the other a lustre. Covered with sweat, the porters went as far as the pool where others helped them place their loads on one of the wooden beds. Another man stripped to the waist, holding the emblem of the Ta'zieh passion play, garnished with flowers, tulips and lengths of brocade, and topped with a feather which swayed to the movement of his step, carefully lowered the emblem past the garden gate. The men indoors looked out from the parlour windows and the women had come out of the basement to watch. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, however, was not among them.\n\nBy nine or nine-thirty in the morning, the garden was filled with men dressed in black. But they were still arriving in droves, and the last group had flagellating chains with them. Finally, they brought in the mock wedding chamber, the Hejleh Ghassem, which nearly made Zari break down and sob, but she managed to control herself by taking out the smelling salts and busying herself with opening the top.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan's friends approached her. The former deputy had crewcut white hair, and no longer carried his rosary. The notary really did look Chinese. The newspaper manager took Zari's hand in his, and said that all of them had to attend a meeting at the governor general's office about bread supplies, so he regretted that they could not be present for the funeral procession. But on everyone's behalf he offered his sympathies and condolences to Zari and \"Abol\" and Khanom Qods-ul-Saltaneh, and he prayed that, God willing, they would all live to old age and never suffer loss in the family again. The others listened, and when he had finished they left. But the newspaper manager would not let go of Zari's hand. He said quietly, \"I hope you understand my position if I don't print news of the event. Even the funeral announcement was placed purely for your sake and that of my friendship with Abol.\"\n\nZari withdrew her hand and said bitterly, \"Funeral announcements have always been permitted.\"\n\nA few minutes later, Abol-Ghassem Khan came and sat next to her. He was very pale and his nostrils were trembling. \"Sister,\" he said, blinking rapidly, \"I know you're more sensible than the rest of them. For heaven's sake, say something to these fools. My own stupid sister doesn't seem to understand. She keeps saying she wants them to turn this dog-infested town into a holy Karbala. And our ruffians keep praising her and egging her on.\" When Zari didn't budge, he pleaded with her, \"Sister, I beg of you, for the sake of that tragically-departed soul, get up and say something.\"\n\nSo they went to Khosrow's room together where, according to Abol-Ghassem Khan, the town ruffians had gathered. Malek Rostam and Majid, wearing black ties, were standing by the doorway. Zari's glance travelled from Haj Mohammad Reza the dyer, who was squatting by the doorway, to the others. Seyyid Mohammad, Hossein Agha and Hassan Agha had their backs to the window. Seated on Khosrow's bed were three men. One she recognized as the tall, broad-shouldered Mashallah Qari; another was Fotouhi, who wasn't wearing a tie; and the third was Mr Mortezai who had put on his religious robe. The rest of Yusef's sworn companions, along with a few others also in mourning dress but whom Zari didn't recognize, were seated on chairs brought from the parlour. Ameh Khanom, wearing an Islamic black scarf, was standing tall and upright behind Khosrow's desk. None of the men had shaved.\n\n\"Here is my late brother's wife,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan announced. \"Do whatever she says. You've shut down the bazaar, so be it. But to circumambulate the Shah Cheraq shrine with the body, and have the crowd flagellating in the courtyard; to have Mr Mortezai saying the last prayers with full sermon from the shrine balcony... upon my word, don't even think of it! What with the foreign army in town, there will be rioting... You've dragged all these people here for nothing.\"\n\nTurning to Zari, Majid said, \"Khanom Zahra, you know yourself we had sworn allegiance to Yusef. Now that they've killed him, they want us to sit here and not even give him a proper burial. Our simple objection...\"\n\nZari didn't let him finish his sentence. \"They have killed my husband unjustly,\" she said. \"The least we can do is to mourn his death. Mourning hasn't been outlawed. In his lifetime we were always frightened and we tried to frighten him off too. Now that he is dead, what else can we fear? I, for one, have nothing more to lose....\" Her voice was trembling. She brought the bottle of salts to her nostrils and inhaled its freshness deeply.\n\n\"Well, bless my soul, sister!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan exploded. \"Now you've really put me to shame! Why don't you understand, woman? When this many people take to the streets, if someone leads them on to rioting, who could possibly stop the tide then?\"\n\n\"Abol-Ghassem,\" Ameh said, \"your brother's corpse is at your mercy now. Don't sit by idly and watch his blood being trampled on.\"\n\nZari, looking at her, was reminded of Hazrate Zeynab, defending her martyrs.\n\n\"I have reliable information that you'll be stopped,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan told them, \"then there'll be bloodshed. I won't allow it. My poor brother wouldn't have wanted to hurt a fly. He treated his peasants like an older brother... Don't torment the departed soul.\"\n\n\"I lived with him for fourteen years,\" Zari said with a sigh. \"I know that he always spoke of courage... of justice...\"\n\nThe serpent which had coiled around her heart the night before reared its head to strike, and her throat constricted. She left her sentence unfinished, but now her mind shone like a torch, and she knew that no-one in the world could ever dim it again. She swallowed and went on, \"Do whatever you have to do today... if you don't do it now, there will never be another opportunity.\" Then, after a pause, she said to Abol-Ghassem Khan, \"Today I came to the conclusion that one has to be brave in life for the sake of those who are living... but it's a pity I realized it so late. To atone for that ignorance, let's mourn our courageous dead the way we should.\"\n\n\"A blessing on this noble mother of our race,\" murmured Seyyid Mohammad.\n\n\"Bravo!\" came from some strangers in mourning clothes.\n\nMortezai recited in Arabic from the Quran: \"There is Life to you, O ye men of understanding.\"\n\n\"This way we shall prove that we've not been annihilated yet, and we value the blood that's been shed,\" Fotouhi added.\n\n\"Sooner or later it'll be my brother's turn,\" Malek Rostam reminded them. \"They'll catch up with him in the heat of these cruel mountains, and drag him into town to the sound of horns and drums. They'll hang him on charges of insurrection, and everyone will come out to watch.\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan, venting his ill-feelings on Malek Rostam, said, \"You talk as if your brother is the Prophet's son! Of course they'll hang him. No-one's forgotten the bloodshed in Semirom. How much government property was raided! How many innocent people were killed! If there's such a thing as penance in this life, then he must pay for all that killing...\" Blinking rapidly, he continued, \"How ambitious can you get! He changes colour every day like a chameleon. One day he's a slave to the Germans, the next he's serving the British, and before you know it, he's turned against them too! Just like the treacherous Shemr...\"\n\nMalek Rostam interrupted him.\n\n\"If a person knowingly makes a mistake, he can try to make up for it. But now's not the time for putting Malek Sohrab on trial, and you're not a judge either.\"\n\n\"Actually, you yourself have been parading a little too freely in public these days,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan retorted. \"If I were you I'd put on a chador and make a getaway to the mountains through the back door of this garden.\"\n\nAt that, Malek Rostam's tribal blood began to boil. He answered sharply, \"Some people hide under black chadors to slip away to the Consul at the British Consulate. My brother and I use them to hide from the Consul and his men.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen!\" Fotouhi intervened. \"This is no time for quarrelling. We were supposed to come to a decision about the funeral procession. Khanom Zahra agrees...\"\n\n\"But I'm against it!\" Abol-Ghassem Khan interrupted again. \"And by rights I'm the legal guardian of my brother's children. Sister, be sensible, listen to my advice.\"\n\nZari couldn't stand on her feet any longer. She sat on the bed next to Fotouhi and said, \"His body's not buried yet. I don't want to argue with you. But while he was alive, you each had a tight grip around his throat and he had to keep raising his voice to be heard until he was finally killed for it. And now... let people show at his death that he was in the right. Besides, justice and truth haven't died with him, there are others to consider.\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan, blinking nervously, raised his voice in anger. \"It's women like you, who follow their husbands like so many sheep, that bring about these tragic events!\"\n\n\"Don't make me say this,\" Zari answered calmly, \"but more than one person was responsible for the blood that was shed, including yourself. Maybe I'm to blame, too.\"\n\n\"You've got something to say for yourself, have you? Well, well! I'll say it in front of everyone, then. Now that you've come into a bit of easy money, you've forgotten that a woman is, after all, only a woman. A woman is like the lining of a garment, she exists to uphold and support a man. But you just blindly endorsed whatever mistakes that poor man made...\"\n\nZari felt that the snake sitting alert inside her was speaking out now. \"You're only worried about your post as a deputy, about all the plans you've made for when you become one. An eye operation, a good set of teeth from the famous Dr Stump... Haven't you said as much yourself? Maybe you even want to get remarried...\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan looked at her in total astonishment. \"Fie, for shame!\" he spat. Then he composed himself and added, \"You don't know me well enough. I'm the kind of man who spent sixteen solitary years, night after night, when my wife died...\"\n\nZari was going to say, \"What about the various temporary wives... What about the shoemaker's daughter who rubs herself all over with ox's gall-bladder stone to fatten herself up...\" She felt completely reckless, and in such a state that, if someone had handed her a gun which she knew how to use, she would have been prepared to shoot. She stood up and said, \"Just a few minutes ago your notary...\"\n\nMajid Khan, trying to mediate, stepped in. \"Please, I beg of you...\" he said. \"Mr Abol-Ghassem Khan, Khanom Zahra. It's hardly the time for this sort of thing.\"\n\nFotouhi motioned everyone to be silent. \"Let's not waste our time with discussions about each other's private lives,\" he said. \"Let's approach the matter in another light. The killing of Yusef Khan is, from your point of view, a personal matter, whereas from ours, it's a social issue...\"\n\nAgain, Abol-Ghassem Khan interrupted Fotouhi, saying, \"I know the rest by heart. You want to make the most of this killing. Create riots in town and cause innocent people to be killed. There are several truck-loads of soldiers blocking the town's main roads. What with the foreign army in town... I suppose you know what you're doing.\"\n\nThe coffin, swathed in eglantine and red roses, was to be taken from the driveway of the house by Hossein Agha, Hassan Agha, Majid Khan and Fotouhi as pall-bearers. Malek Rostam insisted on carrying the coffin too, but Zari dissuaded him, saying that Abol-Ghassem Khan had been right about one thing: the tribesman had shown himself too carelessly in public. She made him promise to put on Khadijeh's chador after they had all left and escape to a safe hide-out through the back door of the garden.\n\nMalek Rostam merely responded by saying, \"It doesn't really matter any more. Whatever's going to happen will happen.\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan begged the ladies to stay at home for lunch. A bite to eat could be arranged at his humble abode, and it wasn't wise for them to attend the burial. Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh would remain at the house too.\n\nThe emblem and the candelabrum went before the coffin while the Hejleh Ghassem followed it. Abol-Ghassem Khan gave his arm to one of Yusef's sworn companions, and extracted a black handkerchief from his pocket which he used for dabbing at his eyes every so often. Zari and Ameh walked alongside him.\n\nThe door of the stable was open. The roan horse was feeding, but the mare and Sahar were standing quietly on the side-path, with Khosrow and Hormoz holding their bridles. Zari felt sick with grief at the sight of the horses and the boys. The mare's saddle was completely covered with black fabric, with Yusef's hat on top and his gun strapped to the mare's neck. They had covered Sahar with a white sheet stained randomly with red ink like a bloodied shroud. When the mare saw the body, she picked up her ears and drummed her hoofs on the ground. Zari felt as if her own heart were being trampled on. Then the mare neighed twice. Zari thought she saw tears rolling down the horse's flared nostrils. She remembered what the middle-aged woman had told her about Savushun, all those years ago.\n\nKhosrow and Hormoz led the horses behind the Hejleh Ghassem. Abol-Ghassem Khan rushed at them and pulled the blood-stained shroud off Sahar. He bunched it up and threw it under one of the elm trees. Then he gave Hormoz a hard slap on the face, knocking his glasses to the ground. \"What kind of nonsense is this?\" he shouted. \"Everything is being run by women and children all of a sudden! Take the horses back to the stables, you fools! My God, they make you livid with anger!\"\n\nThe emblem of the Ta'zieh had by now been carried as far as the garden gate. Its porter, the man stripped to the waist, bent over to lower it, his bare back glistening with sweat. Everyone stopped. Hormoz picked up his glasses from the ground, shook out the broken bits of glass from the right lens and put them back on. Just then a car, sounding its horn, pulled up at the garden gate. An Indian soldier got out, bringing with him a white flower arrangement adorned with black ribbons in the shape of a cross. Entering the garden, he headed towards the coffin and tried to put the flowers on it. But the pall-bearers, standing on tip-toe, lifted the coffin out of his reach. Khosrow dropped Sahar's bridle, went to the Indian soldier and took the flower arrangement from him. One by one he plucked the flowers from the cross and threw them in front of the horses. The horses sniffed at the flowers but didn't eat them. The Indian soldier stared with bulging eyes at the black-clad mourners, as if he couldn't believe what he saw. The crowd was so silent you could have heard a pin drop. Abol-Ghassem Khan put a hand on the soldier's back and led him to the car, whispering something to him which the man seemed not to understand since he answered aloud in a language no-one recognized. Then the car sounded its horn again and drove away.\n\nNow the youngest son of their neighbour, the distiller, came running up to them, panting and sweating, with an armful of wild flowers. Khosrow took the flowers and smelled them before placing them on the coffin which the pall-bearers now lowered.\n\nBy this time the sun had penetrated every nook and cranny. Coming out of the garden, Zari noticed that all the shops in the side-street were closed. Haj Mohammad Reza, using pairs of wooden poles, had draped lengths of black material all along both sides of the street. Usually he tied colourful fabrics in red, blue, green and orange on them, or else dyed silks and wool to dry off in the sunlight.\n\nThey had barely gone half-way up the street when they saw a bare-headed Gholam approaching with the twins. Reaching Zari, Gholam spat and said, \"Mohsen Khan telephoned, so I went and fetched them...\"\n\nZari and Ameh stood aside to let the procession go ahead, but the crowd waited. Zari bent down and kissed the children. Mina was holding the keychain which she gave to her mother.\n\n\"Now take us so we can watch too!\" she said. \"Oh look at the lights! Look at all the stars!\"\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan, who had gone ahead a few steps, came back to warn Zari, \"They'll be trampled on. Sister, please take them to Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh.\"\n\n\"No, Ameh Khanom,\" Zari replied. \"Leave them with Ferdows.\"\n\nAt that, the twins started to cry. None of Ameh's pleading and cajoling had any effect. Finally Gholam picked Mina up and Ameh took Marjan as the crowd made way for them to leave.\n\nAlong the main road, policemen were either scattered randomly or walking around in pairs. In the side-street opposite, a truck full of soldiers was waiting. When the policemen first sighted the funeral procession they simply stood and watched, but when the procession turned towards the main road, the policeman in command blew his whistle, bringing his men into a line to block the crowd's path. But the Ta'zieh emblem had already been carried into the main road and its front feather seemed to nod in greeting to the crowds spread out on the roof-tops and pavements. What loudspeaker could have drawn the people to the street in such numbers?\n\nThe police officer came towards the crowd and shouted, \"Gentlemen, except for the relatives of the deceased, everyone else must disperse.\" He waited. Abol-Ghassem Khan remained standing with his back to the crowd. Zari turned round to look. Men dressed in black were still flocking out through the garden gates. Then a voice proclaimed in Arabic, \"There is but one God!\" In unison, the crowd repeated the sacred phrase.\n\nThe policeman shouted again, this time on behalf of Abol-Ghassem Khan. \"Do you hear me or not? The honourable Abol-Ghassem Khan cannot speak out because of his grief... to thank all of you. The weather is hot. He bids you gentlemen farewell.\"\n\nA voice from the crowd replied calmly, \"We are all related to the deceased.\"\n\nHossein Agha, who was one of the pall-bearers, signalled to Seyyid Mohammad to replace him as he walked up to the policeman and addressed him. \"Sir, a young man has been killed unjustly. We're mourning his death. That is all.\"\n\n\"I'm asking the crowd, very politely, to disperse,\" the policeman declared in a loud voice. \"Go back and open your shops. If you don't, your trading licences will be revoked. That's an order. Do you understand? If you don't obey, I'll have to resort to force...\"\n\nThis time, Mashallah Qari came forward. He said, \"Sir, you know what kind of a fellow I am, don't you? When I say something, I stand by my word. We don't mean to stir things up. We're just mourning one of our fellow-townsmen. Imagine it's Karbala here and today is the massacre of Ashura; you don't want to be Shemr, do you?\"\n\nSomeone cried out, \"O Hussein!\" And the crowd enthusiastically echoed, \"O Hussein!\"\n\nZari thought bitterly, \"Or imagine it's Savushun and we're mourning Siavush.\"\n\n\"I told you to disperse!\" The police commander shouted even more angrily, \"I'm going to smash that candelabrum to pieces!\" And he made for the upright candelabrum which was being carried on a tray over a porter's head. The man with the candelabrum had come right up against the line of gendarmes blocking the main road. His companion nudged him in the side and whispered something in his ear. The man turned to the right and went off to stand by the dried-up gutter along the street, the candelabrum pendants jingling to his movement.\n\nThe policeman turned around and motioned to the truck full of soldiers in the side-street opposite. The truck's engine revved, and the vehicle swerved noisily, coming to a halt a little beyond the Ta'zieh emblem on the main road. The crowd watched the truck. An officer stepped out. He was stout, with a perspiring face, and he had three stars on his epaulette. He came over and stood by the policeman.\n\n\"As God is my witness,\" he said, \"I don't want any of you to come to any harm. We have families too. Go back to your work and livelihood.\"\n\nThe crowd seemed to take heart at the captain's gentleness. Mashallah Qari stepped forward again and said, \"Sir, you know what sort of a fellow I am, don't you? As long as I'm around, I'll make sure our brothers and sisters here are safe and sound. We'll take the body to the Shah Cheraq Shrine, go round it, mourn and flagellate for a while...\"\n\n\"What! The Shah Cheraq?\" shouted the captain, quickly losing his temper. \"Right in the centre of town? Whoever gave you permission to do that? Can't you be spoken to in a civilized way? Now, go straight back to where you belong!\"\n\nHe took a few steps towards the main road and motioned again to the soldiers in the truck. One by one the soldiers got out, rifle in hand, and lined up behind the police. The captain turned to the crowd and, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his hand, said, \"That man's always been trouble, dead or alive.\"\n\nZari thought she was the only one who had heard the insult to her husband, but Hossein Agha turned to Abol-Ghassem Khan and said, \"The poor man hasn't been buried yet, and you let them insult him like that?\"\n\nThe captain slapped Hossein Agha sharply across the face, making his nose bleed. \"You shut up!\" he barked.\n\nAbol-Ghassem Khan took out a silver cigarette-case from his pocket which he opened and held in front of the captain.\n\n\"Captain, please have one,\" he said, blinking. \"I seem to recognize you. Aren't you the son of Agha Mirza Mehdi, the porter at the oil-maker's caravanserai? Your father respected the dead...\"\n\n\"Is this the time to be pulling out my pedigree?\" the captain shouted angrily. \"Why do you lead these people on?\" Turning to the crowd, he yelled, \"I told you to get lost!\"\n\nHossein Agha had cupped his hand under his nose. \"How can we do that?\" he asked. \"You're blocking our way.\"\n\nThe captain dealt Hossein Agha several more blows on the back of the head. \"Why are you jabbering again?\" he bellowed. \"Didn't I tell you to shut up?\"\n\nThey began to grapple with each other. Just as Mashallah Qari had pinned the captain's arms behind him, the police commander blew his whistle and the policemen and soldiers charged the crowd, hitting out left and right with their batons or rifle-butts. But the crowd managed to make its way down the main road. First Fotouhi and Hassan Agha, then Majid and Seyyid Mohammad, out of necessity, left the coffin on the ground by the side-street and followed the crowd into the main road.\n\nThe road itself became blocked. Cars were backed up in both lanes; several carriage-horses shied. The noise of drivers cursing and lashing at their horses, car drivers honking and vainly attempting to reverse, mingled with that of the mourners who had taken out their chains and begun to flagellate amidst the general hubbub and confusion of the crowd.\n\nThe man carrying the candelabrum tried to cross the dried-up gutter to reach the sidewalk, but he was pushed by the crowd and the candelabrum crashed to the ground, breaking into bits. The man, with the empty tray still on his head, squatted down to pick up the bits of crystal. The others, however, managed to escape to the sidewalk with the Ta'zieh emblem which they leaned against a wall. A group of people helped make way for the Hejleh Ghassem to be taken back to the garden.\n\nNow all the crowd had poured into the main road and the coffin, decked with flowers, was lying abandoned by a wall along the side-street. Only Zari and Abol-Ghassem Khan remained. Wordlessly, they tried to pick up the coffin. It was heavy. The eglantine and red roses had withered, but the wild flowers were still fresh. Zari looked down the main road for help. Suddenly she heard gun shots. The people who had been watching from the shop roof-tops retreated a little.\n\nZari spotted Khosrow who was struggling and shouting, \"Let me go!\"\n\nA policeman was holding both his arms with one hand, and Hormoz, wearing his one-eyed glasses, was punching the policeman on the chest.\n\nThose who were injured or unconscious were being carried off by others, many of them with torn clothing revealing naked flesh underneath. What a cloud of dust there was in the air! Meanwhile, no-one could be found to help them pick up the coffin from the ground, and Zari was against dragging it on the dirt all the way back home as Abol-Ghassem Khan suggested. Feeling sick to the stomach, she had to resort to her smelling salts again.\n\nEventually four buses, honking non-stop, managed to scatter the crowd and open up a way for themselves. They narrowly passed the truck, now empty of soldiers, hitting the deserted sidewalk with a thump. The odd remaining spectator dodged the vehicles as they pulled up and parked, one after the other, beyond the Ta'zieh emblem. Indian soldiers peered out from the bus windows and the crowd, which had momentarily retreated, converged again, shouting and clamouring.\n\nThe captain approached Zari and Abol-Ghassem Khan. \"I think you ought to go and bury the body right away,\" he told Abol-Ghassem Khan. \"I'll find you a car. When you get a crowd roused up...\" He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his face.\n\n\"I have a car myself,\" Abol-Ghassem Khan answered.\n\nAn Indian officer got out of the first bus and pushed his way through to the captain. He saluted and said in broken Persian, \"We on holiday. Soldiers been visiting Shah Cheraq. Only two days' holiday.\"\n\n\"You can see for yourself that the road is blocked,\" the captain informed him loudly.\n\n\"All right, all right,\" said the Indian soldier.\n\nBut Zari knew, and was quite certain the captain knew too, that the route the soldiers had taken could never have led to the shrine.\n\nAt this point Zari noticed Majid and Haj Mohammad Reza the dyer holding Khosrow and Hormoz by the hand, leading them towards the side-street. They helped Abol-Ghassem Khan lift the coffin, but they didn't let go of the boys' hands. This small group, followed by Zari, returned to the house and took the body to the cistern. Abol-Ghassem Khan sent Haj Mohammad Reza for more ice, praying that he wouldn't return empty-handed. By now the garden was filled with wounded people. Several half-conscious, bloodied men with their shirts ripped open had collapsed on to the wooden beds. Two men were washing their faces at the pool, and drinking from it even though the water was no longer clear.\n\nZari went to the basement, hoping to find the twins there. But instead she found Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, lying on the bed with Ferdows at her feet, fanning her. The pool-fountain had been turned on, and no-one else was there.\n\nZari found Ameh and the twins in the bedroom. The curtains had been drawn and the room was half-dark, but Mina still spotted Zari, and she got up from Ameh's side on the bed to throw herself with open arms into her mother's embrace. Zari kissed her on the eyes which were moist from crying. Marjan was sitting on Ameh's lap and didn't get up. She just stared at her mother with round eyes.\n\n\"Mother,\" said Mina, \"the old man didn't say Nargessi, Narengi. He kept saying 'Ouch! Ouch!' His head was hurt! It was bleeding...\"\n\n\"But you were supposed to stay at Aunt Mehri's,\" said Zari.\n\nMina kept staring at the curtains of the window which opened on to the verandah. \"Why did you let them into the house?\" she asked. \"Now they'll take dadash's horse and father's horse away... that boy was hurt there...\" and she pointed to her arm.\n\n\"I asked you why you didn't stay at Aunt Mehri's,\" Zari repeated.\n\nMina pointed at Marjan, who was still in Ameh's lap, and said, \"This cry-baby was scared and cried. She kept saying, 'I want my mama'... Ameh didn't let us look... he kept his head under the tree like this, it was bleeding...\" She paused and threw an arm around her mother's neck. \"Aunt Mehri and Uncle Mohsen were fighting. Aunt Mehri cried. Uncle Mohsen said, 'I'm scared!' Then he hit Aunt Mehri. And this cry-baby started to cry...\"\n\n\"I didn't want it to be like this, and I didn't think it would turn out like this,\" Ameh said.\n\n\"But I don't regret it,\" Zari said. \"As Yusef used to say, a town mustn't be completely empty of real men.\"\n\n\"I wanted them to mourn the poor martyr's death, but I didn't want it to end up in fighting and violence. As my late father always said, in any war, both sides are losers.\"\n\nMina, still holding on to Zari, said, \"Father will come and scold us. My brother will say, 'Where's my horse, then?' I'll say, 'Brother, Sahar was hurt and died.' All right?\"\n\nNow that Zari had her keychain she could fetch the first-aid box from the cupboard to treat the injured. The noise still continued, as did the gun-fire. In the midst of all this, the telephone kept ringing stubbornly. Abol-Ghassem Khan went to pick it up. It was obviously  for him because he was a long time answering, and when he left by the garden gate, he seemed in a great hurry. Soon afterwards, Hormoz left too. But Majid remained, holding Khosrow's hand in his own, sitting next to Zari on the bed while Zari rubbed some ointment on to Khosrow's other wrist which was puffed and bruised from the gendarme's grip.\n\n\"Does it hurt a lot?\" Zari asked. \"I think it's dislocated.\"\n\n\"No, mother. And anyway, I'm not more precious than father, after all. When he was shot...\" He didn't finish his sentence. Instead, he smiled at his mother and said, \"Even if it hurts, it'll get better.\"\n\n\"That's my man!\" Zari said with a smile.\n\nThat night, they moved the body from the cistern and its bags of ice to the boot of Abol-Ghassem Khan's car. Ameh, Zari, Khosrow, Hormoz and Abol-Ghassem Khan sat in the car and drove around Seyyid Haj Gharib's grave as a ritual gesture. Ameh Khanom cried all the time, sobbing, \"O my poor lonely one!\"\n\nBut Zari had no tears. She wondered whether Ameh was referring to the solitary saint, or Yusef's loneliness. She could only wish for her own tears to flow, and a safe place to sit and weep for all the lonely and estranged people in the world; for all those who had been killed unjustly and buried secretly by night.\n\nWhen they reached the Javan Abad cemetery, the grave had been prepared and they lowered the body into it by the light of a lantern Gholam held. Seyyid Mohammad wanted to say the last prayers but he couldn't remember them properly. At Gholam's signal, Khosrow pulled back the shroud, crying behind his hands. Gholam and Seyyid threw a handful of earth over Yusef, while Ameh wailed, \"My martyr is lying right here. My brother is right here. Why should I go to Karbala?\"\n\nBut Zari felt nauseated with everything, even with death. A death which had had no last rites, no departing prayer, no proper burial. She decided not to have anything engraved on the gravestone either.\n\nWhen they got home, several letters of condolence had already arrived. Among these, only McMahon's really touched her, and she translated it for Khosrow and Ameh:\n\n\"Do not weep, my sister. A tree will take root in your home and many trees in your town and even more in your land. And the wind will bring the message of each tree to the other, and the trees will ask the wind, 'did you see the dawn as you were coming on your way?'\" \n\n# _Glossary_\n\nAgha\u2014or Aqa. Roughly meaning \"Mr.\" or \"Sir\".\n\nAshura\u2014the tenth day of Moharram, the day of the martyrdom of Imam Hossein at Karbala.\n\nBabi\u2014a member of the Babi sect, founded by Seyyid Ali Mohammad of Shiraz, and considered heretical by Shiites.\n\nBibi\u2014mother.\n\nchador\u2014full-length veil. Women of higher class would use indoor and outdoor veils, often made in a variety of luxurious fabrics.\n\ndroshke\u2014an open, horse-drawn carriage similar to its Russian counterpart.\n\nEzhdehakosh\u2014a clan of the Qashqai tribe of southern Iran.\n\nFarsi-Madan\u2014a clan of the Qashqai tribe.\n\nFassayakafikohomo'allah\u2014a phrase in Arabic meaning \"Then God shall be sufficient for you\".\n\nGhassem wedding chamber\u2014a miniature structure carried at the head of Shiite funeral processions to remind mourners of the untimely martyrdom of Qassem, son of Hassan, who died just before his marriage-day.\n\ngiveh\u2014woven canvas summer shoes or slippers.\n\nhalva\u2014a type of pastry commonly served at funerals.\n\nHazrat\u2014meaning \"saint\" or \"holiness\"; thus Hazrate Abbas,\n\nHazrate Massoumeh, Hazrate Fatemeh, Hazrate Zeynab, all refer to holy persons, in this case the immediate family of the Prophet Mohammad.\n\nhowzkhaneh\u2014roughly equivalent to a basement, where people retire in the heat of the day, and which generally has a small pool with a fountain.\n\nImam\u2014Islamic religious title which refers both to the family of the Prophet Mohammad, and to clergymen of the highest authority, e.g. Imam Juma. Thus, also, Imam Reza, eighth Shiite Imam, or Imam Hossein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, or Imam Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, on whom the Sufi sect of dervishes in Iran is focused, as well as being the legitimate Caliph and heir after Mohammad's death, according to Shiites.\n\nKahn\/Khanom\u2014titles meaning \"Mr.\" or \"Mrs.\" Khanom Hakim literally means \"lady doctor\". Khan can also refer to tribal chiefs or feudal landlords, as in Yusef's case.\n\nKhuli\u2014in Shiite lore, a man who had hidden Imam Hossein's severed head in the furnace in his house.\n\nMasnavi\u2014a form of verse popularized by Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, the great Persian mystic poet.\n\nNakir and Monkir\u2014two angels believed to interrogate the dead on their first night in the grave.\n\nRamadan\/Ramazan\u2014Islamic month of fasting.\n\nRowzeh\u2014a ritual gathering in popular religious practice, to lament the martyrdom of the Shiite Imams. Special food is prepared for the occasion and distributed amongst the poor.\n\nSeyyid\u2014honorific title used for men to denote descent from the Prophet Mohammad.\n\nShahnameh\u2014epic book of poetry written by the Iranian poet Ferdowsi, dating to the eleventh century. The mythology created by Ferdowsi figures largely in all aspects of traditional Iranian culture. Thus, Rostam and Sohrab \u2013 the legendary son killed at the hand of Rostam, his own father. Esfandiar the invincible, Ashkabus the warrior, Akvan the demon\u2014are all characters from this epic.\n\nSheikh San'an\u2014from Farrid-ud-Din Attar's \"Mantiq-ut-Teyr\" or \"Conference of the Birds\". The story of a prominent clergyman who fell in love with a Christian girl, renouncing his high position and followers to prove his love for her.\n\nSiavush\u2014legendary Iranian prince, whose stepmother conspired against him and who was forced to undergo a trial by fire.\n\nSobhi\u2014a popular radio story-teller for children.\n\ntakht\u2014large, multi-purpose wooden bed or platform. Can be used as seating over a small pool for coolness in the afternoon, or as bed under mosquito netting.\n\ntar\u2014a stringed instrument, played by plucking.\n\nTa'zieh\u2014an Islamic Shiite passion play re-enacting the martyrdom of the Imams at Karbala. It often serves as inspiration for various mourning rituals, and was banned by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi for the religious fervour it was liable to create. Marhab, Shemr (who beheaded Imam Hossein), Yazid (the Omayyid Caliph), the farangi (or European), the unwanted Zeynab, Hend, who rapaciously tore out the liver of the Prophet's uncle, and Fezza, are all villains of the play.\n\ntoman\u2014ten rials, i.e. unit of Iranian currency.\n\nTuba tree\u2014a tree in Paradise which has all manner of heavenly fruit.\n\nWalazalin\u2014the last phrase of the opening Surah of the Quran.\n\nYa Hu, Ya Haq, Ya Ali\u2014a chant used by Sufi dervishes.\n\nzither\u2014a stringed instrument with flat sounding-board played on table.\n\nZurkhaneh\u2014Persian \"gymnasium\" where the national sport\u2014a type of rhythmic exercise with weights\u2014is practised to chanted music. \n\n# About the Author\n\nSIMIN DANESHVAR was born into a provincial, middle-class family in Shiraz in 1921, educated at a missionary school and later at Tehran University. The comparatively relaxed political environment of the forties in Iran led her to choose journalism as her first career, and she began writing fiction at the same time. She subsequently married Jalal Al-e Ahmad, the leading Iranian intellectual and writer, received her doctorate from Tehran University and won a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford University. Upon her return to Iran she became an associate professor of art history at Tehran University. She was an articulate and outspoken lecturer and her promotion was hindered by Savak, the secret police.\n\nAfter her husband's untimely death in 1969, Daneshvar assumed a leading role in the Writer's Association which he had helped found and she provided moral support for intellectuals opposing the Shah's regime. After the Revolution in 1979, she retired from her University post. Since then, she has kept a low profile whilst continuing to write fiction and remaining deeply committed to her life-long concern with women and their role in Iranian society. \n\n# Copyright\n\nThis ebook published in Great Britain by  \nHalban Publishers Ltd  \n22 Golden Square  \nLondon W1F 9JW  \n2012\n\nFirst published in Great Britain by Halban Publishers, 1991\n\nwww.halbanpublishers.com\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publishers.\n\nA CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.\n\nISBN 978 1 905559 48 0\n\nOriginally published in Iran under the title _Savushun_\n\nCopyright \u00a9 1969 by Simin Daneshvar  \nTranslation copyright \u00a9 1991 by Roxane Zand\n\nSimin Daneshvar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.\n\nOriginal cover design by _The Third Man_\n\nOriginally printed in Great Britain by Cox and Wyman\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nMALANGA   \nCHASING   \nVALLEJO\n\n_Selected Poems:_\n\nC\u00c9SAR VALLEJO\n\n_with New Translations and Notes by_\n\nGERARD MALANGA\n\nA BILINGUAL EDITION\n\nTHREE ROOMS PRESS\n\nNEW YORK CITY\nA note of thanks to everyone who helped me with preparing this book project. To Carol Streib who was the first to assist me with these translations back in 1970. To Professor Pachas Almeyda for his research and advice. To Juan Larrea and Madame Georgette de Vallejo for photos. To David Cudaback for editorial guidance on the Introduction. To Claudio Taverna and Patricia Daniela Alverte for their patient generosity in looking after every aspect of these translations. I thank them all.\n\n\u2014GM\n_Malanga Chasing Vallejo:  \nSelected Poems of C\u00e9sar Vallejo   \nwith New Translations and Notes   \n_by Gerard Malanga\n\nTRANSLATIONS, INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND   \nCLOSING POEM (ORIGINAL AND TRANSLATION):  \nCopyright \u00a9 2014 by Gerard Malanga\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without permission of the author or publisher, except for brief quotes for review purposes. For permissions, please write to info@threeroomspress.com.\n\nISBN: 978-1-9411101-0-2 ebook  \nLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2014938002\n\nLETTERS FROM GEORGETTE VALLEJO, INTRODUCTION,   \nAND CLOSING POEM BY GERARD MALANGA:   \nTranslated by Patricia Daniela Alverte\n\nCOVER AND BOOK DESIGN:   \nKat Georges Design International  \nwww.katgeorges.com\n\nALL PHOTOS:  \nArchives Malanga\n\nPUBLISHED BY:  \nThree Rooms Press, New York, NY  \nwww.threeroomspress.com\n\nDISTRIBUTED BY:  \nPGW\/Perseus  \nwww.pgw.com\nCONTENTS\n\nC\u00e9sar Vallejo, the Man and the Poet\n\n_C\u00e9sar Vallejo, el hombre y el poeta_\n\nSELECTED POEMS: C\u00c9SAR VALLEJO\n\n_from_ LOS HERALDOS NEGROS, 1919\n\nThe Black Heralds\n\n_Los heraldos negros_\n\nThe Voice of the Mirror\n\n_La voz del espejo_\n\nA Divine Falling of Leaves\n\n_Deshojaci\u00f3n sagrada_\n\nIce Boat\n\n_Bordas de hielo_\n\nTwilight\n\n_Medialuz_\n\nWillow\n\n_Sauce_\n\nAbsent\n\n_Ausente_\n\nBeneath the Poplars\n\n_Bajos los \u00e1lamos_\n\nThe Spider\n\n_La ara\u00f1a_\n\nBabel\n\n_Babel_\n\nDregs\n\n_Heces_\n\nThe Black Cup\n\n_La copa negra_\n\nVillager\n\n_Aldeana_\n\nAgape\n\n_\u00c1gape_\n\nWhite Rose\n\n_Rosa blanca_\n\nOur Daily Bread\n\n_El pan nuestro_\n\nThe Eternal Dice\n\n_Los dados eternos_\n\nThe Weary Circles\n\n_Los anillos fatigados_\n\nThe Distant Footsteps\n\n_Los pasos lejanos_\n\nTo My Brother Miguel (in memoriam)\n\n_A mi hermano Miguel (in memoriam)_\n\nFilled with January\n\n_Enereida_\n\nI Was Born on a Day God Was Sick\n\n_Espergesia_\n\nFROM TRILCE, 1922\n\nIII \"The grown-ups\"\n\n_III \u00abLas personas mayores\u00bb_\n\nXIV \"My explanation exactly\"\n\n_XIV \u00abCual mi explicaci\u00f3n\u00bb_\n\nXV \"In that corner we sleep together\"\n\n_XV \u00abEn el rinc\u00f3n aquel, donde dormimos juntos\u00bb_\n\nXVI \"I have faith in being strong\"\n\n_XVI \u00abTengo fe en ser fuerte\u00bb_\n\nXVIII \"Oh the four walls of the cell\"\n\n_XVIII \u00abOh las cuatro paredes de la celda\u00bb_\n\nXXXIII \"If it rained tonight I would retire\"\n\n_XXXIII \u00abSi lloviera esta noche, retirar\u00edame\u00bb_\n\nXLV \"I am free from the chains of the sea\"\n\n_XLV \u00abMe desvinculo del mar\u00bb_\n\nLXI \"I get down from the horse tonight\"\n\n_LXI \u00abEsta noche desciendo del caballo\u00bb_\n\nLXIII \"Dawn rain drops. The well-combed\"\n\n_LXIII \u00abAmanece lloviendo. Bien peinada\u00bb_\n\nLXIII \"November 2nd turns\"\n\n_LXVI \u00abDobla el dos de Noviembre\u00bb_\n\nLXXV \"You are dead\"\n\n_LXXV \u00abEst\u00e1is muertos\u00bb_\n\nFROM POEMAS EN PROSA, 1923\/1924\u20131929\n\nThe Good Sense\n\n_El buen sentido_\n\nLanguidly Your Spirit\n\n_L\u00e1nguidamente su licor_\n\nThe Most Critical Moment of My Life\n\n_El momento m\u00e1s grave de la vida_\n\nI Am Going to Speak about Hope\n\n_Voy a hablar de la esperanza_\n\nDiscovery of Life\n\n_Hallazgo de la vida_\n\nPayroll of Bones\n\n_N\u00f3mina de huesos_\n\n\"Behold I Greet Today\"\n\n_\"He aqu\u00ed que hoy saludo\"_\n\nLoin of the Sacred Scriptures\n\n_Lomo de las sagradas escrituras_\n\nFROM POEMAS HUMANOS: THE UNDATED POEMS 1923(?)\u20131937\n\nHat, Overcoat, Gloves\n\n_Sombrero, abrigo, guantes_\n\nThe Wheel of the Starving\n\n_La rueda del hambriento_\n\nEpistle to Passersby\n\n_Ep\u00edstola a los transe\u00fantes_\n\nToday I'd Really Like to Be Happy\n\n_Quisiera hoy ser feliz de buena gana_\n\nConsidering Coldly, Impartially\n\n_Considerando en fr\u00edo, imparcialmente_\n\nAnd If after So Many Words\n\n_\u00a1Y si despu\u00e9s de tantas palabras!_\n\nParis, October 1936\n\n_Par\u00eds, Octubre 1936_\n\nBlack Stone on a White Stone\n\n_Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca_\n\nToday I Like Life Much Less\n\n_Hoy me gusta la vida mucho menos_\n\n[FROM POEMAS HUMANOS:   \nTHE DATED POEMS, 4 SEPTEMBER\u20138 DECEMBER, 1937](part05.html)\n\nA Pillar Tolerating Solaces\n\n_Un pilar soportando consuelos_\n\nPoem to Be Read and Sung\n\n_Poema para ser Le\u00eddo y Cantado_\n\nWhile Pondering in Life, While Pondering\n\n_Al cavilar en la vida, al cavilar_\n\nOh Bottle without Wine!\n\n_\u00a1Oh botella sin vino!_\n\nHe Goes Running, Walking, Fleeing\n\n_Va corriendo, andando, huyendo_\n\nMy Breast Wants and Does Not Want Its Color\n\n_Quiere y no quiere su color mi pecho_\n\nThe Peace, the Wasp, the Bung, the Hillsides\n\n_La paz, la avispa, el taco, las vertientes_\n\nOf Pure Heat I'm Freezing\n\n_De puro calor tengo fr\u00edo_\n\nTrust in the Eyeglass, Not in the Eye\n\n_Confianza en el anteojo, n\u00f3 en el ojo_\n\nMocked, Acclimatized to the Good, Morbid, Tormented\n\n_Escarnecido, aclimatado al bien, m\u00f3rbido, hurente_\n\nStumble between Two Stars\n\n_Traspi\u00e9 entre dos estrellas_\n\nFarewell, Remembering a Goodbye\n\n_Despedida recordando un adi\u00f3s_\n\nThe Book of Nature\n\n_El libro de la naturaleza_\n\nI Have a Terrible Fear of Being an Animal\n\n_Tengo un miedo terrible de ser un animal_\n\nThe Anger Which Breaks a Man into Children\n\n_La c\u00f3lera que quiebra al hombre en ni\u00f1os_\n\nIntensity and Heights\n\n_Intensidad y altura_\n\nGuitar\n\n_Guitarra_\n\nPantheon\n\n_Pante\u00f3n_\n\nA Man Is Watching a Woman\n\n_Un hombre est\u00e1 mirando a una mujer_\n\nThe Nine Monsters\n\n_Los nueve monstruos_\n\nA Man Passes with a Loaf of Bread on His Shoulders\n\n_Un hombre pasa con un pan al hombro_\n\nSome Days a Fruitful, Cautious Longing Comes Over Me\n\n_Me viene, hay d\u00edas, una gana ub\u00e9rrima, pol\u00edtica_\n\nPalms and Guitar\n\n_Palmas y guitarra_\n\nThe Soul That Suffered from Being Its Body\n\n_El alma que sufri\u00f3 de ser su cuerpo_\n\nThe One Who Will Come Has Just Passed By\n\n_Acaba de pasar el que vendr\u00e1_\n\nThe Evil Man Might Come with a Throne on His Shoulder\n\n_Viniere el malo, con un trono al hombro_\n\nThat Is the Place Where I Put On\n\n_Ello es que el lugar donde me pongo_\n\nAnother Bit of Calm, Comrade\n\n_Otro poco de calma, camarada_\n\nFROM ESPA\u00d1A, APARTA DE M\u00cd ESTE C\u00c1LIZ, SET.\/OCT.\/NOV. 1937\n\nI \u2013 Hymn to the Volunteers of the Republic\n\n_I \u2013 Himno a los voluntarios de la rep\u00fablica_\n\nIII \u2013 With His Index Finger He Writes on the Air\n\n_III \u2013 Sol\u00eda escribir con su dedo grande en el aire_\n\nIX \u2013 A Brief Funeral Prayer for a Hero of the Republic\n\n_IX \u2013 Peque\u00f1o responso a un h\u00e9roe de la rep\u00fablica_\n\nXII \u2013 Mass\n\n_XII \u2013 Masa_\n\nXV \u2013 Spain, Take This Cup from Me\n\n_XV \u2013 Espa\u00f1a, aparta de m\u00ed este c\u00e1liz_\n\nCLOSING POEM BY GERARD MALANGA\n\nTHE LETTERS FROM GEORGETTE VALLEJO\nINTRODUCTION\n\n_C\u00e9sar Vallejo, with his wife Georgette_\n\nPhoto: Juan Larrea Collection\/Archives Malanga\nC\u00e9sar Vallejo, the Man and the Poet  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nHOW DID I COME TO TRANSLATE the poetry of C\u00e9sar Vallejo in 1969? First, having only a peripheral knowledge of Spanish, I never professed to be \"translating\" his verse in the literal sense, but to be transubstantiating them from one language to another. Initially, _Cassell's Spanish Dictionary_ , the 1959 edition, was my constant companion.\n\nI first became acquainted with Vallejo's poetry through the pioneer translations of his work by Thomas Merton, Donald Devenish Walsh, Muna Lee de Mu\u00f1oz Mar\u00edn, H. R. Hays, James Wright, and Robert Bly. I was not out to improve what they had accomplished. I loved what they'd done.\n\nHaving read about his life\u2014consumed by the burden of poverty and malnutrition\u2014I felt he was a kindred spirit; and through his verse, I came to understand the bleakness, the loneliness, the deprivation of what he had expressed in his daily living. Life was not kind to him.\n\nI experienced what he experienced. It's no fun being poor in Paris, especially during his sojourn there in those late 1930s, I can imagine. Sixty years later I, too, have walked those same Paris streets of gloom and rain and bitter cold. I, too, peered hungrily through those curtained windows at the privileged in some warm and cozy bistro. I, too, walked away with a growling stomach. I, too, had unfulfilled desires glancing in shop windows, even at something as simple as a folded linen handkerchief. I, too, wore through the soles of my only pair of shoes until my feet ached from the dampness. They don't give you grants or shower you with prizes for being poor. Poverty doesn't support vision, and counts for nothing in the end.\n\nVallejo's experiences became my experiences\u2014not by choice, mind you, but by the mere fact of our spiritual brotherhood through poetry. It's as if I fully understood the spirituality of what he was expressing on a universal plane. He was talking to me directly. His soul touched mine through his verse. In this moment, we became spiritual brothers.\n\nBut I had no one with whom I could share those experiences discovered through his verse. Dare I reach out to Vallejo's widow, Madame Georgette de Vallejo?\n\nOne early translator had demonized her. I was forewarned that she was difficult to deal with. But this warning didn't discourage me in the slightest. I wanted to touch the one person still alive who was closest to the man whose works touched me. One problem: she was living in Lima, Peru, nearly four thousand miles away.\n\nSo I took a chance, a long shot, to be sure. I sent her a couple dozen of my translations. Remarkably, within a month, she wrote back with glowing remarks and helpful hints and even concrete examples of what to do and what not to do, so that I could make my versions better. She bestowed upon me the gift of her generosity and the knowledge she had gained being C\u00e9sar Vallejo's lifetime companion. She shared her knowledge with me because she clearly believed in my work.\n\nIt was never my intention to make a career out of translating C\u00e9sar Vallejo. There were plenty others in the horse race; and we know what B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k had to say about horse races (\"Competition is for horses, not for artists\"). Any other choice not to translate would have betrayed the spiritual connection I felt for the man and his work.\n\nI did what I did because of the spiritual connection, and nothing more. No great expectations. No accolades sought. No subterfuge. No hidden agendas. I felt bonded to the man through time and space. This is what counted most for me, in the end.\n\nIt's now been nearly forty-five years since I embarked on this long voyage through uncharted waters with many an electrical storm coming my way. For most of that time, I would return to my working drafts and make revisions and read them aloud to myself. My efforts are a testament to the spiritual kinship I've felt for C\u00e9sar Vallejo all along. I was steadfast. I was focused. I was dedicated. He never left my side. He has been my guiding spirit, my guiding light, not only through his poetry but through mine as well. _Dear friend_.\n\nGerard Malanga  \n _5:VI:13_\nC\u00e9sar Vallejo, el hombre y el poeta  \n(For English translation click here)\n\ntranslated by Patricia Daniela Alverte\n\nC\u00d3MO ES QUE LLEGU\u00c9 A TRADUCIR la poes\u00eda de C\u00e9sar Vallejo en 1969? Primero, teniendo apenas un conocimiento perif\u00e9rico del espa\u00f1ol, nunca he pretendido \"traducir\" sus versos en sentido literal, sino transustanciar los mismos de un lenguaje a otro. En ese momento, la edici\u00f3n de 1959 del _Cassell's Spanish Dictionary_ , fue mi constante compa\u00f1\u00eda.\n\nMe familiaric\u00e9 por primera vez con la poes\u00eda de Vallejo a trav\u00e9s de las traducciones pioneras de su trabajo realizadas por Thomas Merton, Donald Devenish Walsh, Muna Lee de Mu\u00f1oz Mar\u00edn, H. R. Hays, James Wright, y Robert Bly. Yo no pretend\u00eda mejorar el trabajo logrado por ellos. Me encanta lo que han hecho.\n\nHabiendo le\u00eddo sobre su vida\u2014consumida por el agobio de la pobreza y de la malnutrici\u00f3n\u2014sent\u00ed que \u00e9l era un esp\u00edritu af\u00edn; y a trav\u00e9s de su verso, comprend\u00ed la desolaci\u00f3n, la soledad, la privaci\u00f3n de lo que ha expresado en su vida cotidiana. \u00c9sta no era amable con \u00e9l.\n\nPas\u00e9 por lo mismo que el pas\u00f3. No es gracioso ser pobre en Par\u00eds, puedo imaginar, especialmente durante su estancia all\u00ed a finales de los a\u00f1os 30. Sesenta a\u00f1os despu\u00e9s yo, tambi\u00e9n, he caminado esas mismas calles de penumbra, lluvia y fr\u00edo de Par\u00eds. Yo, tambi\u00e9n, he mirado con avidez a trav\u00e9s de esas ventanas con cortinas el privilegio de alg\u00fan c\u00e1lido y costoso peque\u00f1o restaurante. Yo, tambi\u00e9n, me he alejado con un est\u00f3mago quejoso. Yo, tambi\u00e9n, he tenido deseos insatisfechos luego de echar un vistazo a las vidrieras de las tiendas, incluso por algo tan sencillo como un pa\u00f1uelo de lino plegado. Yo, tambi\u00e9n, agujere\u00e9 la suela de mi \u00fanico par de zapatos hasta que mi pie dol\u00eda a causa de la humedad. No te dan subvenciones ni te colman de premios por ser pobre. La pobreza no apoya a la visi\u00f3n, y no cuenta para nada al final.\n\nLas vivencias de Vallejo se convirtieron en mis vivencias\u2014no por elecci\u00f3n, como se pueden imaginar, sino por el simple hecho de nuestra hermandad a trav\u00e9s de la poes\u00eda. Como si hubiera comprendido enteramente la espiritualidad de lo que \u00e9l estaba expresando en un plano universal. Me hablaba a m\u00ed directamente. Su alma toc\u00f3 la m\u00eda a trav\u00e9s de sus versos. En ese momento, nos volvimos hermanos espirituales.\n\nPero no ten\u00eda a nadie con quien compartir esas experiencias descubiertas a trav\u00e9s de sus versos. Me atrevo a contactar a la viuda de Vallejo, Madame Georgette de Vallejo?\n\nUno de los primeros traductores la hab\u00eda demonizado. Yo estaba advertido de que ella era una persona dif\u00edcil de tratar. Pero esta advertencia no me desalent\u00f3 en lo m\u00e1s m\u00ednimo. Quer\u00eda contactar a la \u00fanica persona a\u00fan viva m\u00e1s cercana al hombre cuyas palabras me hab\u00edan tocado. Peque\u00f1o problema: ella estaba viviendo en Lima, Per\u00fa, a casi 4000 millas de distancia.\n\nAs\u00ed que me arriesgu\u00e9, un tiro dif\u00edcil, de seguro: le mand\u00e9 un par de docenas de mis traducciones. Extraordinariamente, en un mes, ella me escribi\u00f3 con brillantes observaciones y consejos \u00fatiles e incluso con ejemplos concretos de lo que ten\u00eda que hacer y de lo que no ten\u00eda que hacer, as\u00ed de esa manera yo podr\u00eda mejorar mis versiones. Ella deposit\u00f3 en m\u00ed el regalo de su generosidad y el conocimiento que hab\u00eda adquirido siendo la compa\u00f1era de vida de C\u00e9sar Vallejo. Ella comparti\u00f3 el conocimiento conmigo porque claramente confiaba en mi trabajo.\n\nNunca fue mi intenci\u00f3n hacer carrera traduciendo a C\u00e9sar Vallejo. Hab\u00eda muchos otros en la carrera de caballos; y todos sabemos lo que dijo Bela Bartok sobre las carreras de caballos (\"La competici\u00f3n es para los caballos, no para los artistas\"). Cualquier otra opci\u00f3n que no haya sido simplemente traducir, hubiera traicionado la conexi\u00f3n espiritual que sent\u00eda por el hombre y su trabajo.\n\nHice lo que hice por la conexi\u00f3n espiritual, y por nada m\u00e1s. Sin grandes expectativas. Sin b\u00fasqueda de elogios. Sin subterfugios. Sin agendas ocultas. Me sent\u00ed unido al hombre a trav\u00e9s del tiempo y del espacio. Al final, eso es lo que m\u00e1s cuenta para m\u00ed.\n\nAhora ya han pasado casi cuarenta y cinco a\u00f1os desde que me embarqu\u00e9 en este largo viaje a trav\u00e9s de aguas inexploradas con algunas tormentas el\u00e9ctricas en mi camino. La mayor parte de ese tiempo, he vuelto a mis borradores y he hecho correcciones y las he le\u00eddo para m\u00ed mismo. Mis esfuerzos son el testamento a la afinidad espiritual que he sentido por C\u00e9sar Vallejo desde el principio. Fui constante. Fui centrado. Fui dedicado. \u00c9l nunca se fue de mi lado. \u00c9l ha sido mi rector espiritual, mi gu\u00eda de luz, no s\u00f3lo a trav\u00e9s de su poes\u00eda sino a trav\u00e9s de la m\u00eda tambi\u00e9n. _Querido amigo_.\n\nGerard Malanga  \n _5:VI:13_\n_for_\n\n_Georgette de Vallejo_\n\n_1908\u20131984_\n\n_C\u00e9sar Vallejo in Lima, 1920_\n\nPhoto: Juan Larrea Collection\/Archives Malanga\n_from_\n\nLOS HERALDOS NEGROS\n\n_1919_\nThe Black Heralds  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nLife has such blows and such harsh ones . . . I don't know!\n\nBlows like the hatred of God; as if before them,\n\nthe whiplash of all suffering\n\nwere to damn up the soul . . . I don't know!\n\nThey are few, yet they are . . . cleaving dark furrows\n\nin the proudest of faces and the strongest of backs.\n\nPerhaps they are the colts of barbarous Attilas;\n\nor the black heralds sent to us by Death.\n\nThey are the deep downfall of the Christ's soul,\n\nof some adoring faith that Destiny blasphemes.\n\nThese bloody blows are the cracklings\n\nof some bread we burn at the oven door.\n\nAnd man . . . Poor . . . poor! He turns his eyes, as\n\nwhen we are called by a pat on the shoulder;\n\nhe turns his mad eyes, and all experienced\n\nwells up, like a pool of guilt in his gaze.\n\nLife has such blows and such harsh ones . . . I don't know!\nLos heraldos negros  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nHay golpes en la vida, tan Fuertes Yo no s\u00e9!\n\nGolpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos\n\nla resaca de todo lo sufrido\n\nse empozara en el alma . . . Yo no s\u00e9!\n\nSon pocos, pero son . . . Abren zanjas oscuras\n\nen el rostro m\u00e1s fiero y en el lomo m\u00e1s fuerte.\n\nSer\u00e1n tal vez los potros de b\u00e1rbaros atilas;\n\nlos heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.\n\nSon las ca\u00eddas hondas de los Cristos del alma,\n\nde alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.\n\nEsos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones\n\nde alg\u00fan pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.\n\nY el hombre . . . Pobre . . . pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como\n\ncuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;\n\nvuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido\n\nse empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.\n\nHay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes . . . Yo no s\u00e9!\nThe Voice of the Mirror  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nSo life passes like a rare mirage.\n\nThe blue rose gives light and being to the thistle!\n\nBeside the dogma of the bundle\n\nmurderer, the sophism of The Good and The Reason!\n\nBy chance it has caught the thing which brushed the hand;\n\nthe perfumes diffused, and between them has felt\n\nthe moss that in the middle of the road has grown\n\nin the dry apple-tree of the dead Illusion.\n\nSo life passes,\n\nwith the singing of treacherous parched bacchantes.\n\nI go totally overwhelmed, forward . . . forward,\n\nmuttering my funeral march.\n\nThey walk close to the feet of Royal Brahmin elephants,\n\nand the sordid buzz of a boil mercurial,\n\ncouples raise a toast sculpted in rock,\n\nand forgotten ones dawn a cross on the mouth.\n\nSo life passes, a vast orchestra of Sphinxes\n\nwho throws on the Abyss, their funeral march.\nLa voz del espejo  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nAs\u00ed pasa la vida, como raro espejismo.\n\nLa rosa azul que alumbra y da el ser al cardo!\n\nJunto al dogma del fardo\n\nmatador, el sofisma del Bien y la Raz\u00f3n!\n\nSe ha cogido, al acaso, lo que roz\u00f3 la mano;\n\nlos perfumes volaron, y entre ellos se ha sentido\n\nel moho que a mitad de la ruta ha crecido\n\nen el manzano seco de la muerta Ilusi\u00f3n.\n\nAs\u00ed pasa la vida,\n\ncon c\u00e1nticos aleves de agostada bacante.\n\nYo voy todo azorado, adelante . . . adelante,\n\nrezongando mi marcha funeral.\n\nVan al pie de brahm\u00e1nicos elefantes reales,\n\ny al s\u00f3rdido abejeo de un hervor mercurial,\n\nparejas que alzan brindis esculpidos en roca\n\ny olvidados crep\u00fasculos una cruz en la boca.\n\nAs\u00ed pasa la vida, vasta orquesta de Esfinges\n\nque arrojan al Vac\u00edo su marcha funeral.\nA Divine Falling of Leaves  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nMoon! Crown of an enormous head,\n\ndropping leaves into yellows shadows!\n\nRed crown of a Jesus who thinks\n\ntragically, soft of emeralds!\n\nMoon! Reckless heart celestial,\n\nwhy do you row this way, inside the cup\n\nfull of blue wine, toward the west\n\nwhose stern is defeated and painful?\n\nMoon! It's no use flying away,\n\nso you go up in flames of scattered opals;\n\nmaybe you are my gypsy heart\n\nwho wanders in the blue, crying verses! . . .\nDeshojaci\u00f3n sagrada  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nLuna! Corona de una testa inmensa,\n\nque te vas deshojando en sombras gualdas!\n\nRoja corona de un Jes\u00fas que piensa\n\ntr\u00e1gicamente dulce de esmeraldas!\n\nLuna! Alocado coraz\u00f3n celeste\n\n\u00bfpor qu\u00e9 bogas as\u00ed, dentro la copa\n\nllena de vino azul, hacia el oeste,\n\ncual derrotada y dolorida popa?\n\nLuna! Y a fuerza de volar en vano,\n\nte holocaustas en \u00f3palos dispersos:\n\nt\u00fa eres talvez mi coraz\u00f3n gitano\n\nque vaga en el azul llorando versos! . . .\nIce Boat  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI come to see you go by every day,\n\nenchanting boat, always distant . . .\n\nYour eyes two blond captains,\n\nyour lips one tiny red handkerchief\n\nwaving a bloodstained farewell!\n\nI come to see you go by, until one day,\n\nintoxicated of time and cruelty,\n\nenchanted boat, always distant,\n\nthe afternoon star will depart!\n\nThe rigging winds that betray, winds\n\nof a woman that has passed by!\n\nYour cold captains give orders;\n\nAnd the one who departs will be I . . .\nBordas de hielo  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nVengo a verte pasar todos los d\u00edas,\n\nvaporcito encantado siempre lejos . . .\n\nTus ojos son dos rubios capitanes;\n\ntu labio es un brev\u00edsimo pa\u00f1uelo\n\nrojo que ondea en un adi\u00f3s de sangre!\n\nVengo a verte pasar; hasta que un d\u00eda,\n\nembriagada de tiempo y de crueldad,\n\nvaporcito encantado siempre lejos,\n\nla estrella de la tarde partir\u00e1!\n\nLas jarcias; vientos que traicionan; vientos\n\nde mujer que pas\u00f3!\n\nTus fr\u00edos capitanes dar\u00e1n orden;\n\ny quien habr\u00e1 partido ser\u00e9 yo . . .\nTwilight  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI've dreamed a leak. And I've dreamed\n\nyour laces dispersed in the bedroom;\n\nalong the length of a wharf, some mother;\n\nbreastfeeding the hour at her fifteen years.\n\nI've dreamt a leak. A \"forever\"\n\nsighing at a prow's ladder.\n\nI've dreamed a mother;\n\nsome fresh sprigs planted of vegetables,\n\nand the starry trousseau stitched of a dawn.\n\nAlong the length of a wharf . . .\n\nAnd along the length of a throat drowning!\nMedialuz  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nHe so\u00f1ado una fuga. Y he so\u00f1ado\n\ntus encajes dispersos en la alcoba.\n\nA lo largo de un muelle, alguna madre;\n\ny sus quince a\u00f1os dando el seno a una hora.\n\nHe so\u00f1ado una fuga. Un \u00abpara siempre\u00bb\n\nsuspirado en la escala de una proa;\n\nhe so\u00f1ado una madre;\n\nunas frescas matitas de verdura,\n\ny el ajuar constelado de una aurora.\n\nA lo largo de un muelle . . .\n\nY a lo largo de un cuello que se ahoga!\nWillow  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nWinter's lyricism, sound of muslin,\n\nwhen the early departure is approaching,\n\ndoomed voices of sad tunes\n\nthat in the afternoon prays a farewell.\n\nVision of my buried delusions\n\nin my own tomb of a mortal wound.\n\nVeronica charity of unknowns lands,\n\nwhere the life is lost at an ether price.\n\nClose to the dawn I will depart crying;\n\nand while my years are hunching\n\nmy fast path will curve scythes.\n\nBefore the cold unction of a dying moon,\n\nwith steel dings in an indolent land,\n\nthe dogs will dig, howling, a goodbye!\nSauce  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nLirismo de invierno, rumor de crespones,\n\ncuando ya se acerca la pronta partida;\n\nagoreras voces de tristes canciones\n\nque en la tarde rezan una despedida.\n\nVisi\u00f3n del entierro de mis ilusiones\n\nen la propia tumba de mortal herida.\n\nCaridad ver\u00f3nica de ignotas regiones,\n\ndonde a precio de \u00e9ter se pierde la vida.\n\nCerca de la aurora partir\u00e9 llorando;\n\ny mientras mis a\u00f1os se vayan curvando,\n\ncurvar\u00e1 guada\u00f1as mi ruta veloz.\n\nY ante fr\u00edos \u00f3leos de luna muriente,\n\ncon timbres de aceros en tierra indolente,\n\ncavar\u00e1n los perros, aullando, un adi\u00f3s!\nAbsent  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nAbsent! The morning I go\n\nfarther than the farthest, to the Mystery,\n\nlike following an inevitable line,\n\nyour feet will glide to the cemetery.\n\nAbsent! The morning when to the beach\n\nthe sea is shadow and the hushed empire,\n\nI go like a mournful bird,\n\nthe white pantheon will hold you captive.\n\nThe night will fall in your eyes\n\nand you will suffer, taking\n\nthe torn white garments of a penitent.\n\nAbsent! within your sufferings\n\na bronze weeping, there will pass a hound\n\npack of remorse.\nAusente  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nAusente! La ma\u00f1ana en que me vaya\n\nm\u00e1s lejos de lo lejos, al Misterio,\n\ncomo siguiendo inevitable raya,\n\ntus pies resbalar\u00e1n al cementerio.\n\nAusente! La ma\u00f1ana en que a la playa\n\ndel mar de sombra y del callado imperio,\n\ncomo un p\u00e1jaro l\u00fagubre me vaya,\n\nser\u00e1 el blanco pante\u00f3n tu cautiverio.\n\nSe habr\u00e1 hecho de noche en tus miradas;\n\ny sufrir\u00e1s, y tomar\u00e1s entonces\n\npenitentes blancuras laceradas.\n\nAusente! Y en tus propios sufrimientos\n\nha de cruzar entre un llorar de bronces\n\nuna jaur\u00eda de remordimientos!\nBeneath the Poplars  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\n_for Jos\u00e9 Garrido_\n\nLike poet-priests who've been imprisoned,\n\nthe poplars of blood have slept\n\nchewing songs of grass in the sunset,\n\nthe herds of Bethlehem on the hills.\n\nTo the latest martyrs of light\n\nthe ancient shepherd, shaken\n\nin his Easters' eyes have picked up\n\na caste herd of constellations.\n\nTilled in orphanhood the moment gone down\n\nwith burial rumors, in the praying meadows\n\ncowbells fill with autumn shadows.\n\nSurvive the blue weaved on iron,\n\nin which the shrouded pupils\n\na dog draws his pastoral howl.\nBajo los \u00e1lamos  \n(For English translation click here)\n\n_para Jos\u00e9 Garrido_\n\nCual hier\u00e1ticos bardos prisioneros,\n\nlos \u00e1lamos de sangre se han dormido.\n\nRumian arias de yerba al sol ca\u00eddo,\n\nlas greyes de Bel\u00e9n en los oteros.\n\nEl anciano pastor, a los postreros\n\nmartirios de la luz, estremecido,\n\nen sus pascuales ojos ha cogido\n\nuna casta manada de luceros.\n\nLabrado en orfandad baja al instante\n\ncon rumores de entierro, al campo orante;\n\ny se oto\u00f1an de sombra las esquilas.\n\nSupervive el azul urdido en hierro,\n\ny en \u00e9l, amortajadas las pupilas,\n\ntraza su aullido pastoral un perro.\nThe Spider  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nIt is an enormous spider no longer moving;\n\na colorless spider whose body,\n\nhead, and abdomen, is bleeding.\n\nI've seen him so close today. With what strength\n\nhe lengthened his innumerable feet\n\nto every side.\n\nAnd I think of his invisible eyes\n\nthose fatal pilots of the spider.\n\nIt's a spider who shivered, fixed\n\nat the edge of a stone;\n\nthe abdomen on one side\n\nand on the other, its head.\n\nWith so many feet the poor thing, and yet he cannot\n\nmake himself out. And I, watching him\n\namazed in such trance,\n\nwhat strange pain this traveler gives me today.\n\nIt's an enormous spider, whose abdomen\n\nprevents him from following his head.\n\nI've thought about his eyes\n\nand his numerous feet . . .\n\nAnd what strange pain this traveler gives me today!\nLa ara\u00f1a  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEs una ara\u00f1a enorme que ya no anda;\n\nuna ara\u00f1a incolora, cuyo cuerpo,\n\nuna cabeza y un abdomen, sangra.\n\nHoy la he visto de cerca. Y con qu\u00e9 esfuerzo\n\nhacia todos los flancos\n\nsus pies innumerables alargaba.\n\nY he pensado en sus ojos invisibles,\n\nlos pilotos fatales de la ara\u00f1a.\n\nEs una ara\u00f1a que temblaba fija\n\nen un filo de piedra;\n\nel abdomen a un lado,\n\ny al otro la cabeza.\n\nCon tantos pies la pobre, y a\u00fan no puede\n\nresolverse. Y, al verla\n\nat\u00f3nita en tal trance,\n\nhoy me ha dado qu\u00e9 pena esa viajera.\n\nEs una ara\u00f1a enorme, a quien impide\n\nel abdomen seguir a la cabeza.\n\nY he pensado en sus ojos\n\ny en sus pies numerosos . . .\n\n\u00a1Y me ha dado qu\u00e9 pena esa viajera!\nBabel  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nSweet home with no style, built\n\nwith just one stroke and just one piece\n\nof glint wax. And at home\n\nshe destroys and she cleans; says at times:\n\n\"The asylum is nice. Right here!\"\n\nOther times she breaks down and cries!\nBabel  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nDulce hogar sin estilo, fabricado\n\nde un solo golpe y de una sola pieza\n\nde cera tornasol. Y en el hogar\n\nella da\u00f1a y arregla; a veces dice:\n\n\u00abEl hospicio es bonito; aqu\u00ed no m\u00e1s!\u00bb\n\n\u00a1Y otras veces se pone a llorar!\nDregs  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThis afternoon it's raining, as never before; and I don't\n\nfeel like staying alive, heart.\n\nThis afternoon is gentle. Why not?\n\nWears grace and grief, dressed like a woman.\n\nThis afternoon, in Lima, it's raining. And I remember\n\nthe cruel caverns of my ingratitude;\n\nmy block of ice on her poppy,\n\nstronger than her \"Don't be this way!\"\n\nMy violent black flowers; and the barbarous\n\nand staggering blow with a stone; and the glacial roof.\n\nAnd will put the silence of her dignity\n\nwith burning oils on the endpoint.\n\nTherefore, this afternoon, as never before, I walk\n\nwith this owl, with this heart.\n\nAnd other women pass me by; and seeing me so sad,\n\nthey take a little piece from you,\n\nin the abrupt wrinkle of my deep grief.\n\nThis afternoon it's raining, rain so hard. And I don't\n\nfeel like staying alive, heart!\nHeces  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEsta tarde llueve, como nunca; y no\n\ntengo ganas de vivir, coraz\u00f3n.\n\nEsta tarde es dulce. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no ha de ser?\n\nViste de gracia y pena; viste de mujer.\n\nEsta tarde en Lima llueve. Y yo recuerdo\n\nlas cavernas crueles de mi ingratitud;\n\nmi bloque de hielo sobre su amapola,\n\nm\u00e1s fuerte que su \u00abNo seas as\u00ed!\u00bb\n\nMis violentas flores negras; y la b\u00e1rbara\n\ny enorme pedrada; y el trecho glacial.\n\nY pondr\u00e1 el silencio de su dignidad\n\ncon \u00f3leos quemantes el punto final.\n\nPor eso esta tarde, como nunca, voy\n\ncon este b\u00faho, con este coraz\u00f3n.\n\nY otras pasan; y vi\u00e9ndome tan triste,\n\ntoman un poquito de ti\n\nen la abrupta arruga de mi hondo dolor.\n\nEsta tarde llueve, llueve mucho. \u00a1Y no\n\ntengo ganas de vivir, coraz\u00f3n!\nThe Black Cup  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThe night is a cup of evil. A police whistle\n\ncuts across it, like a vibrating pin.\n\nTrampy woman, listen, how is it if you've gone away,\n\nthe wave is still black and still makes me flare up?\n\nThe Earth holds edges of a coffin in the shadows.\n\nTrampy woman, listen, please don't come back.\n\nMy flesh swims, swims\n\nin the cup of darkness that still makes me feel pain;\n\nmy flesh swims in there\n\nas in a swampy heart of a woman.\n\nStarlike coal . . . I've felt\n\ndry touches of clays\n\nover my transparent lotus.\n\nAh, woman. The flesh of instinct\n\nexists for and within you. Ah, woman!\n\nBecause of this, oh black chalice! even when you're gone,\n\nI smother in dust,\n\nand other desires to drink start pawing inside my flesh.\nLa copa negra  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nLa noche es una copa de mal. Un silbo agudo\n\ndel guardia la atraviesa, cual vibrante alfiler.\n\nOye, t\u00fa, mujerzuela, \u00bfc\u00f3mo, si ya te fuiste,\n\nla onda a\u00fan es negra y me hace a\u00fan arder?\n\nLa Tierra tiene bordes de f\u00e9retro en la sombra.\n\nOye, t\u00fa, mujerzuela, no vayas a volver.\n\nMi carne nada, nada\n\nen la copa de sombra que me hace a\u00fan doler;\n\nmi carne nada en ella,\n\ncomo en un pantanoso coraz\u00f3n de mujer.\n\nAscua astral . . . He sentido\n\nsecos roces de arcilla\n\nsobre mi loto di\u00e1fano caer.\n\nAh, mujer! Por ti existe\n\nla carne hecha de instinto. Ah mujer!\n\nPor eso \u00a1oh, negro c\u00e1liz! aun cuando ya te fuiste,\n\nme ahogo con el polvo;\n\ny piafan en mis carnes m\u00e1s ganas de beber!\nVillager  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nDistant vibration of small rusty bells\n\nspills on the air\n\nthe rural fragrance of their anguish.\n\nIn the silent light\n\nthe setting sun bleeds its farewell.\n\nAutumn's amber on the landscape\n\ntakes on a cold hue of mournful gray!\n\nTo the gate of the house,\n\nthat time's claws fill it with holes,\n\npeeping in silence,\n\npassing then to the nearby stable,\n\nthe calm silhouette\n\nof an ox color of gold,\n\nwho yearns with its biblical eyes\n\nlistening the prayers of the cowbells\n\nhis virile bull age!\n\nA noble rooster jumps across,\n\nthe garden wall,\n\nflapping the pain of his song, and in sad alert,\n\nas two drops of weep,\n\ntremble his eyes in the dead afternoon!\n\nAt the old village\n\nlanguidly plucks\n\nthe soft yarav\u00ed* of a guitar,\n\nin whose eternity of deep suffering\n\nthe sad voice of an Indian tolls\n\nlike a huge old bell in a cemetery.\n\nLeaning my elbows on the wall,\n\nwhen dark hues triumph in the soul\n\nand the wind prays in stiff branches\n\nwooden flute laments, timid, uncertain,\n\nI sigh my dismay,\n\nto see that in the scarlet and gold penumbra\n\nweeps a tragic blue of dead idylls!\n\n_*Yarav\u00ed is a melancholic song, originally from Quechua._\nAldeana  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nLejana vibraci\u00f3n de esquilas mustias\n\nen el aire derrama\n\nla fragancia rural de sus angustias.\n\nEn el patio silente,\n\nsangra su despedida el sol poniente.\n\nEl \u00e1mbar oto\u00f1al del panorama\n\ntoma un fr\u00edo matiz de gris doliente!\n\nAl port\u00f3n de la casa,\n\nque el tiempo con sus garras torna ojosa,\n\nasoma silenciosa\n\ny al establo cercano luego pasa,\n\nla silueta calmosa\n\nde un buey color de oro,\n\nque a\u00f1ora con sus b\u00edblicas pupilas,\n\noyendo la oraci\u00f3n de las esquilas,\n\nsu edad viril de toro!\n\n\u00a1Al muro de la huerta,\n\naleteando la pena de su canto,\n\nsalta un gallo gentil, y un triste alerta,\n\ncual dos gotas de llanto,\n\ntiemblan sus ojos a la tarde muerta!\n\nL\u00e1nguido se derrama\n\nen la vetusta aldea\n\nel dulce yarav\u00ed de una guitarra,\n\nen cuya eternidad de hondo quebranto\n\nla triste voz de un indio dondonea,\n\ncomo un viejo esquil\u00f3n de camposanto.\n\nDe codos yo en el muro,\n\ncuando triunfa en el alma el tinte oscuro,\n\ny el viento reza en los ramajes yertos\n\nllantos de quena, t\u00edmidos, inciertos,\n\nsuspiro una congoja\n\nal ver que en la penumbra gualda y roja\n\nllora un tr\u00e1gico azul de idilios muertos!\nAgape  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nToday no one comes to inquire,\n\nnor wants anything from me this afternoon.\n\nI've not seen a single graveyard flower\n\nin all this gay procession of lights.\n\nForgive me, Lord: how little I've died!\n\nIn this afternoon everyone, everyone goes by\n\nwithout asking or begging me anything.\n\nAnd I don't know what it is they forget that remains\n\nwrong in my hands, like an alien thing.\n\nI've come to the door,\n\nI feel like shouting to everyone:\n\nif you miss something, here it is!\n\nBecause on every afternoon of this life,\n\nI don't know which doors they slam in the face,\n\nand my soul takes something that belongs to another.\n\nToday nobody comes;\n\nand today I've died how little this afternoon!\n\u00c1gape  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nHoy no ha venido nadie a preguntar;\n\nni me han pedido en esta tarde nada.\n\nNo he visto ni una flor de cementerio\n\nen tan alegre procesi\u00f3n de luces.\n\nPerd\u00f3name, Se\u00f1or: qu\u00e9 poco he muerto!\n\nEn esta tarde todos, todos pasan\n\nsin preguntarme ni pedirme nada.\n\nY no s\u00e9 qu\u00e9 se olvidan y se queda\n\nmal en mis manos, como cosa ajena.\n\nHe salido a la puerta,\n\ny me da ganas de gritar a todos:\n\nSi echan de menos algo, aqu\u00ed se queda!\n\nPorque en todas las tardes de esta vida,\n\nyo no s\u00e9 con qu\u00e9 puertas dan a un rostro,\n\ny algo ajeno se toma el alma m\u00eda.\n\nHoy no ha venido nadie;\n\ny hoy he muerto qu\u00e9 poco en esta tarde!\nWhite Rose  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI feel all right. Now\n\na stoical frost shines\n\non me.\n\nMaking me laugh, ruby-colored\n\nrope\n\nthat grinds in my body.\n\nEndless rope,\n\nlike a\n\nspiral\n\ndescending\n\nof evil . . .\n\nbloody rope and lefty\n\nshaped by\n\na thousand strut daggers.\n\nGoing in this way, braiding\n\nits rolls of crepe;\n\nand tying the tremulous cat\n\nof Fear to the frozen nest,\n\nto the ultimate bonfire.\n\nAnd now I am calm,\n\nsurrounded by light.\n\nAnd a shipwrecked coffin\n\nmeows in my Pacific.\nRosa blanca  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nMe siento bien. Ahora\n\nbrilla un estoico hielo\n\nen m\u00ed.\n\nMe da risa esta soga\n\nrub\u00ed\n\nque rechina en mi cuerpo.\n\nSoga sin fin,\n\ncomo una\n\nvoluta\n\ndescendente\n\nde mal . . .\n\nSoga sangu\u00ednea y zurda\n\nformada de\n\nmil dagas en puntal.\n\nQue vaya as\u00ed, trenzando\n\nsus rollos de cresp\u00f3n;\n\ny que ate el gato tr\u00e9mulo\n\ndel Miedo al nido helado,\n\nal \u00faltimo fog\u00f3n.\n\nYo ahora estoy sereno,\n\ncon luz.\n\nY maya en mi Pac\u00edfico\n\nun n\u00e1ufrago ata\u00fad.\nOur Daily Bread  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\n_for Alejandro Gamboa_\n\nDrinks the breakfast . . . Humid earth\n\nof cemetery smells of loved blood.\n\nCity of winter . . . The scathing crusade\n\nof a cart that seems pulling\n\nemotions of fasting that cannot get free!\n\nWish I could knock all the doors,\n\nand ask for I don't know who; and then\n\nlook at the poor, and, while they wept softly,\n\ngive bits of fresh bread to all of them.\n\nAnd plunder the rich of the vineyards\n\nwith the two holy hands\n\nthat with one blow of light,\n\nflew away from the Cross!\n\nEyelash of morning do not rise!\n\nGive us this day our daily bread,\n\nLord . . . !\n\nAll my bones in me belong to others;\n\nand maybe I robbed them.\n\nI came to take something for myself that maybe\n\nwas meant for some other man;\n\nand I start thinking that, if I had not been born,\n\nanother poor man could drink this coffee.\n\nI am an evil thief . . . Where will I end!\n\nIn this frigid hour, when the earth\n\ntranscends the human dust and is so sad,\n\nI wish I could knock on all doors\n\nand beg pardon to I don't know who\n\nand make bits of fresh bread for him\n\nhere, in the oven of my heart . . . !\nEl pan nuestro  \n(For English translation click here)\n\n_para Alejandro Gamboa_\n\nSe bebe el desayuno . . . H\u00fameda tierra\n\nde cementerio huele a sangre amada.\n\nCiudad de invierno . . . La mordaz cruzada\n\nde una carreta que arrastrar parece\n\nuna emoci\u00f3n de ayuno encadenada!\n\nSe quisiera tocar todas las puertas,\n\ny preguntar por no s\u00e9 qui\u00e9n; y luego\n\nver a los pobres, y, llorando quedos,\n\ndar pedacitos de pan fresco a todos.\n\nY saquear a los ricos sus vi\u00f1edos\n\ncon las dos manos santas\n\nque a un golpe de luz\n\nvolaron desclavadas de la Cruz!\n\nPesta\u00f1a matinal, no os levant\u00e9is!\n\n\u00a1El pan nuestro de cada d\u00eda d\u00e1noslo,\n\nSe\u00f1or . . . !\n\nTodos mis huesos son ajenos;\n\nyo talvez los rob\u00e9!\n\nYo vine a darme lo que acaso estuvo\n\nasignado para otro;\n\ny pienso que, si no hubiera nacido,\n\notro pobre tomara este caf\u00e9!\n\nYo soy un mal ladr\u00f3n . . . A d\u00f3nde ir\u00e9!\n\nY en esta hora fr\u00eda, en que la tierra\n\ntrasciende a polvo humano y es tan triste,\n\nquisiera yo tocar todas las puertas,\n\ny suplicar a no s\u00e9 qui\u00e9n, perd\u00f3n,\n\ny hacerle pedacitos de pan fresco\n\naqu\u00ed, en el horno de mi coraz\u00f3n . . . !\nThe Eternal Dice  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nMy God, I am weeping for the being I'm living;\n\nI am sorry to have taken your bread;\n\nbut this wretched thinking dough\n\nis not a crust leavened in your side,\n\nyou don't have Marias who are departing!\n\nMy God, if you had been man,\n\ntoday you would know how to be God,\n\nbut you, you've been always fine,\n\nyou feel nothing of your creation.\n\nAnd the man oh yes is suffering you: the God is him!\n\nToday, that there are candles in my magic eyes,\n\nlike in a condemned man,\n\nmy God, you will light all your lights,\n\nand we will play with the old die . . .\n\nPerhaps, oh player! in bringing the good luck\n\nof the entire universe,\n\nthe ringside eyes of Death will turn up,\n\nlike two grim aces of mud.\n\nMy God, in this still, dark night\n\nyou can't play anymore, because the Earth\n\nis already a die worn and smoothed out at the edges\n\nfrom rolling by chance,\n\nthat can only stop in a space,\n\nin the space of an immense sepulcher.\nLos dados eternos  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nDios m\u00edo, estoy llorando el ser que vivo;\n\nme pesa haber tom\u00e1dote tu pan;\n\npero este pobre barro pensativo\n\nno es costra fermentada en tu costado:\n\nt\u00fa no tienes Mar\u00edas que se van!\n\nDios m\u00edo, si t\u00fa hubieras sido hombre,\n\nhoy supieras ser Dios;\n\npero t\u00fa, que estuviste siempre bien,\n\nno sientes nada de tu creaci\u00f3n.\n\nY el hombre s\u00ed te sufre: el Dios es \u00e9l!\n\nHoy que en mis ojos brujos hay candelas,\n\ncomo en un condenado,\n\nDios m\u00edo, prender\u00e1s todas tus velas,\n\ny jugaremos con el viejo dado.\n\nTal vez \u00a1oh jugador! al dar la suerte\n\ndel universo todo,\n\nsurgir\u00e1n las ojeras de la Muerte,\n\ncomo dos ases f\u00fanebres de lodo.\n\nDios m\u00edos, y esta noche sorda, oscura,\n\nya no podr\u00e1s jugar, porque la Tierra\n\nes un dado ro\u00eddo y ya redondo\n\na fuerza de rodar a la aventura,\n\nque no puede parar sino en un hueco,\n\nen el hueco de inmensa sepultura.\nThe Weary Circles  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThere are desires to return, to love, not to go away,\n\nand there are desires to die, fought by two\n\ncontrary waters that will never become isthmus.\n\nThere are desires for a kiss that would shroud life,\n\nthat withers in Africa of a fiery agony,\n\nsuicide!\n\nThere are desires to . . . to not have desires. Lord;\n\nat you I point my god murdering finger.\n\nThere are desires not to have had a heart at all.\n\nSpring returns, returns to go away once again. And God,\n\ncurved in time, repeats himself passing,\n\npassing with the spinal cord of the Universe on his shoulder.\n\nWhen my temples bent their mournful drum,\n\nwhen the dream etched on a knife is hurting me,\n\nthere are desires not to move on an inch from this poem!\nLos anillos fatigados  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nHay ganas de volver, de amar, de no ausentarse,\n\ny hay ganas de morir, combatido por dos\n\naguas encontradas que jam\u00e1s han de istmarse.\n\nHay ganas: de un gran beso que amortaje a la Vida,\n\nque acaba en el \u00e1frica de una agon\u00eda ardiente,\n\nsuicida!\n\nHay ganas de . . . no tener ganas. Se\u00f1or;\n\na ti yo te se\u00f1alo con el dedo deicida:\n\nhay ganas de no haber tenido coraz\u00f3n.\n\nLa primavera vuelve, vuelve y se ir\u00e1. Y Dios,\n\ncurvado en tiempo, se repite, y pasa, pasa\n\na cuestas con la espina dorsal del Universo.\n\nCuando las sienes tocan su l\u00fagubre tambor,\n\ncuando me duele el sue\u00f1o grabado en un pu\u00f1al,\n\nhay ganas de quedarse plantado en este verso!\nThe Distant Footsteps  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nMy father sleeps. His noble face\n\nshows a mild heart within;\n\nhe's so sweet now . . .\n\nif there's anything bitter within him, it's me.\n\nThere's a loneliness in the living; they are praying;\n\nand there's no news of the children today.\n\nMy father wakes, he listens\n\nthe flight into Egypt, the staunched goodbye.\n\nNow he's so near;\n\nif there's anything distant within him, it's me.\n\nMy mother walks in the orchard,\n\nsavoring a taste already without savor.\n\nNow she's so gentle,\n\nso much nervy, so much rakish, so much love.\n\nThere is loneliness in the living without sound,\n\nwithout news, without greenness, without childhood.\n\nAnd if there's something broken this afternoon,\n\nand descends and creaks\n\nit's two old roads, curving and white.\n\nDown them my heart walks on foot.\nLos pasos lejanos  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nMi padre duerme. Su semblante augusto\n\nfigura un apacible coraz\u00f3n;\n\nest\u00e1 ahora tan dulce . . .\n\nsi hay algo en \u00e9l de amargo, ser\u00e9 yo.\n\nHay soledad en el hogar; se reza;\n\ny no hay noticias de los hijos hoy.\n\nMi padre se despierta, ausculta\n\nla huida a Egipto, el resta\u00f1ante adi\u00f3s.\n\nEst\u00e1 ahora tan cerca;\n\nsi hay algo en \u00e9l de lejos, ser\u00e9 yo.\n\nY mi madre pasea all\u00e1 en los huertos,\n\nsaboreando un sabor ya sin sabor.\n\nEst\u00e1 ahora tan suave,\n\ntan ala, tan salida, tan amor.\n\nHay soledad en el hogar sin bulla,\n\nsin noticias, sin verde, sin ni\u00f1ez.\n\nY si hay algo quebrado en esta tarde,\n\ny que baja y que cruje,\n\nson dos viejos caminos blancos, curvos.\n\nPor ellos va mi coraz\u00f3n a pie.\nTo My Brother Miguel  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\n_In memoriam_\n\nBrother, today I sit on the stone bench by our home\n\nwhere we miss you terribly!\n\nI remember we used to play at this hour, and Mama\n\nwould hug us: \"But, my sons . . . \"\n\nNow I hide,\n\nand as before, from all evening\n\nprayers, and I trust you won't give me away.\n\nThrough the parlor, the vestibule, the corridors.\n\nLater, you hide, and I can't find you.\n\nI remember that we made each other cry,\n\nbrother, in that game.\n\nMiguel, you hid yourself\n\none August night, just before dawn;\n\nbut, instead of laughing when you hid, you were sad.\n\nAnd your twin heart of those now extinct\n\nafternoons has grown weary of not finding you. And now\n\na shadow falls in the soul.\n\nListen, brother, don't take so long\n\ncoming out. All right? Mama might worry.\nA mi hermano Miguel  \n(For English translation click here)\n\n_In memoriam_\n\nHermano, hoy estoy en el poyo de la casa,\n\ndonde nos haces una falta sin fondo!\n\nMe acuerdo que jug\u00e1bamos esta hora, y que mam\u00e1\n\nnos acariciaba: \u00abPero, hijos . . . \u00bb\n\nAhora yo me escondo,\n\ncomo antes, todas estas oraciones\n\nvespertinas, y espero que t\u00fa no des conmigo.\n\nPor la sala, el zagu\u00e1n, los corredores.\n\nDespu\u00e9s, te ocultas t\u00fa, y yo no doy contigo.\n\nMe acuerdo que nos hac\u00edamos llorar,\n\nhermano, en aquel juego.\n\nMiguel, t\u00fa te escondiste\n\nuna noche de agosto, al alborear;\n\npero, en vez de ocultarte riendo, estabas triste.\n\nY tu gemelo coraz\u00f3n de esas tardes\n\nextintas se ha aburrido de no encontrarte. Y ya\n\ncae sombra en el alma.\n\nOye, hermano, no tardes\n\nen salir. Bueno? Puede inquietarse mam\u00e1.\nFilled with January  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nIn bird morning,\n\nmy father, with difficulty, puts\n\nhis seventy-eight years, his seventy-eight\n\nwinter branches out in the sun.\n\nThe cemetery of Santiago seen at a glance\n\nanointed in a happy new year.\n\nHow many times his steps cut toward it,\n\nreturning from some sad and humble burial.\n\nFor a long time now my father hasn't left the house!\n\nA joke of children is dispersed.\n\nOther times he used to speak to my mother\n\nabout urban impressions, politics;\n\nand today, leaning on his illustrious cane\n\nhaving a better ring to it during the years of the government,\n\nmy father looks unknown, fragile,\n\nmy father is an eve of.\n\nAbsentmindedly he carries, keeps with him, relics,\n\nthings, memories, suggestions.\n\nThe affable morning accompanies him\n\nwith its white wings of a sister of charity.\n\nThis is an eternal day, ingenuous day, infant,\n\nsharp, day of prayers,\n\ntime crowned with doves,\n\nthe future is peopled\n\nwith caravans of immortal roses.\n\nFather, all is wide awake still;\n\nis January who sings, is your love\n\nwho is resonating goes to Eternity.\n\nYou still laugh at your babies,\n\nand will be triumphal noise in the Voids.\n\nStill be new year. There will be meat pies,\n\nand I'll be hungry, when the call to Mass is sounded\n\nin the blessed bell tower\n\nby the good, lyrical blindfolded man with whom\n\nmy syllables scholarly and fresh departed,\n\nin my rotund innocence.\n\nAnd when morning full of grace\n\nfrom its bosoms of time\n\nthat are two renunciations, two advances of love\n\nstretching out, imploring the infinite, eternal life,\n\nsings, and begins to fly plural Verbs,\n\npennants of your being,\n\non the sail of her white wings\n\nof a sister of charity, oh my father!\nEn\u00e9reida  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nMi padre, apenas,\n\nen la ma\u00f1ana pajarina, pone\n\nsus setentiocho a\u00f1os, sus setentiocho\n\nramos de invierno a solear.\n\nEl cementerio de Santiago, untado\n\nen alegre a\u00f1o nuevo, est\u00e1 a la vista.\n\nCu\u00e1ntas veces sus pasos cortaron hacia \u00e9l,\n\ny tornaron de alg\u00fan entierro humilde.\n\nHoy hace mucho tiempo que mi padre no sale!\n\nUna broma de ni\u00f1os se desbanda.\n\nOtras veces le hablaba a mi madre\n\nde impresiones urbanas, de pol\u00edtica;\n\ny hoy, apoyado en su bast\u00f3n ilustre\n\nque sonara mejor en los a\u00f1os de la Gobernaci\u00f3n,\n\nmi padre est\u00e1 desconocido, fr\u00e1gil,\n\nmi padre es una v\u00edspera.\n\nLleva, trae, abstra\u00eddo, reliquias, cosas,\n\nrecuerdos, sugerencias.\n\nLa ma\u00f1ana apacible le acompa\u00f1a\n\ncon sus alas blancas de hermana de la caridad.\n\nD\u00eda eterno es \u00e9ste, d\u00eda ingenuo, infante\n\ncoral, oracional;\n\nse corona el tiempo de palomas,\n\ny el futuro se puebla\n\nde caravanas de inmortales rosas.\n\nPadre, a\u00fan sigue todo despertando;\n\nes enero que canta, es tu amor\n\nque resonando va en la Eternidad.\n\nA\u00fan reir\u00e1s de tus peque\u00f1uelos,\n\ny habr\u00e1 bulla triunfal en los Vac\u00edos.\n\nA\u00fan ser\u00e1 a\u00f1o nuevo. Habr\u00e1 empanadas;\n\ny yo tendr\u00e9 hambre, cuando toque a misa\n\nen el beato campanario\n\nel buen ciego m\u00e9lico con quien\n\ndepartieron mis s\u00edlabas escolares y frescas,\n\nmi inocencia rotunda.\n\nY cuando la ma\u00f1ana llena de gracia,\n\ndesde sus senos de tiempo\n\nque son dos renuncias, dos avances de amor\n\nque se tienden y ruegan infinito, eterna vida,\n\ncante, y eche a volar Verbos plurales,\n\njirones de tu ser,\n\na la borda de sus alas blancas\n\nde hermana de la caridad, \u00a1oh, padre m\u00edo!\nI Was Born on a Day God Was Sick  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI was born\n\non a day God was sick.\n\nThey all know I live,\n\nthat I'm bad, and they don't know\n\nabout the December that follows from that January.\n\n'Cause I was born\n\non a day God was sick.\n\nThere is an empty place\n\nin my metaphysical shape\n\nthat no one can reach:\n\nthe cloister of silence\n\nspeaking with the muffled voice of its fire.\n\nI was born\n\non a day God was sick.\n\nBrother, listen to me, listen . . .\n\nOh, all right. Don't worry, I won't leave\n\nwithout taking Decembers along,\n\nwithout leaving Januaries behind.\n\nI was born\n\non a day God was sick.\n\nThey all know I'm alive,\n\nthat I chew my food . . . And they don't know\n\nwhy in my verses creaks,\n\nthe dark uneasiness\n\nof a coffin,\n\ndisentangled winds unscrewed from the Sphinx\n\ninquisitive of the Desert.\n\nYes, they all know . . . And they don't know\n\nthe light getting skinny,\n\nand the Shadow is fat . . .\n\nAnd they don't know Mystery joins things together . . .\n\nthat he is hunchbacked,\n\nmusical, sad, standing a little way off and foretells\n\nthe dazzling progression from the limits to the Limits.\n\nI was born\n\non a day God was sick.\n\nGravely.\nEspergesia  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nYo nac\u00ed un d\u00eda\n\nque Dios estuvo enfermo.\n\nTodos saben que vivo,\n\nque soy malo; y no saben\n\ndel diciembre de ese enero.\n\nPues yo nac\u00ed un d\u00eda\n\nque Dios estuvo enfermo.\n\nHay un vac\u00edo\n\nen mi aire metaf\u00edsico\n\nque nadie ha de palpar:\n\nel claustro de un silencio\n\nque habl\u00f3 a flor de fuego.\n\nYo nac\u00ed un d\u00eda\n\nque Dios estuvo enfermo.\n\nHermano, escucha, escucha . . .\n\nBueno. Y que no me vaya\n\nsin llevar diciembres,\n\nsin dejar eneros.\n\nPues yo nac\u00ed un d\u00eda\n\nque Dios estuvo enfermo.\n\nTodos saben que vivo,\n\nque mastico . . . Y no saben\n\npor qu\u00e9 en mi verso chirr\u00edan,\n\noscuro sinsabor de f\u00e9retro,\n\nluyidos vientos\n\ndesenroscados de la Esfinge\n\npreguntona del Desierto.\n\nTodos saben . . . Y no saben\n\nque la luz es t\u00edsica,\n\ny la Sombra gorda . . .\n\nY no saben que el Misterio sintetiza . . .\n\nque \u00e9l es la joroba\n\nmusical y triste que a distancia denuncia\n\nel paso meridiano de las lindes a las Lindes.\n\nYo nac\u00ed un d\u00eda\n\nque Dios estuvo enfermo,\n\ngrave.\n\n_C\u00e9sar Vallejo and Georgette, taking a walk  \nin Madrid, 1931. Beside them is the   \npoet Rafael Alberti._\n\nPhoto: Juan Larrea Collection\/Archives Malanga\n_from_\n\nTRILCE\n\n_1922_\nIII  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nWhat time are the grown-ups\n\ngetting back?\n\nBlind Santiago strikes six\n\nand already darkness takes hold.\n\nMother said she wouldn't delay.\n\nAguedita, Nativa, Miguel,\n\nbe careful of going over there, where\n\ntheir doubled-up memories just passed\n\nsnuggling\n\ntoward the silent corral, and whereby\n\nthe hens settle for the night\n\nthey have frightened a lot.\n\nWe'd better just stay here.\n\nMother said she wouldn't delay.\n\nBesides, we shouldn't be sad. Let's go on seeing\n\nthe boats! (mine's the prettiest of the toy fleet!)\n\nwhich we've played the whole blessed day,\n\nwithout fighting among ourselves, as it should be:\n\nthey stayed behind in the puddle, all ready,\n\nloaded with sweet things for tomorrow.\n\nLet's obediently wait, there's no choice but,\n\nfor the homecoming, the relief of\n\nthe adults, who are always the first\n\nto abandon us small ones in the house,\n\nas if we couldn't go out on our own!\n\nAguedita, Nativa, Miguel?\n\nI call to you, feeling around for you in that very same darkness.\n\nDon't leave me behind by myself,\n\nto be the only recluse locked in all alone.\nIII  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nLas personas mayores\n\n\u00bfa qu\u00e9 hora volver\u00e1n?\n\nDa las seis el ciego Santiago,\n\ny ya est\u00e1 muy oscuro.\n\nMadre dijo que no demorar\u00eda.\n\nAguedita, Nativa, Miguel,\n\ncuidado con ir por ah\u00ed, por donde\n\nacaban de pasar gangueando sus memorias\n\ndobladoras penas,\n\nhacia el silencioso corral, y por donde\n\nlas gallinas que se est\u00e1n acostando todav\u00eda,\n\nse han espantado tanto.\n\nMejor estemos aqu\u00ed no m\u00e1s.\n\nMadre dijo que no demorar\u00eda.\n\nYa no tengamos pena. Vamos viendo\n\nlos barcos \u00a1el m\u00edo es m\u00e1s bonito de todos!\n\ncon los cuales jugamos todo el santo d\u00eda,\n\nsin pelearnos, como debe de ser:\n\nhan quedado en el pozo de agua, listos,\n\nfletados de dulces para ma\u00f1ana.\n\nAguardemos as\u00ed, obedientes y sin m\u00e1s\n\nremedio, la vuelta, el desagravio\n\nde los mayores siempre delanteros\n\ndej\u00e1ndonos en casa a los peque\u00f1os,\n\ncomo si tambi\u00e9n nosotros no pudi\u00e9semos partir.\n\nAguedita, Nativa, Miguel?\n\nLlamo, busco al tanteo en la oscuridad.\n\nNo me vayan a haber dejado solo,\n\ny el \u00fanico recluso sea yo.\nXIV  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nMy explanation exactly.\n\nIt's hurts me, because it's so premature.\n\nThis business of tightrope walking.\n\nThose brave beasts staring as if they saw themselves unnatural.\n\nThat amalgam sticking the quicksilver to the inside.\n\nThese buttocks sitting up.\n\nThis cannot be! But it is!\n\nAbsurdity!\n\nMadness!\n\nBut I have come from Trujillo to Lima.\n\nYet I earn only a wage worth five _soles_.*\n\n_*Peruvian currency_\nXIV  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nCual mi explicaci\u00f3n.\n\nEsto me lacera la tempran\u00eda.\n\nEsta manera de caminar por los trapecios.\n\nEsos corajosos brutos como postizos.\n\nEsa goma que pega el azogue al adentro.\n\nEsas posaderas sentadas para arriba.\n\nEse no puede ser, sido.\n\nAbsurdo.\n\nDemencia.\n\nPero he venido de Trujillo a Lima.\n\nPero gano un sueldo de cinco soles.\nXV  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nIn that corner we sleep together\n\nso many nights, now I'm sitting there\n\nto walk. The bed of one-time lovers\n\nwas pushed aside, or whatever has happened.\n\nYou've come early today to deal with other issues\n\nand you're not here. It was in this corner\n\nwhere one night between your tender breasts\n\nI read beside you\n\na tale of Daudet's. This is the beloved\n\ncorner. Don't deny it.\n\nI've set myself to recording the days\n\nof that summer long past, your coming and going\n\nsmall and brave and pale though these rooms.\n\nOn this night of rain\n\ndropping so far removed from us. I suddenly leap up! . . .\n\nThere are two doors opening and closing,\n\ntwo doors that come and go in the wind\n\nshadow to shadow.\nXV  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEn el rinc\u00f3n aquel, donde dormimos juntos\n\ntantas noches, ahora me he sentado\n\na caminar. La cuja de los novios difuntos\n\nfue sacada, o talvez qu\u00e9 habr\u00e1 pasado.\n\nHas venido temprano a otros asuntos,\n\ny ya no est\u00e1s. Es el rinc\u00f3n\n\ndonde a tu lado, le\u00ed una noche,\n\nentre tus tiernos puntos,\n\nun cuento de Daudet. Es el rinc\u00f3n\n\namado. No lo equivoques.\n\nMe he puesto a recordar los d\u00edas\n\nde verano idos, tu entrar y salir,\n\npoca y harta y p\u00e1lida por los cuartos.\n\nEn esta noche pluviosa,\n\nya lejos de ambos dos, salto de pronto . . .\n\nSon dos puertas abri\u00e9ndose cerr\u00e1ndose,\n\ndos puertas que al viento van y vienen\n\nsombra a sombra.\nXVI  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI have faith in being strong.\n\nDepleted air, set me free, let me go,\n\ndecorate my left side with zeros,\n\nand you, dream, surrender your unyielding diamond\n\nyour timeless demand.\n\nYes, I have faith in being strong.\n\nOver there goes a hollow woman,\n\nas in a colorless quantity, whose\n\ngrace closes within when I open my heart.\n\nIn the street an ancient friar walks, dull crabs\n\nadmire the green banner of the president\n\ntopping the other six banners\n\nall the bunting of the return.\n\nI have faith that I am,\n\nand I have been less.\n\nBehold! The first good one!\nXVI  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nTengo fe en ser fuerte.\n\nDame, aire manco, dame ir\n\ngalone\u00e1ndome de ceros a la izquierda.\n\nY t\u00fa, sue\u00f1o, dame tu diamante implacable,\n\ntu tiempo de deshora.\n\nTengo fe en ser fuerte.\n\nPor all\u00ed avanza c\u00f3ncava mujer,\n\ncantidad incolora, cuya\n\ngracia se cierra donde me abro.\n\nAl aire, fray pasado. Cangrejos, zote!\n\nAv\u00edstate la verde bandera presidencial,\n\narriando las seis banderas restantes,\n\ntodas las colgaduras de la vuelta.\n\nTengo fe en que soy,\n\ny en que he sido menos.\n\nEa! Buen primero!\nXVIII  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nOh the four walls of the cell.\n\nAh the four bleaching walls\n\nthat open without fail the same number.\n\nNursery of nerves, crooked dice,\n\nhow its four corners wrench\n\nat the daily shackled extremities.\n\nAmorous mistress of innumerable keys\n\nif only you were here, if you could see\n\nwhat hour these four walls are\n\nwithout closing in. Against them we would be,\n\nwith you, two, two more than ever.\n\nYou would not cry, my liberator!\n\nAh the walls of the cell.\n\nThey hurt me, most of all\n\nthe two long ones that tonight\n\nremind me a bit of mothers now dead\n\nupon bromine slopes\n\nleading a child by the hand each one.\n\nI find only myself left behind,\n\nwith my right hand, serving for both,\n\nlifting in search of a third arm\n\nhousing, between my where and my when,\n\nthis futile manhood of mine.\nXVIII  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nOh las cuatro paredes de la celda.\n\nAh las cuatro paredes albicantes\n\nque sin remedio dan al mismo n\u00famero.\n\nCriadero de nervios, mala brecha,\n\npor sus cuatro rincones c\u00f3mo arranca\n\nlas diarias aherrojadas extremidades.\n\nAmorosa llavera de innumerables llaves,\n\nsi estuvieras aqu\u00ed, si vieras hasta\n\nqu\u00e9 hora son cuatro estas paredes.\n\nContra ellas ser\u00edamos contigo, los dos,\n\nm\u00e1s dos que nunca. Y ni lloraras,\n\ndi, libertadora!\n\nAh las paredes de la celda.\n\nDe ellas me duele entretanto, m\u00e1s\n\nlas dos largas que tienen esta noche\n\nalgo de madres que ya muertas\n\nllevan por bromurados declives,\n\na un ni\u00f1o de la mano cada una.\n\nY s\u00f3lo yo me voy quedando,\n\ncon la diestra, que hace por ambas manos,\n\nen alto, en busca de terciario brazo\n\nque ha de pupilar, entre mi d\u00f3nde y mi cu\u00e1ndo,\n\nesta mayor\u00eda inv\u00e1lida de hombre.\nXXXIII  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nIf it rained tonight I would retire\n\nfrom here to a thousand years.\n\nOr better just a hundred, no more,\n\nas if nothing had happened, I should imagine\n\nthat I'm still to come.\n\nOh, motherless and loveless, without an urge\n\nto squat down and loom into the very depths by pure\n\nstrength,\n\ntonight, like this, I should be disentangling\n\nthe Vedic fiber,\n\nthe Vedic wool of my final end, thread\n\nof the devil, the twisting\n\nmark of having held by the nose\n\ntwo jangling clappers of time\n\nin one single bell.\n\nDo the math of my life,\n\nor do the math of yourself still not born yet,\n\nI shall not succeed in freeing myself.\n\nIt will not be what has not yet come, but what has\n\narrived and already gone, but what has\n\narrived and already gone.\nXXXIII  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nSi lloviera esta noche, retirar\u00edame\n\nde aqu\u00ed a mil a\u00f1os.\n\nMejor a cien no m\u00e1s.\n\nComo si nada hubiese ocurrido, har\u00eda\n\nla cuenta de que vengo todav\u00eda.\n\nO sin madre, sin amada, sin porf\u00eda\n\nde agacharme a aguaitar al fondo, a puro\n\npulso,\n\nesta noche as\u00ed, estar\u00eda escarmenando\n\nla fibra v\u00e9dica,\n\nla lana v\u00e9dica de mi fin final, hilo\n\ndel diantre, traza de haber tenido\n\npor las narices\n\na dos badajos inacordes de tiempo\n\nen una misma campana.\n\nHaga la cuenta de mi vida\n\no haga la cuenta de no haber a\u00fan nacido\n\nno alcanzar\u00e9 a librarme.\n\nNo ser\u00e1 lo que a\u00fan no haya venido, sino\n\nlo que ha llegado y ya se ha ido,\n\nsino lo que ha llegado y ya se ha ido.\nXLV  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI am freed from the chains of the sea\n\nwhen the tide reaches me.\n\nLet's sail out forever. Let's taste\n\nthe stupendous song, the song spoken\n\nby the longer lips of desire.\n\nOh prodigious virginity.\n\nThe saltless breeze passes.\n\nFrom afar I take in the wind of the marrows,\n\nhearing the profound score, as the surf\n\nhunts for its keys.\n\nAnd if we happen to meet suddenly\n\nwith the absurd,\n\nwe shall cover ourselves with the gold of owning nothing,\n\nand hatch the still unborn wing\n\nof the night, sister\n\nto this orphaned wing of the day\n\nwhose strength is no longer a wing.\nXLV  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nMe desvinculo del mar\n\ncuando vienen las aguas a m\u00ed.\n\nSalgamos siempre. Saboreemos\n\nla canci\u00f3n estupenda, la canci\u00f3n dicha\n\npor los labios inferiores del deseo.\n\nOh prodigiosa doncellez.\n\nPasa la brisa sin sal.\n\nA lo lejos husmeo los tu\u00e9tanos\n\noyendo el tanteo profundo, a la caza\n\nde teclas de resaca.\n\nY si as\u00ed di\u00e9ramos las narices\n\nen el absurdo,\n\nnos cubriremos con el oro de no tener nada,\n\ny empollaremos el ala a\u00fan no nacida\n\nde la noche, hermana\n\nde esta ala hu\u00e9rfana del d\u00eda,\n\nque a fuerza de ser una ya no es ala.\nLXI  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI get down from the horse tonight,\n\nat the door of the house, where\n\nat cockcrow took my leave.\n\nIt's locked and nobody answers.\n\nStone bench on which mother gave birth to\n\nmy older brother, so that he might saddle up\n\nloins I had ridden bareback through village\n\nroads and past garden walls, a child of the village;\n\nthe bench on which I left behind me the sun\n\nlight of my painful childhood . . . And what of\n\nthis pain that frames the entrance?\n\nA god in alien peace,\n\nsneezing, like calling also, the brute,\n\nsniff, striking the pavement. And then, hesitate\n\nit neighs,\n\ntwitching its alert ears.\n\nFather must be awake praying, and perhaps\n\nwith thoughts about my being out late.\n\nMy sisters who hum their illusions,\n\nsimple but noisy,\n\nin their work for the oncoming feast,\n\nand now almost nothing is wanting.\n\nI wait, I wait, the heart\n\nan egg that in its right moment obstructs itself.\n\nNumerous family that we left recently,\n\nthey're still awake and not one candle set\n\non the altar for our homecoming.\n\nI call again and nothing,\n\nwe shut up and we start to sob, and the animal\n\nneighs, neighs more and more.\n\nThey are asleep forever,\n\nthey're so fine, that finally\n\nmy horse becomes weary when turning\n\nhis head, and in half sleep, in each greeting, says\n\nthat he's alright, that everything is alright.\nLXI  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEsta noche desciendo del caballo,\n\nante la puerta de la casa, donde\n\nme desped\u00ed con el cantar del gallo.\n\nEst\u00e1 cerrada y nadie responde.\n\nEl poyo en que mam\u00e1 alumbr\u00f3\n\nal hermano mayor, para que ensille\n\nlomos que hab\u00eda yo montado en pelo,\n\npor r\u00faas y por cercas, ni\u00f1o aldeano;\n\nel poyo en que dej\u00e9 que se amarille al sol\n\nmi adolorida infancia . . . \u00bfY este duelo\n\nque enmarca la portada?\n\nDios en la paz for\u00e1nea,\n\nestornuda, cual llamando tambi\u00e9n, el bruto;\n\nhusmea, golpeando el empedrado. Luego duda\n\nrelincha,\n\norejea a viva oreja.\n\nHa de velar pap\u00e1 rezando, y quiz\u00e1s\n\npensar\u00e1 se me hizo tarde.\n\nLas hermanas, canturreando sus ilusiones\n\nsencillas, bullosas,\n\nen la labor para la fiesta que se acerca,\n\ny ya no falta casi nada.\n\nEspero, espero, el coraz\u00f3n\n\nun huevo en su momento, que se obstruye.\n\nNumerosa familia que dejamos\n\nno ha mucho, hoy nadie en vela, y ni una cera\n\npuso en el ara para que volvi\u00e9ramos.\n\nLlamo de nuevo, y nada.\n\nCallamos y nos ponemos a sollozar, y el animal\n\nrelincha, relincha m\u00e1s todav\u00eda.\n\nTodos est\u00e1n durmiendo para siempre,\n\ny tan de lo m\u00e1s bien, que por fin\n\nmi caballo acaba fatigado por cabecear\n\na su vez, y entre sue\u00f1os, a cada venia, dice\n\nque est\u00e1 bien, que todo est\u00e1 muy bien.\nLXIII  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nIt dawned raining. The well-combed\n\nmorning drips its fine hair.\n\nMelancholy is moored;\n\nand in badly tarred oxidant of hind\u00fa furniture,\n\ndestiny heaves about, barely able to keep its seat.\n\nFlatland skies, disheartened\n\nby great love, the platinum skies,\n\nimpossibly grim.\n\nThe sheepfold ruminates, underscored\n\nby an Andean neighing.\n\nI remember about myself. But masts of wind\n\nare enough, rudders quiet until\n\nthey become one,\n\nand the cricket of tedium and the gibbons unbreakable elbow.\n\nLast of the mornings of freed long-haired poets\n\nof precious pitch mountainous bucolic poems,\n\nwhen I go out in search of the eleven\n\nand it's nothing but an untimely twelve.\nLXIII  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nAmanece lloviendo. Bien peinada\n\nla ma\u00f1ana chorrea el pelo fino.\n\nMelancol\u00eda est\u00e1 amarrada;\n\ny en mal asfaltado oxidente de muebles hind\u00faes,\n\nvira, se asienta apenas el destino.\n\nCielos de puna descorazonada\n\npor gran amor, los cielos de platino, torvos\n\nde imposible.\n\nRumia la majada y se subraya\n\nde un relincho andino.\n\nMe acuerdo de m\u00ed mismo. Pero bastan\n\nlas astas del viento, los timones quietos hasta\n\nhacerse uno,\n\ny el grillo del tedio y el jiboso codo inquebrantable.\n\nBasta la ma\u00f1ana de libres crinejas\n\nde brea preciosa, serrana,\n\ncuando salgo y busco las once\n\ny no son m\u00e1s que las doce deshoras.\nLXVl  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nNovember 2nd turns.\n\nThese chairs are a good place of refuge.\n\nThe bough of foreboding comes and goes,\n\nrises and sweating, sways,\n\nweary in this room.\n\nNovember 2nd sadly turns.\n\nDead men, how deep your vanished teeth cut,\n\nre-examining the blind exposed nerves,\n\njangling in the root of a tooth throbbing that needs to be pulled,\n\nremindful of the tough fabric\n\nthat stout singing workers mend with unfinished hemp\n\nof innumerable knots beating crossroads.\n\nYou, dead, with clear pure knees\n\nfrom self surrender,\n\nhow you hack at another's heart\n\nwith your white crowns, sparing\n\nof tenderness. Yes. You, the decayed.\n\nNovember 2nd sadly turns.\n\nAnd the bough of foreboding\n\nis bitten by a cart that simply\n\nrolls in the street.\nLXVI  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nDobla el dos de Noviembre.\n\nEstas sillas son buenas acojidas.\n\nLa rama del presentimiento\n\nva, viene, sube, ondea sudorosa,\n\nfatigada en esta sala.\n\nDobla triste el dos de Noviembre.\n\nDifuntos, qu\u00e9 bajo cortan vuestros dientes\n\nabolidos, repasando ciegos nervios,\n\nsin recordar la dura fibra\n\nque cantores obreros redondos remiendan\n\ncon c\u00e1\u00f1amo inacabable, de innumerables nudos\n\nlatientes de encrucijada.\n\nVosotros, difuntos, de las n\u00edtidas rodillas\n\npuras a fuerza de entregaros,\n\nc\u00f3mo aserr\u00e1is el otro coraz\u00f3n\n\ncon vuestras blancas coronas, ralas\n\nde cordialidad. S\u00ed. Vosotros, difuntos.\n\nDobla triste el dos de Noviembre.\n\nY la rama del presentimiento\n\nse la muerde un carro que simplemente\n\nrueda por la calle.\nLXXV  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nYou are dead.\n\nWhat a strange way to be dead. Anyone would say that\n\nyou are not. But, truthfully, you are dead.\n\nYou float just behind an aqueous membrane, hanging\n\nfrom one zenith to the opposite, nothing, coming and\n\ngoing from twilight to dawn, vibrating before the cithern\n\nbox of a wound that does not cause you pain. You say,\n\nwell, that life passes in a mirror and that you are the\n\noriginal, you are the dead.\n\nMeanwhile the waves go, meanwhile the wave comes, how\n\nis one dead without being punished. Only when the waters\n\nbreak on the beach, and they break again and again, then\n\nyou lose form and believing you are dying, you perceive\n\nthe sixth cord that now is not yours.\n\nYou are dead, without living before. Anyone would say that\n\nnot being now, you were in another time. But, truthfully\n\nyou are the skeleton of a life that never was. Sad destiny.\n\nYou have never been anything but dead. Like being a dry\n\nleaf never having been green. Orphans of orphanages.\n\nAnd, nevertheless, the dead are not, they cannot be\n\nskeletons of a life never lived. They always die of life.\n\nYou are dead.\nLXXV  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEsta\u00eds muertos.\n\nQu\u00e9 extra\u00f1a manera de estarse muertos. Quienquiera dir\u00eda\n\nque no lo est\u00e1is. Pero en verdad, esta\u00eds muertos.\n\nFlot\u00e1is nadamente detr\u00e1s de aquesa membrana que,\n\np\u00e9ndula del zenit al nadir, viene y va de crep\u00fasculo a crep\u00fasculo,\n\nvibrando ante la sonora caja de una herida\n\nque a vosotros no os duele. Os digo, pues, que la vida\n\nest\u00e1 en el espejo, y que vosotros sois el original, la\n\nmuerte.\n\nMientras la onda va, mientras la onda viene, cu\u00e1n\n\nimpunemente se est\u00e1 uno muerto. S\u00f3lo cuando las aguas\n\nse quebrantan en los bordes enfrentados y se doblan y\n\ndoblan, entonces os transfigur\u00e1is y creyendo morir, percib\u00eds\n\nla sexta cuerda que ya no es vuestra.\n\nEst\u00e1is muertos, no habiendo antes vivido jam\u00e1s.\n\nQuienquiera dir\u00eda que, no siendo ahora, en otro tiempo\n\nfuisteis. Pero en verdad, vosotros sois los cad\u00e1veres\n\nde una vida que nunca fue. Triste destino el no haber\n\nsido sino muertos siempre. El ser hoja seca sin haber\n\nsido verde jam\u00e1s. Orfandad de orfandades.\n\nY, sin embargo, los muertos no son, no pueden ser\n\ncad\u00e1veres de una vida que todav\u00eda no han vivido. Ellos\n\nmurieron siempre de vida.\n\nEst\u00e1is muertos.\n\n_The Peruvian poets, C\u00e9sar Vallejo and Ernesto More. Paris, 1926_\n\nPhoto: Juan Larrea Collection\/Archives Malanga\n_from_\n\nPOEMAS EN PROSA\n\n_1923\/1924\u20131929_\nThe Good Sense  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThere is, mother, a place in the world they call Paris.  \nIt's a huge place and far away and again very big.\n\nMy mother adjusts the collar of my coat, not because  \nit will snow, but in order that it may start.\n\nMy father's wife is in love with me, pushing and advancing my shoulders when I was born and my breast when I die. I am hers twice: for the departure and the return. She encloses me at the return. For this her eyes give me so much, close to me, fragments of me, happening by works now finished, by consummate pacts.\n\nMy mother confesses to me, my namesake. Why does she not give so much to my other brothers? To Victor, for example, the oldest who is so old now, that people say: \"He seems like he's his mother's youngest brother!\" Perhaps it might be because I have traveled so much! It must be because I have lived so much more!\n\nMy mother remembers me the first letter relating the return. Before my life of return, remembering that I journeyed in two hearts through her womb, she blushed and was left mortally livid, when I said, in the treaty of the soul: that night was happy. But, she seems all the more sad. She might have become even sadder.\n\n\u2014Son, how old you seem!\n\nAnd through the color yellow she walks firmly and cries because I seem old in her eyes, in the leaf of the sword, in the mouth of my face. She cries for me, she is sad for me. What difference will my youthfulness make if I will always be her son? Why do mothers feel much pain at having found their sons looking old, if the age of them will never equate or pass that of their mothers? And, why, if the sons the more they get on in their years moreover resemble their fathers? My mother cries because I am old in my time, and because I will never get old enough to be old in hers of my own accord!\n\nMy goodbye took a part of her being, more external than that part of her being when I returned. I am, on account of the excessive time-limit of my return, more the man to my mother than the son to my mother. There resides the candor and purity that lights us both with three flames. Then I say to her until I fall silent:\n\n\u2014There is, mother, a place in the world that they call Paris. It's a huge place and far away and again very big.\n\nThe woman of my father, upon hearing me, continues eating her lunch and her mortal eyes travel down my arm slowly.\nEl buen sentido  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nHay, madre, un sitio en el mundo, que se llama Par\u00eds. Un sitio muy grande y lejano y otra vez grande.\n\nMi madre me ajusta el cuello del abrigo, no porque empieza a nevar, sino para que empiece a nevar.\n\nLa mujer de mi padre est\u00e1 enamorada de m\u00ed, viniendo y avanzando de espaldas a mi nacimiento y de pecho a mi muerte. Que soy dos veces suyo: por el adi\u00f3s y por el regreso. La cierro, al retornar. Por eso me dieran t\u00e1nto sus ojos, justa de m\u00ed, in fraganti de m\u00ed, aconteci\u00e9ndose por obras terminadas, por pactos consumados.\n\nMi madre est\u00e1 confesa de m\u00ed, nombrada de m\u00ed. \u00bfC\u00f3mo no da otro tanto a mis otros hermanos? A V\u00edctor, por ejemplo, el mayor, que es tan viejo ya, que las gentes dicen: \u00a1Parece hermano menor de su madre! \u00a1Fuere porque yo he viajado mucho! \u00a1Fuere porque yo he vivido m\u00e1s!\n\nMi madre acuerda carta de principio colorante a mis relatos de regreso. Ante mi vida de regreso, recordando que viaj\u00e9 durante dos corazones por su vientre, se ruboriza y se queda mortalmente l\u00edvida, cuando digo, en el tratado del alma: Aquella noche fui dichoso. Pero, m\u00e1s se pone triste; m\u00e1s se pusiera triste.\n\n\u2014Hijo, \u00a1c\u00f3mo est\u00e1s viejo!\n\nY desfila por el color amarillo a llorar, porque me halla envejecido, en la hoja de espada, en la desembocadura de mi rostro. Llora de m\u00ed, se entristece de m\u00ed. \u00bfQu\u00e9 falta har\u00e1 mi mocedad, si siempre ser\u00e9 su hijo? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 las madres se duelen de hallar envejecidos a sus hijos, si jam\u00e1s la edad de ellos alcanzar\u00e1 a la de ellas? \u00bfY por qu\u00e9, si los hijos, cuanto m\u00e1s se acaban, m\u00e1s se aproximan a los padres? \u00a1Mi madre llora porque estoy viejo de mi tiempo y porque nunca llegar\u00e9 a envejecer del suyo!\n\nMi adi\u00f3s parti\u00f3 de un punto de su ser, m\u00e1s externo que el punto de su ser al que retorno. Soy, a causa del excesivo plazo de mi vuelta, m\u00e1s el hombre ante mi madre que el hijo ante mi madre. All\u00ed reside el candor que hoy nos alumbra con tres llamas. Le digo entonces hasta que me callo:\n\n\u2014Hay, madre, en el mundo un sitio que se llama Par\u00eds. Un sitio muy grande y muy lejano y otra vez grande.\n\nLa mujer de mi padre, al o\u00edrme, almuerza y sus ojos mortales descienden suavemente por mis brazos.\nLanguidly Your Spirit  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nWe had a pious age, when my father ordered our entrance into school. Priest of love, one rainy afternoon in February, mother served food of oration in the kitchen. In the corridor below, they were sitting at the table, my father and my older brothers. And my mother was seated near the same hearth-fire. They rang the bell.\n\n\u2014The doorbell is ringing!\u2014my mother said.\n\n\u2014The doorbell is ringing!\u2014my own mother said.\n\n\u2014The doorbell is ringing!\u2014said all of my mother, touching her bowels to infinite rays, above all the heights of those who come.\n\n\u2014Walk, Nativa, daughter, to see who comes.\n\nAnd without waiting the maternal permission, it was Miguel, the son, who went to see who came in this manner, placing himself in direct contradiction with us.\n\nA time of roads held my family. Mother left, advancing inversely   \nand as if she might have said: the parts. She made it to the patio outside. Nativa cried during one of those visits, of one of those patios and of the hand of my mother. Then, and when, pain and relish, they covered our fronts with a roof.\n\n\u2014Why did you not let her go to the door?\u2014said Nativa, the daughter, \u2014you've thrown Miguel to his duck.\n\nWhat imperfect protection, the light hand of father revealing the man, the small bones befitting the child. He could give his consent to the adventure the man would want later on. Nevertheless:\n\n\u2014And tomorrow to school\u2014argued father like a magistrate before the public of every week, his sons.\n\n\u2014And such, the law, the reason of the law. And also the life.\n\nMother should have cried, she was scarcely grieving like a mother. Now no one wanted to eat. In the lips of father lips, to leave breaking, a fine spoon that I know. In the fraternal mouths, the amazing bitterness of the son was left totally finished.\n\nMuch later, unexpectedly, he left the sewer of rain and from the same patio of the bad visit, a hen, not abhorrent nor laying eggs, but brutal and black. In my throat there rose a cluck-cluck. It was old hen, maternally widowed from chickens that had not hatched. The hen, whose origins were forgotten, at this moment, was widowed from her children. All the eggs were found empty. Afterward the clucking had the verb.\n\nNo one scared her. And no one, because they were frightened stopped cooing for the great maternal indisposition.\n\n\u2014Where are the children of the old hen?\n\n\u2014Where are the chickens of the old hen?\n\nPoor little ones! Where could they be!\nL\u00e1nguidamente su licor  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nTendr\u00edamos ya una edad misericordiosa, cuando mi padre orden\u00f3 nuestro ingreso a la escuela. Cura de amor, una tarde lluviosa de febrero, mam\u00e1 serv\u00eda en la cocina el yantar de oraci\u00f3n. En el corredor de abajo, estaban sentados a la mesa mi padre y mis hermanos mayores. Y mi madre iba sentada al pie del mismo fuego del hogar. Tocaron a la puerta.\n\n\u2014Tocan a la puerta!\u2014mi madre.\n\n\u2014Tocan a la puerta!\u2014mi propia madre.\n\n\u2014Tocan a la puerta!\u2014dijo toda mi madre, toc\u00e1ndose las entra\u00f1as a trastes infinitos, sobre toda la altura de quien viene.\n\n\u2014Anda, Nativa, la hija, a ver qui\u00e9n viene.\n\nY, sin esperar la venia maternal, fuera Miguel, el hijo, quien sali\u00f3 a ver qui\u00e9n venia as\u00ed, oponi\u00e9ndose a lo ancho de nosotros.\n\nUn tiempo de r\u00faa contuvo a mi familia. Mam\u00e1 sali\u00f3, avanzando inversamente y como si hubiera dicho: las partes. Se hizo patio afuera. Nativa lloraba de una tal visita, de un tal patio y de la mano de mi madre. Entonces y cuando, dolor y paladar techaron nuestras frentes.\n\n\u2014Porque no le deje que saliese a la puerta,\u2014Nativa, la hija\u2014, me ha echado Miguel al pavo. A su pavo.\n\n\u00a1Qu\u00e9 diestra de subprefecto, la diestra del padre, revelando, el hombre, las falanjas filiales del ni\u00f1o! Pod\u00eda as\u00ed otorgarle las venturas que el hombre deseara m\u00e1s tarde. Sin embargo:\n\n\u2014Y ma\u00f1ana, a la escuela,\u2014disert\u00f3 magistralmente el padre, ante el p\u00fablico semanal de sus hijos.\n\n\u2014Y tal, la ley, la causa de la ley. Y tal tambi\u00e9n la vida.\n\nMam\u00e1 debi\u00f3 llorar, gimiendo a penas la madre. Ya nadie quiso comer. En los labios del padre cupo, para salir rompi\u00e9ndose, una fina cuchara que conozco. En las fraternas bocas, la absorta amargura del hijo, qued\u00f3 atravesada.\n\nMas, luego, de improviso, sali\u00f3 de un alba\u00f1al de aguas llovedizas y de aquel mismo patio de la visita mala, una gallina, no ajena ni ponedora, sino brutal y negra. Cloqueaba en mi garganta. Fue una gallina vieja, maternalmente viuda de unos pollos que no llegaron a incubarse. Origen olvidado de ese instante, la gallina era viuda de sus hijos. Fueron hallados vac\u00edos todos los huevos. La clueca despu\u00e9s tuvo el verbo.\n\nNadie la espant\u00f3. Y de espantarla, nadie dej\u00f3 arrullarse por su gran calofr\u00edo maternal.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1n los hijos de la gallina vieja?\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1n los pollos de la gallina vieja?\n\n\u00a1Pobrecitos! \u00a1D\u00f3nde estar\u00edan!\nThe Most Critical Moment of My Life  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nOne man said:\n\n\u2014The most critical moment of my life was during the battle of the Marne, when I was wounded in the chest.\n\nAnother man said:\n\n\u2014The most critical moment of my life happened during a tidal wave in Yokohama, from which I saved myself, miraculously taking refuge under the eaves of a lacquer shop.\n\nAnd another man said:\n\n\u2014The most critical moment of my life happens when I sleep by day.\n\nAnd another said:\n\n\u2014The most critical moment of my life has been during my deepest solitude.\n\nAnd another said.\n\n\u2014The most critical moment of my life was when I was in jail in Peru.\n\nAnd another said:\n\n\u2014The most critical moment of my life was surprising my father's profile.\n\nAnd the ultimate man said:\n\n\u2014The most critical moment of my life is yet to come.\nEl momento m\u00e1s grave de la vida  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nUn hombre dijo:\n\n\u2014El momento m\u00e1s grave de mi vida estuvo en la batalla del Marne cuando fui herido en el pecho.\n\nOtro hombre dijo:\n\n\u2014El momento m\u00e1s grave de mi vida, ocurri\u00f3 en un maremoto de Yokohama, del cual salv\u00e9 milagrosamente, refugiado bajo el alero de una tienda de lacas.\n\nY otro hombre dijo:\n\n\u2014El momento m\u00e1s grave de mi vida acontece cuando duermo de d\u00eda.\n\nY otro dijo:\n\n\u2014El momento m\u00e1s grave de mi vida ha estado en mi mayor soledad.\n\nY otro dijo:\n\n\u2014El momento m\u00e1s grave de mi vida fue mi prisi\u00f3n en una c\u00e1rcel del Per\u00fa.\n\nY otro dijo:\n\n\u2014El momento m\u00e1s grave de mi vida es el haber sorprendido de perfil a mi padre.\n\nY el \u00faltimo hombre dijo:\n\n\u2014El momento m\u00e1s grave de mi vida no ha llegado todav\u00eda.\nI Am Going to Speak about Hope  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI do not suffer this pain as C\u00e9sar Vallejo. I do not hurt now as an artist, as a man nor simply as a human being. I do not suffer this pain as a Catholic, or as a Mohammedan or an atheist. Today I am simply in pain. If I were not called C\u00e9sar Vallejo, I would also suffer this same pain. Even if I were not a man not at least a human being I would also suffer it. Even if I were not Catholic, atheist, or Mohammedan I would still suffer. Today I suffer from the deepest depths. Today I am simply in pain.\n\nNow I hurt without explanations. My pain is so much from the depths, now I don't have cause nor do I need cause. What could its cause have been? Where is that cause of such importance that it stopped being its cause? Nothing has been able to leave this cause from being. For what has this pain been born, for itself? My pain is of the wind of the north and the wind of the south, like these sexless eggs that sometimes rare birds conceive in the wind. If my love had died, my pain would still be the same. If they had cut the collar of my race, my pain would still be the same. If finally, life was another form, my pain would still be the same. Today I suffer from the heights. Today I am simply in pain.\n\nI see the hungry man's pain and I see that his hunger walks so far from my suffering, to leave me fasting until death, it would always leave a fragment of grass from my tomb, at the very least. The same to the one in love. What engenders your blood for mine without source or end!\n\nUntil now I believed that all things of the universe, inevitably were fathers and sons. But here with my pain of today it is not father or son. My pain lacks courage to come out in the night, just as at dawn it is bold. If my pain lives in some dark house it would not give off light and if my pain lived in illumination, it would not cast a shadow. All I do today is suffer. Today I suffer happening what will happen. Today I am simply in pain.\nVoy a hablar de la esperanza  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nYo no sufro este dolor como C\u00e9sar Vallejo. Yo no me duelo ahora como artista, como hombre ni como simple ser vivo siquiera. Yo no sufro este dolor como cat\u00f3lico, como mahometano ni como ateo. Hoy sufro solamente. Si no me llamase C\u00e9sar Vallejo, tambi\u00e9n sufrir\u00eda este mismo dolor. Si no fuese artista, tambi\u00e9n lo sufrir\u00eda. Si no fuese hombre ni ser vivo siquiera, tambi\u00e9n lo sufrir\u00eda. Si no fuese cat\u00f3lico, ateo ni mahometano, tambi\u00e9n lo sufrir\u00eda. Hoy sufro desde m\u00e1s abajo. Hoy sufro solamente.\n\nMe duelo ahora sin explicaciones. Mi dolor es tan hondo, que no tuvo ya causa ni carece de causa. \u00bfQu\u00e9 ser\u00eda su causa? \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 aquello tan importante, que dejase de ser su causa? Nada es su causa; nada ha podido dejar de ser su causa. \u00bfA qu\u00e9 ha nacido este dolor, por s\u00ed mismo? Mi dolor es del viento del norte y del viento del sur, como esos huevos neutros que algunas aves raras ponen del viento. Si hubiera muerto mi novia, mi dolor ser\u00eda igual. Si la vida fuese, en fin, de otro modo, mi dolor ser\u00eda igual. Hoy sufro desde m\u00e1s arriba. Hoy sufro solamente.\n\nMiro el dolor del hambriento y veo que su hambre anda tan lejos de mi sufrimiento, que de quedarme ayuno hasta morir, saldr\u00eda siempre de mi tumba una brizna de yerba al menos. Lo mismo el enamorado. \u00a1Qu\u00e9 sangre la suya m\u00e1s engendrada, para la m\u00eda sin fuente ni consumo!\n\nYo cre\u00eda hasta ahora que todas las cosas del universo eran, inevitablemente, padres o hijos. Pero he aqu\u00ed que mi dolor de hoy no es padre ni es hijo. Le falta espalda para anochecer, tanto como le sobra pecho para amanecer y si lo pusiesen en la estancia oscura, no dar\u00eda luz y si lo pusiesen en una estancia luminosa, no echar\u00eda sombra. Hoy sufro suceda lo que suceda. Hoy sufro solamente.\nDiscovery of Life  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nSirs! Today is the first day I realized the presence of life. Sirs! I request you to let me be free for a moment in order to savor this formidable emotion, spontaneous and fresh with life, that today, for the first time, I am in ecstasy it makes me so happy I cry.\n\nMy pleasure comes from my virgin emotion. My explanation comes as before. I did not feel the presence of life. I had never felt it. He who says that he has is lying. He lies and his lie wounds me to such a great degree that I become miserable. My pleasure comes from my faith in this personal encounter of life and no one is able to go against this faith. If this should happen, his tongue should fail, his bones should fail, and he should run the danger of catching others, in order to maintain oneself in front of my eyes.\n\nI have never had life until now. People have never passed until now. There have never been houses nor avenues, air nor horizons, until now. If come now my friend, Peyriet, I should say that I do not know him and that we ought to begin anew. When, in effect, have I known my friend Peyriet? Today should be the first time that we know each other. I should say to him that he should go and return and enter again, seeing me as if he does not know me, that is to say, for the first time.\n\nNow I do not know anyone not anyone. I am acquainted with a strange country, that relieves the birth, light of unwithering epiphany. No, sir. Do not talk to that man. You do not know him and it will surprise you to hear such unbiased gossip. Do not stand up on this little stone, it may not be a stone and may go flowing into the abyss. Be cautious, we are placed in an absolutely unknown world.\n\nHow little time I have lived! My birth is so recent that there's not enough size to count my age. If I've just born! If, I have not lived yet! Sirs: I am so tiny that scarcely a day is in me.\n\nNot until now, did I hear the clamor of wagons, carryings stones for the great construction of the Boulevard Haussmann. Not until now, did I advance alongside the spring, saying to it, \"If death have been something else . . . \" Not until now, I did see the aurora of light of the sun on the domes of the Sacre-Coeur. Not until now, has a child approached me and looked at me deeply with his mouth. Not until now I knew there existed a door, another door and the cordial song of the distances.\n\nLeave me! Now life has given to me in all my death.\nHallazgo de la vida  \n(For English translation click here)\n\n\u00a1Se\u00f1ores! Hoy es la primera vez que me doy cuenta de la presencia de la vida. \u00a1Se\u00f1ores! Ruego a ustedes dejarme libre un momento, para saborear esta emoci\u00f3n formidable, espont\u00e1nea y reciente de la vida, que hoy, por la primera vez, me extas\u00eda y me hace dichoso hasta las l\u00e1grimas.\n\nMi gozo viene de lo in\u00e9dito de mi emoci\u00f3n. Mi exultaci\u00f3n viene de que antes no sent\u00ed la presencia de la vida. No la he sentido nunca. Miente quien diga que la he sentido. Miente y su mentira me hiere a tal punto que me har\u00eda desgraciado. Mi gozo viene de mi fe en este hallazgo personal de la vida, y nadie puede ir contra esta fe. Al que fuera, se le caer\u00eda la lengua, se le caer\u00edan los huesos y correr\u00eda el peligro de recoger otros, ajenos, para mantenerse de pie ante mis ojos.\n\nNunca, sino ahora, ha habido vida. Nunca, sino ahora, han pasado gentes. Nunca, sino ahora, ha habido casas y avenidas, aire y horizonte. Si viniese ahora mi amigo Peyriet, les dir\u00eda que yo no le conozco y que debemos empezar de nuevo. \u00bfCu\u00e1ndo, en efecto, le he conocido a mi amigo Peyriet? Hoy ser\u00eda la primera vez que nos conocemos. Le dir\u00eda que se vaya y regrese y entre a verme, como si no me conociera, es decir, por la primera vez.\n\nAhora yo no conozco a nadie ni nada. Me advierto en un pa\u00eds extra\u00f1o, en el que todo cobra relieve de nacimiento, luz de epifan\u00eda inmarcesible. No, se\u00f1or. No hable usted a ese caballero. Usted no lo conoce y le sorprender\u00eda tan inopinada parla. No ponga usted el pie sobre esa piedrecilla: qui\u00e9n sabe no es piedra y vaya usted a dar en el vac\u00edo. Sea usted precavido, puesto que estamos en un mundo absolutamente inconocido.\n\n\u00a1Cu\u00e1n poco tiempo he vivido! Mi nacimiento es tan reciente, que no hay unidad de medida para contar mi edad. \u00a1Si acabo de nacer! \u00a1Si a\u00fan no he vivido todav\u00eda! Se\u00f1ores: soy tan peque\u00f1ito, que el d\u00eda apenas cabe en m\u00ed!\n\nNunca, sino ahora, o\u00ed el estruendo de los carros, que cargan piedras para una gran construcci\u00f3n del boulevard Haussmann. Nunca, sino ahora avanc\u00e9 paralelamente a la primavera, dici\u00e9ndola: \u00abSi la muerte hubiera sido otra . . . \u00bb. Nunca, sino ahora, vi la luz \u00e1urea del sol sobre las c\u00fapulas de Sacre-Coeur. Nunca, sino ahora, se me acerc\u00f3 un ni\u00f1o y me mir\u00f3 hondamente con su boca. Nunca, sino ahora, supe que exist\u00eda una puerta, otra puerta y el canto cordial de las distancias.\n\n\u00a1Dejadme! La vida me ha dado ahora en toda mi muerte.\nPayroll of Bones  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nIn a loud voice they demanded:\n\n\u2014He shows by force both his hands at once.  \nAnd this was not possible.\n\n\u2014Let them measure his steps while he weeps.  \nAnd this was not possible.\n\n\u2014Let him think thoughts simultaneous, in the time a zero remains useless.  \nAnd this was not possible.\n\n\u2014Let them act crazy.  \nAnd this was not possible.\n\n\u2014Let between him and another man similar to him a crowd of men like himself intercede.  \nAnd this was not possible.\n\n\u2014Let them compare him with himself.  \nAnd this was not possible.\n\n\u2014Let them, finally, call him by his name.  \nAnd this was not possible.\nN\u00f3mina de huesos  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nSe ped\u00eda a grandes voces:\n\n\u2014Que muestre las dos manos a la vez.  \nY esto no fue posible.\n\n\u2014Que, mientras llora, le tomen la medida de sus pasos.  \nY esto no fue posible.\n\n\u2014Que piense un pensamiento id\u00e9ntico, en el tiempo en que un cero permanece in\u00fatil.  \nY esto no fue posible.\n\n\u2014Que haga una locura.  \nY esto no fue posible.\n\n\u2014Que entre \u00e9l y otro hombre semejante a \u00e9l, se interponga una muchedumbre de hombres como \u00e9l.  \nY esto no fue posible.\n\n\u2014Que le comparen consigo mismo.  \nY esto no fue posible.\n\n\u2014Que le llamen, en fin, por su nombre.  \nY esto no fue posible.\nBehold I Greet Today  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nBehold I greet today, I put on my collar and live,  \nsuperficial of fathomless steps from plants.  \nSuch things I receive from man, rather such things leave me  \nfrom every hour of mine sprouts a distance.\n\nWhat more do you want? Charmed.  \nPolitically, my words  \ndeclare accusation through my lower lip  \nand economically,  \nwhen I turn back on the Orient.  \nI distinguish in the dignity of death for my visits.\n\nI greet the unknown soldier with  \nthe required normal laws,  \nthe persecuted verse with dead ink  \nand the lizards which are in the same place every day  \nof their life and their death,  \nlike those who do not do anything.\n\nThe time has a centipede fear of watches.\n\n(Readers may title this poem whatever they wish)\nHe aqu\u00ed que hoy saludo  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nHe aqu\u00ed que hoy saludo, me pongo el cuello y vivo,  \nsuperficial de pasos insondable de plantas.  \nTal me recibo de hombre, tal m\u00e1s bien me despido  \ny de cada hora m\u00eda reto\u00f1a una distancia.\n\n\u00bfQuer\u00e9is m\u00e1s? encantado.  \nPol\u00edticamente, mi palabra  \nemite cargos contra mi labio inferior  \ny econ\u00f3micamente,  \ncuando doy la espalda a Oriente,  \ndistingo en dignidad de muerte a mis visitas.\n\nDesde totales c\u00f3digos regulares saludo  \nal soldado desconocido  \nal verso perseguido por la tinta fatal  \ny al saurio que Equidista diariamente  \nde su vida y su muerte,  \ncomo quien no hace la cosa.\n\nEl tiempo tiene un miedo ciempi\u00e9s a los relojes.\n\n(Los lectores pueden poner el t\u00edtulo que quieran a este poema)\nLoin of the Sacred Scriptures  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nWithout ever having noticed excessive tourism  \nand without agencies  \nbreast to breast toward the unanimous mother.\n\nNow I come from Paris to be a son. Listen,  \nman, truthfully, I say you are the Eternal Son,  \nin order to be a brother your arms are hardly equal  \nand you have a great deal of malice as a father.\n\nMy mother's figure moving me by the emotion in her movement  \nand making me serious, hits me right in the heart:  \nthinking how often she has fallen from flight with my sad grandparents,  \nmy mother, from the other side of the circle, silences herself in the sky.\n\nMy meter now measures two meters,  \nmy bones generally in agreement and number  \nand the verb incarnate is living among us,  \nand the verb incarnate is living while I'm sinking in the bath,  \na high degree of perfection.\n\n_October 1926_\nLomo de las sagradas escrituras  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nSin haberlo advertido jam\u00e1s, exceso por turismo  \ny sin agencias  \nde pecho en pecho hacia la madre un\u00e1nime.\n\nHasta Par\u00eds ahora vengo a ser hijo. Escucha,  \nHombre, en verdad te digo que eres el Hijo Eterno,  \npues para ser hermano tus brazos son escasamente iguales  \ny tu malicia para ser padre, es mucha.\n\nLa talla de mi madre movi\u00e9ndome por \u00edndole de movimiento,  \ny poni\u00e9ndome serio, me llega exactamente al coraz\u00f3n:  \npesando cuanto cayera de vuelo con mis tristes abuelos,  \nmi madre me oye en di\u00e1metro call\u00e1ndose en altura.\n\nMi metro est\u00e1 midiendo ya dos metros,  \nmis huesos concuerdan en g\u00e9nero y en n\u00famero  \ny el verbo encarnado habita entre nosotros  \ny el verbo encarnado habita, al hundirme en el ba\u00f1o,  \nun alto grado de perfecci\u00f3n.\n\n_octubre 1926_\n\n_C\u00e9sar Vallejo celebrating Christmas next to Henriette Maisse and Carlos More. Paris, 1926_\n\nPhoto: Juan Larrea Collection\/Archives Malanga\n_from_\n\nPOEMAS HUMANOS\n\n_The Undated Poems 1923(?)\u20131937_\nHat, Overcoat, Gloves  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nIn front of the Com\u00e9die-Fran\u00e7aise is the Regency Caf\u00e9\n\nin it there is a secret\n\nroom, with an armchair and table.\n\nThe dusts stands motionless and covers my shoes when I enter.\n\nBetween my wet lips, the embers of the cigarette\n\nsmolder, and in the smoke one is able to see\n\ntwo intense smokes, the thorax of the Caf\u00e9,\n\nand in the thorax, a profound oxide of sadness.\n\nIt's important that autumn be grafted to autumn,\n\nit's important that autumn be integrated of sprouts,\n\nthe cloud of six months; of the prominent cheekbones, the wrinkle.\n\nImportant also to smell the crazy postulating\n\nhow warm the snow is, how quick the tortoise,\n\nhow simple the how, how thundering the when!\nSombrero, abrigo, guantes  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEnfrente a la Comedia Francesa, est\u00e1 el Caf\u00e9\n\nde la Regencia; en \u00e9l hay una pieza\n\nrec\u00f3ndita, con una butaca y una mesa.\n\nCuando entro, el polvo inm\u00f3vil se ha puesto ya de pie.\n\nEntre mis labios hechos de jebe, la pavesa\n\nde un cigarrillo humea, y en el humo se ve\n\ndos humos intensivos, el t\u00f3rax del Caf\u00e9,\n\ny en el t\u00f3rax, un \u00f3xido profundo de tristeza.\n\nImporta que el oto\u00f1o se injerte en los oto\u00f1os,\n\nimporta que el oto\u00f1o se integre de reto\u00f1os,\n\nla nube, de semestres; de p\u00f3mulos, la arruga.\n\nImporta oler a loco postulando\n\n\u00a1qu\u00e9 c\u00e1lida es la nieve, qu\u00e9 fugaz la tortuga,\n\nel c\u00f3mo qu\u00e9 sencillo, qu\u00e9 fulminante el cu\u00e1nto!\nThe Wheel of the Starving  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI come out steaming from between my own teeth,\n\nscreaming, moaning\n\npulling my pants down . . .\n\nMy stomach and my blood and guts despicably,\n\nthe misery plucks me from between my own teeth,\n\npicked up with a toothpick by my own shirt cuff.\n\nIsn't there for me\n\na bench to sit on?\n\nNot even that bench on which the new mother stumbles to sit,\n\nmother of the lamb, the cause, the root?\n\nIs that one ready for me now?\n\nThe one which stumbled looming through my soul!\n\nAt least\n\nthe chalky or evil one (sea of humility),\n\nor the one with no more use, not even to be thrown\n\nagainst a man,\n\nlet me just have that one now.\n\nAt least the one that can be found alone and pierced in an insult,\n\nlet me just have that one now.\n\nAt least the crowned and twisted one, in which but once\n\nthe echo of the walk of a righteous conscience,\n\nor at least that other one, tossed in a noble curve,\n\nwhich drops by itself,\n\nshowing essence of its innards,\n\nlet me just have that one now.\n\nIs there not one piece of bread for me either?\n\nI shall no longer be what I must always be,\n\nbut give me\n\na stone to sit on,\n\nbut give me,\n\nplease, a piece of bread to sit on,\n\nbut give me,\n\nin simple words,\n\nsomething, at least, to drink, to eat, to live, to rest upon,\n\nthen I will leave . . .\n\nIt found a weird shape, my shirt is shattered\n\nand grimy\n\nand I have nothing, this is frightful.\nLa rueda del hambriento  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nPor entre mis propios dientes salgo humeando,\n\ndando voces, pujando,\n\nbaj\u00e1ndome los pantalones . . .\n\nV\u00e1ca mi est\u00f3mago, v\u00e1ca mi yeyuno,\n\nla miseria me saca por entre mis propios dientes,\n\ncogido con un palito por el pu\u00f1o de la camisa.\n\nUna piedra en que sentarme\n\n\u00bfno habr\u00e1 ahora para m\u00ed?\n\nA\u00fan aquella piedra en que tropieza la mujer que ha dado a luz,\n\nla madre del cordero, la causa, la ra\u00edz,\n\n\u00bf\u00e9sa no habr\u00e1 ahora para m\u00ed?\n\n\u00a1Siquiera aquella otra,\n\nque ha pasado agach\u00e1ndose por mi alma!\n\nSiquiera\n\nla calc\u00e1rida o la mala (humilde oc\u00e9ano)\n\no la que ya no sirve ni para ser tirada contra el hombre\n\n\u00e9sa d\u00e1dmela ahora para m\u00ed!\n\nSiquiera la que hallaren atravesada y sola en un insulto,\n\n\u00e9sa d\u00e1dmela ahora para m\u00ed!\n\nSiquiera la torcida y coronada, en que resuena\n\nsolamente una vez el andar de las rectas conciencias,\n\no, al menos, esa otra, que arrojada en digna curva,\n\nva a caer por s\u00ed misma,\n\nen profesi\u00f3n de entra\u00f1a verdadera,\n\n\u00a1\u00e9sa d\u00e1dmela ahora para m\u00ed!\n\nUn pedazo de pan, tampoco habr\u00e1 para m\u00ed?\n\nYa no m\u00e1s he de ser lo que siempre he de ser,\n\npero dadme\n\nuna piedra en que sentarme,\n\npero dadme,\n\npor favor, un pedazo de pan en que sentarme,\n\npero dadme\n\nen espa\u00f1ol\n\nalgo, en fin, de beber, de comer, de vivir, de reposarse\n\ny despu\u00e9s me ir\u00e9 . . .\n\nHall\u00f3 una extra\u00f1a forma, est\u00e1 muy rota\n\ny sucia mi camisa\n\ny ya no tengo nada, esto es horrendo.\nEpistle to Passersby  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI start my rabbit day again,\n\nmy night of elephant ease.\n\nAnd I say to myself,\n\nthis is my raw immensity, wholesale,\n\nthis is the pleasant weight which sought a bird in me below,\n\nthis is my arm,\n\nthat on its own refused to be a wing,\n\nthese are my sacred scriptures,\n\nthese my frightened testes.\n\nA gloomy isle will light me like a continent,\n\nwhile the capitol rests on my intimate collapse\n\nand like lancers the assembly hems in my parade.\n\nBut when I die,\n\nfrom life and not from time,\n\nwhen my two valises reach the count of two,\n\nthis shall be my stomach, where my shattered lamp once fit,\n\nthis that head atoning for the torment of my footsteps' circle,\n\nthese those worms the heart had counted one by one,\n\nthis shall be my body jointly liable\n\nwith the one on whom the single soul keeps watch; this shall be\n\nmy navel, where I killed my natural born lice,\n\nthis my thing thing, my fearsome thing.\n\nMeanwhile, convulsive, harsh,\n\nconvalescing my bridle,\n\nsuffering as I suffer from the lion's direct speech;\n\nand since I have existed between two brick-wall powers,\n\nI too grow strong again, with smiling lips.\nEp\u00edstola a los transe\u00fantes  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nReanudo mi d\u00eda de conejo\n\nmi noche de elefante en descanso.\n\nY, entre mi, digo:\n\n\u00e9sta es mi inmensidad en bruto, a c\u00e1ntaros\n\n\u00e9ste es mi grato peso,\n\nque me buscar\u00e1 abajo para p\u00e1jaro;\n\n\u00e9ste es mi brazo\n\nque por su cuenta rehus\u00f3 ser ala,\n\n\u00e9stas son mis sagradas escrituras,\n\n\u00e9stos mis alarmados campe\u00f1ones.\n\nL\u00fagubre isla me alumbrar\u00e1 continental,\n\nmientras el capitolio se apoye en mi \u00edntimo derrumbe\n\ny la asamblea en lanzas clausure mi desfile.\n\nPero cuando yo muera\n\nde vida y no de tiempo,\n\ncuando lleguen a dos mis dos maletas,\n\n\u00e9ste ha de ser mi est\u00f3mago en que cupo mi l\u00e1mpara en pedazos,\n\n\u00e9sta aquella cabeza que expi\u00f3 los tormentos del c\u00edrculo en mis pasos,\n\n\u00e9stos esos gusanos que el coraz\u00f3n cont\u00f3 por unidades,\n\n\u00e9ste ha de ser mi cuerpo solidario\n\npor el que vela el alma individual; \u00e9ste ha de ser\n\nmi ombligo en que mat\u00e9 mis piojos natos,\n\n\u00e9sta mi cosa cosa, mi cosa tremebunda.\n\nEn tanto, convulsiva, \u00e1speramente\n\nconvalece mi freno,\n\nsufriendo como sufro del lenguaje directo del le\u00f3n;\n\ny, puesto que he existido entre dos potestades de ladrillo,\n\nconvalezco yo mismo, sonriendo de mis labios.\nToday I'd Really Like to Be Happy  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nToday I'd really like to be happy,\n\nto be happy, my whole being burst into questions,\n\nto throw open wildly the doors to the rooms of my flat, like a madman,\n\nthe self confidence of my physical trust laid bare,\n\nonly to see if anyone cares,\n\nonly to see if anyone is taking note of my spontaneous position,\n\nto demand, I'm saying\n\nwhy people inflict so much pain on my soul.\n\nFor I'd like, in substance, to be blissful,\n\nto work without cane, a laic humility, without a black donkey.\n\nTo sense the sensation of the world,\n\nthe subjunctive songs,\n\nthe pencil that I lost in my cavity\n\nand my beloved organs all crying.\n\nPersuadable brother, comrade,\n\nfather through grandeur, mortal son,\n\nfriend and contender, immense document of Darwin:\n\nat what hour will they come with my likeness?\n\nWill they come with joy on their faces? With shrouded enjoyment?\n\nEarlier than expected? Who knows, by what hassle?\n\nAt the mercy, comrade,\n\nthis man of mine in rejection and in observation, neighbor\n\nin whose enormous neck seesaws\n\nnaturally, without wire, my hope . . .\nQuisiera hoy ser feliz de buena gana  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nQuisiera hoy ser feliz de buena gana,\n\nser feliz y portarme frondoso de preguntas,\n\nabrir por temperamento de par en par mi cuarto, como loco,\n\ny reclamar, en fin,\n\nen mi confianza f\u00edsica acostado,\n\ns\u00f3lo por ver si quieren,\n\ns\u00f3lo por ver si quieren probar de mi espont\u00e1nea posici\u00f3n,\n\nreclamar, voy diciendo,\n\npor qu\u00e9 me dan as\u00ed t\u00e1nto en el alma.\n\nPues quisiera en sustancia ser dichoso,\n\nobrar sin bast\u00f3n, laica humildad, ni burro negro.\n\nAs\u00ed las sensaciones de este mundo,\n\nlos cantos subjuntivos,\n\nel l\u00e1piz que perd\u00ed en mi cavidad\n\ny mis amados \u00f3rganos de llanto.\n\nHermano persuasible, camarada,\n\npadre por la grandeza, hijo mortal,\n\namigo y contendor, inmenso documento de Darwin:\n\n\u00bfa qu\u00e9 hora, pues, vendr\u00e1n con mi retrato?\n\n\u00bfA los goces? \u00bfAcaso sobre goce amortajado?\n\n\u00bfM\u00e1s temprano? \u00bfQui\u00e9n sabe, a las porf\u00edas?\n\nA las misericordias, camarada,\n\nhombre m\u00edo en rechazo y observaci\u00f3n, vecino\n\nen cuyo cuello enorme sube y baja,\n\nal natural, sin hilo, mi esperanza . . .\nConsidering Coldly, Impartially  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nConsidering coldly, impartially,\n\nthat man suffers, coughs and, however\n\nself-gratified he is with his reddened chest;\n\nthat the only thing he can do is compose himself\n\nwith days,\n\nthat he's really this gloomy mammal slightly imperfect . . .\n\nConsidering\n\nthat a man proceeds softly from his work\n\nhaving told the boss, a worker's insubordinate dream;\n\nthat the diagram of time\n\nremains a constant diorama with medals\n\nand that his half-open eyes study,\n\nfrom distant hours,\n\nhis famished formula for a workers' coalition . . .\n\nUnderstanding easily enough\n\nthat the man, at times, thinking\n\nof his tears behind sore, burning eyes,\n\nand, allowing to set himself as an object,\n\nbecomes a good carpenter, sweats, kills,\n\nand then sings, breakfasts, plunges into his coat . . .\n\nConsidering too\n\nthat man is, in truth, animal\n\nand, notwithstanding, turns, hitting me on the head with his sadness . . .\n\nExamining, finally,\n\nhis opposed pieces, his toilet,\n\nhis desperation at the end of his atrocious day and rubbing it out . . .\n\nUnderstanding\n\nthat he knows I love him,\n\nand that I hating him with the same love is, in sum, indifference . . .\n\nConsidering his general documents,\n\nstudying with glasses that certificate\n\nthat proves he was born very, very small . . .\n\nI signal to him,\n\nhe comes,\n\nand I embrace him, moved.\n\nWhat more can I give! Moved . . . Moved . . .\nConsiderando en fr\u00edo, imparcialmente  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nConsiderando en fr\u00edo, imparcialmente,\n\nque el hombre es triste, tose y, sin embargo,\n\nse complace en su pecho colorado;\n\nque lo \u00fanico que hace es componerse\n\nde d\u00edas;\n\nque es l\u00f3brego mam\u00edfero y se peina . . .\n\nConsiderando\n\nque el hombre procede suavemente del trabajo\n\ny repercute jefe, suena subordinado;\n\nque el diagrama del tiempo\n\nes constante diorama en sus medallas\n\ny, a medio abrir, sus ojos estudiaron,\n\ndesde lejanos tiempos,\n\nsu f\u00f3rmula fam\u00e9lica de masa . . .\n\nComprendiendo sin esfuerzo\n\nque el hombre se queda, a veces, pensando,\n\ncomo queriendo llorar,\n\ny, sujeto a tenderse como objeto,\n\nse hace buen carpintero, suda, mata\n\ny luego canta, almuerza, se abotona . . .\n\nConsiderando tambi\u00e9n\n\nque el hombre es en verdad un animal\n\ny, no obstante, al voltear, me da con su tristeza en la cabeza . . .\n\nExaminando, en fin,\n\nsus encontradas piezas, su retrete,\n\nsu desesperaci\u00f3n, al terminar su d\u00eda atroz, borr\u00e1ndolo . . .\n\nComprendiendo\n\nque \u00e9l sabe que le quiero,\n\nque le odio con afecto y me es, en suma, indiferente . . .\n\nConsiderando sus documentos generales\n\ny mirando con lentes aquel certificado\n\nque prueba que naci\u00f3 muy peque\u00f1ito . . .\n\nle hago una se\u00f1a,\n\nviene,\n\ny le doy un abrazo, emocionado.\n\n\u00a1Qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s da! Emocionado . . . Emocionado . . .\nAnd If after So Many Words  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nAnd if after so many words,\n\nthe word itself doesn't survive!\n\nIf after the wings of the birds,\n\nthe motionless birds do not survive!\n\nTruthfully, it would be of more value\n\nthat they eat all and we be finished!\n\nTo have been born to live our death!\n\nRising from the sky toward the earth\n\nfrom your own disaster\n\nand spy the moment the darkness that turns out the shade!\n\nIt would be better, frankly,\n\nif it were all swallowed up, and that's that! . . .\n\nAnd if after so much history, we succumb,\n\nnot of eternity,\n\nbut of those simple things, like being\n\nat home or finding fault with yourself!\n\nAnd if, suddenly, we discover that we live\n\njudging by the height of the motionless stars\n\nby the comb and the spots on the handkerchief!\n\nTruthfully, it would be of more value\n\nthat they eat all, of course!\n\nIt will be said that in one\n\nof our eyes we have a great deal of pain\n\nand likewise in the other, the same pain\n\nand in the two, when they see, a great deal of pain . . .\n\nThen! . . . Obviously! . . . Then . . . not a word!\n\u00a1Y si despu\u00e9s de tantas palabras!  \n(For English translation click here)\n\n\u00a1Y si despu\u00e9s de tantas palabras,\n\nno sobrevive la palabra!\n\n\u00a1Si despu\u00e9s de las alas de los p\u00e1jaros,\n\nno sobrevive el p\u00e1jaro parado!\n\n\u00a1M\u00e1s valdr\u00eda, en verdad,\n\nque se lo coman todo y acabemos!\n\n\u00a1Haber nacido para vivir de nuestra muerte!\n\n\u00a1Levantarse del cielo hacia la tierra\n\npor sus propios desastres\n\ny espiar el momento de apagar con su sombra su tiniebla!\n\n\u00a1M\u00e1s valdr\u00eda, francamente,\n\nque se lo coman todo y qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s da . . . !\n\n\u00a1Y si despu\u00e9s de tanta historia, sucumbimos,\n\nno ya de eternidad,\n\nsino de esas cosas sencillas, como estar\n\nen la casa o ponerse a cavilar!\n\n\u00a1Y si luego encontramos,\n\nde buenas a primeras, que vivimos,\n\na juzgar por la altura de los astros,\n\npor el peine y las manchas del pa\u00f1uelo!\n\n\u00a1M\u00e1s valdr\u00eda, en verdad,\n\nque se lo coman todo, desde luego!\n\nSe dir\u00e1 que tenemos\n\nen uno de los ojos mucha pena\n\ny tambi\u00e9n en el otro, mucha pena\n\ny en los dos, cuando miran, mucha pena . . .\n\nEntonces . . . \u00a1Claro! . . . Entonces . . . \u00a1ni palabra!\nParis, October 1936  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nOf all this I am the only one who's leaving.\n\nI am getting up from this bench, of my trousers,\n\nof my grand situation, of my actions,\n\nfrom my house number shattered to pieces,\n\nof all this, and I'm the only one who's leaving.\n\nFrom the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es or while taking a turn\n\nin a strange narrow passage of the Moon,\n\nmy own death is leaving, and my bed taking leave of the room,\n\nand, surrounded by people, solitary, free,\n\nmy human likeness\n\nturns back and dispatches its shadows one by one.\n\nAnd I walk away from everything, because everything\n\nwill remain behind as evidence:\n\nmy shoe, its worn buttonholes, also its mud\n\nand even the crease of the elbow\n\nof my own buttoned shirt.\nPar\u00eds, Octubre 1936  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nDe todo esto yo soy el \u00fanico que parte.\n\nDe este banco me voy, de mis calzones,\n\nde mi gran situaci\u00f3n, de mis acciones,\n\nde mi n\u00famero hendido parte a parte,\n\nde todo esto yo soy el \u00fanico que parte.\n\nDe los Campos El\u00edseos o al dar vuelta\n\nla extra\u00f1a callejuela de la Luna,\n\nmi defunci\u00f3n se va, parte mi cuna,\n\ny, rodeada de gente, sola, suelta,\n\nmi semejanza humana dase vuelta\n\ny despacha sus sombras una a una.\n\nY me alejo de todo, porque todo\n\nse queda para hacer la coartada:\n\nmi zapato, su ojal, tambi\u00e9n su lodo\n\ny hasta el doblez del codo\n\nde mi propia camisa abotonada.\nBlack Stone on a White Stone*  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,\n\na day I already possess the memory.\n\nI shall die in Paris\u2014and I don't run away\u2014\n\nperhaps on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.\n\nIt's got to be Thursday, because today, Thursday, I'm writing\n\nthese verses and I've hurt the humerus bone\n\nand never like today, have I turned\n\nin the direction to where I am alone.\n\nC\u00e9sar Vallejo is dead, they beat him,\n\nall of them, and for nothing.\n\nthey hit him hard with sticks and whipped hard\n\nwith a rope; witnesses are\n\nthe Thursdays and the humerus bones\n\nthe loneliness, the rain, and the long empty roads . . .\n\n_*In Santiago de Chuco, the homeland of C\u00e9sar Vallejo, they put a black stone above a white stone to show a burial._\nPiedra negra sobre una piedra blanca  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nMe morir\u00e9 en Par\u00eds con aguacero,\n\nun d\u00eda del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.\n\nMe morir\u00e9 en Par\u00eds \u00bfy no me corro?\n\ntal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de oto\u00f1o.\n\nJueves ser\u00e1, porque hoy, jueves, que proso\n\nestos versos, los h\u00fameros me he puesto\n\na la mala y, jam\u00e1s como hoy, me he vuelto,\n\ncon todo mi camino, a verme solo.\n\nC\u00e9sar Vallejo ha muerto, le pegaban\n\ntodos sin que \u00e9l les haga nada;\n\nle daban duro con un palo y duro\n\ntambi\u00e9n con una soga; son testigos\n\nlos d\u00edas jueves y los huesos h\u00fameros,\n\nla soledad, la lluvia, los caminos . . .\nToday I Like Life Much Less  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nToday I like life much less\n\nbut I still enjoy being alive: there, I said it.\n\nI almost touched part of my whole and restrained myself\n\nwith a shot on the tongue behind my word.\n\nToday I touch my chin in retreat\n\nand in these momentary trousers I say to myself:\n\nSo much life and never!\n\nSo many years and always my weeks! . . .\n\nMy parents interred with their stone\n\nand their sad rapid growth unachieved;\n\nmy brothers and sisters, present with me always,\n\nand finally, my being erect with a vest.\n\nI like life enormously,\n\nbut, of course,\n\nwith my beloved death and my coffee\n\nand seeing the leafy chestnuts of Paris\n\nand saying:\n\nThis is an eye, that; and this one, a forehead, that . . . And repeating:\n\nSo much life and my song never falters!\n\nSo many years and always, always, always!\n\nI said vest, said\n\nwhole part, anguish, said almost in order not to weep.\n\nFor it's true that I suffered in that hospital over there\n\nand it's good and it's bad to have seen\n\nfrom bottom to top my organism.\n\nI would like to live always, if I could have a strong belly,\n\nbecause, as I was saying, and I'll repeat it again,\n\nso much life and never! And so many years,\n\nand always, much always, always, always!\nHoy me gusta la vida mucho menos  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nHoy me gusta la vida mucho menos,\n\npero siempre me gusta vivir: ya lo dec\u00eda.\n\nCasi toqu\u00e9 la parte de mi todo y me contuve\n\ncon un tiro en la lengua detr\u00e1s de mi palabra.\n\nHoy me palpo el ment\u00f3n en retirada\n\ny en estos moment\u00e1neos pantalones yo me digo:\n\n\u00a1T\u00e1nta vida y jam\u00e1s!\n\n\u00a1T\u00e1ntos a\u00f1os y siempre mis semanas! . . .\n\nMis padres enterrados con su piedra\n\ny su triste estir\u00f3n que no ha acabado;\n\nde cuerpo entero hermanos, mis hermanos,\n\ny, en fin, mi ser parado y en chaleco.\n\nMe gusta la vida enormemente\n\npero, desde luego,\n\ncon mi muerte querida y mi caf\u00e9\n\ny viendo los casta\u00f1os frondosos de Par\u00eds\n\ny diciendo:\n\nEs un ojo \u00e9ste, aqu\u00e9l; una frente \u00e9sta, aqu\u00e9lla . . . Y repitiendo:\n\n\u00a1T\u00e1nta vida y jam\u00e1s me falla la tonada!\n\n\u00a1T\u00e1ntos a\u00f1os y siempre, siempre, siempre!\n\nDije chaleco, dije\n\ntodo, parte, ansia, dije casi, por no llorar.\n\nQue es verdad que sufr\u00ed en aquel hospital que queda al lado\n\ny est\u00e1 bien y est\u00e1 mal haber mirado\n\nde abajo para arriba mi organismo.\n\nMe gustar\u00e1 vivir siempre, as\u00ed fuese de barriga,\n\nporque, como iba diciendo y lo repito,\n\n\u00a1t\u00e1nta vida y jam\u00e1s! \u00a1Y t\u00e1ntos a\u00f1os,\n\ny siempre, mucho siempre, siempre, siempre!\n\n_C\u00e9sar Vallejo in the forest of Fontainebleau.  \nNear Paris, 1926_\n\nPhoto: Juan Larrea Collection\/Archives Malanga\n_from_\n\nPOEMAS HUMANOS\n\n_The Dated Poems, 4 September\u20138 December, 1937_\nA Pillar Tolerating Solaces  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nA pillar tolerating solaces,\n\nanother pillar,\n\nduplicate pillars, pillar-like\n\nand like a grandchild of a dark door.\n\nLost noise, the only one, listening, on the edge of the exhaustion;\n\ndrinking, the other, two by two, with double handles.\n\nPerhaps, do I ignore the year of this day,\n\nthe hate of this love, the tablets of this forehead?\n\nDo you ignore that this afternoon costs days?\n\nDo you ignore that you should never say \"never\" on your knees?\n\nThe pillars I see are listening to me;\n\nso are other pillars, deuces and sad grandchildren of my leg.\n\nI say it in American currency,\n\nthat owes so much fire to the silver!\n\nConsoled in third nuptials,\n\npale, born,\n\nI am going to close my baptismal chest, this window shop,\n\nthis fear with breasts,\n\nthis finger in penitence,\n\nheart and mind united to my skeleton.\n\n_6 September 1937_\nUn pilar soportando consuelos  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nUn pilar soportando consuelos,\n\npilar otro,\n\npilar en duplicado, pilaroso\n\ny como nieto de una puerta oscura.\n\nRuido perdido, el uno, oyendo, al borde del cansancio;\n\nbebiendo, el otro, dos a dos, con asas.\n\n\u00bfIgnoro acaso el a\u00f1o de este d\u00eda,\n\nel odio de este amor, las tablas de esta frente?\n\n\u00bfIgnoro que esta tarde cuesta d\u00edas?\n\n\u00bfIgnoro que jam\u00e1s se dice \u00abnunca\u00bb, de rodillas?\n\nLos pilares que vi me est\u00e1n oyendo;\n\notros pilares son, doses y nietos tristes de mi pierna.\n\n\u00a1Lo digo en cobre americano,\n\nque le debe a la plata t\u00e1nto fuego!\n\nConsolado en terceras nupcias,\n\np\u00e1lido, nacido,\n\nvoy a cerrar mi pila bautismal, esta vidriera,\n\neste susto con tetas,\n\neste dedo en capilla,\n\ncoraz\u00f3nmente unido a mi esqueleto.\n\n_6 setiembre 1937_\nPoem to Be Read and Sung  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI know there's a person\n\nlooking for me day and night inside her hand,\n\nand encountering me, each minute, in her shoes.\n\nDoes she ignore that the night is buried\n\nwith spurs in back of the kitchen?\n\nI know there's a person composed of my parts\n\nwhom I complete when my size fits\n\nriding on its exact little stone.\n\nDoesn't she know that the money spent\n\non her portrait will never turn up in her trunk?\n\nI know the day,\n\nbut the sun has escaped me;\n\nI know the universal act she performed in her bed\n\nwith a courage not of her own and warm water, whose\n\nsuperficial frequency is mine.\n\nIs her being so small\n\nthat even her own feet would trample upon her?\n\nA cat is the border between us,\n\nright there beside its bowl of water.\n\nI see her on the corner, her jacket\n\nopens and closes, in the shape of the questioning palm trees . . .\n\nWhat can she do but change weeping?\n\nBut she looks and looks for me. What a tale!\n\n_7 September 1937_\nPoema para ser le\u00eddo y cantado  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nS\u00e9 que hay una persona\n\nque me busca en su mano, d\u00eda y noche,\n\nencontr\u00e1ndome, a cada minuto, en su calzado.\n\n\u00bfIgnora que la noche est\u00e1 enterrada\n\ncon espuelas detr\u00e1s de la cocina?\n\nS\u00e9 que hay una persona compuesta de mis partes,\n\na la que integro cuando va mi talle\n\ncabalgando en su exacta piedrecilla.\n\n\u00bfIgnora que a su cofre\n\nno volver\u00e1 moneda que sali\u00f3 con su retrato?\n\nS\u00e9 el d\u00eda,\n\npero el sol se me ha escapado;\n\ns\u00e9 el acto universal que hizo en su cama\n\ncon ajeno valor y esa agua tibia, cuya\n\nsuperficial frecuencia es una mina.\n\n\u00bfTan peque\u00f1a es, acaso, esa persona,\n\nque hasta sus propios pies as\u00ed la pisan?\n\nUn gato es el lindero entre ella y yo,\n\nal lado mismo de su tasa de agua.\n\nLa veo en las esquinas, se abre y cierra\n\nsu veste, antes palmera interrogante . . .\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 podr\u00e1 hacer sino cambiar de llanto?\n\nPero me busca y busca. \u00a1Es una historia!\n\n_7 setiembre 1937_\nWhile Pondering in Life, While Pondering  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nWhile pondering in life, while pondering\n\nslowly with the strength of the torrent,\n\nit relieves, just for existing it offers a seat,\n\nit condemns death;\n\nwrapped in white shrouds, falls,\n\nfalls planetarily\n\nthe nail swarming with grief, falls!\n\n(Official acrimony, that of my left,\n\nold pocket, in itself this right considered.)\n\nEverything is joyful, without my joy\n\nand everything free, without my candor,\n\nmy uncertainty!\n\nJudging by the form, nevertheless, I go ahead,\n\nlimping anciently,\n\nand my eyes forgotten because of my tears (Very interesting)\n\nI climb to my feet from my star.\n\nI weave, having sewn, here I am sewing.\n\nI look for what follows me and hides from me between archbishops,\n\nbeneath my soul and behind the smoke of my breath.\n\nSuch was the sensual desolation\n\nof the ascending maiden goat,\n\nexhaling fateful oils\n\nyesterday Sunday when I lost my Saturday.\n\nSuch is death, with its fearless husband.\n\n_7 September 1937_\nAl cavilar en la vida, al cavilar  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nAl cavilar en la vida, al cavilar\n\ndespacio en el esfuerzo del torrente,\n\nalivia, ofrece asiento el existir,\n\ncondena a muerte;\n\nenvuelto en trapos blancos cae,\n\ncae planetariamente\n\nel clavo hervido en pesadumbre; cae!\n\n(Acritud oficial, la de mi izquierda;\n\nviejo bolsillo, en s\u00ed considerada, esta derecha.)\n\n\u00a1Todo est\u00e1 alegre, menos mi alegr\u00eda\n\ny todo, largo, menos mi candor,\n\nmi incertidumbre!\n\nA juzgar por la forma, no obstante, voy de frente,\n\ncojeando antiguamente,\n\ny olvido por mis l\u00e1grimas mis ojos (Muy interesante)\n\ny subo hasta mis pies desde mi estrella.\n\nTejo; de haber hilado, h\u00e9me tejiendo.\n\nBusco lo que me sigue y se me esconde entre arzobispos,\n\npor debajo de mi alma y tras del humo de mi aliento.\n\nTal era la sensual desolaci\u00f3n\n\nde la cabra doncella que ascend\u00eda,\n\nexhalando petr\u00f3leos fat\u00eddicos,\n\nayer domingo en que perd\u00ed mi s\u00e1bado.\n\nTal es la muerte, con su audaz marido.\n\n_7 setiembre 1937_\nOh Bottle without Wine!  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nOh bottle without wine! Oh widowed wine of this bottle!\n\nLate afternoon when the aurora of dusk\n\nflutters forebodingly in five spirits.\n\nWidowhood without bread nor grime, topping in horrendous metals,\n\nand finishing our oral cells.\n\nOh always, never to give with the never of so much always!\n\nOh my good friends, cruel fallacy,\n\npartial, penetrating our cut-short\n\nvolatile, playful-like grief!\n\nSublime, low perfection of the pig,\n\ntouches my overall melancholy!\n\nzuela* sounding in dreams,\n\nzuela\n\nboorish, inferior, duped, lawful, thief\n\nlowers and touches those ideas that were mine!\n\nYou and he and they and everyone,\n\nnevertheless,\n\nenter into my shirt all at once,\n\nin the wooden shoulders, between the thighbones, toothpicks;\n\nyou particularly\n\nhaving influenced me;\n\nhe, futile, colored, with money\n\nand they, bee wings of some other importance.\n\nOh bottle without wine! Oh widowed wine of this bottle!\n\n_16 September 1937_\n\n_*Zuela is a carpenter tool used for scabble. It is built with an iron plate steely and sharp._\n\u00a1Oh botella sin vino!  \n(For English translation click here)\n\n\u00a1Oh botella sin vino! \u00a1Oh vino que enviud\u00f3 de esta botella!\n\nTarde cuando la aurora de la tarde\n\nflame\u00f3 funestamente en cinco esp\u00edritus.\n\nViudez sin pan ni mugre, rematando en horrendos metaloides\n\ny en c\u00e9lulas orales acabando.\n\n\u00a1Oh siempre, nunca dar con el jam\u00e1s de t\u00e1nto siempre!\n\n\u00a1oh mis buenos amigos, cruel falacia,\n\nparcial, penetrativa en nuestro trunco,\n\nvol\u00e1til, jugarino desconsuelo!\n\n\u00a1Sublime, baja perfecci\u00f3n del cerdo,\n\npalpa mi general melancol\u00eda!\n\n\u00a1Zuela sonante en sue\u00f1os,\n\nzuela\n\nzafia, inferior, vendida, l\u00edcita, ladrona,\n\nbaja y palpa lo que eran mis ideas!\n\nT\u00fa y \u00e9l y ellos y todos,\n\nsin embargo,\n\nentraron a la vez en mi camisa,\n\nen los hombros madera, entre los f\u00e9mures, palillos;\n\nt\u00fa particularmente,\n\nhabi\u00e9ndome influido;\n\n\u00e9l, f\u00fatil, colorado, con dinero\n\ny ellos, z\u00e1nganos de ala de otro peso.\n\n\u00a1Oh botella sin vino! \u00a1oh vino que enviud\u00f3 de esta botella!\n\n_16 setiembre 1937_\nHe Goes Running, Walking, Fleeing  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nHe goes running, walking, fleeing\n\nfrom his feet . . .\n\nHe goes with two clouds in his cloud\n\nsitting uncertainly, nailed in the hand\n\nhis sad \"for,\" his funeral \"then.\"\n\nHe runs from all, walking\n\nbetween colorless protests; he flees\n\nrising, he flees\n\nfalling, he flees\n\nby measured of the underground cellar, he flees\n\nraising in his arms the evil,\n\nhe flees\n\ndirectly to sob alone.\n\nWhere may he be going,\n\nfar from his brambles, caustic talons,\n\nfar from the air, far from his journey,\n\nat last to flee, flee, and flee, and flee\n\nfrom his feet\u2014man of two feet, stops\n\nfrom all this fleeing\u2014he must be thirsty from running.\n\nAnd not even the tree, if he endorses iron of gold!\n\nAnd not even the iron, if he covers his foliage!\n\nNothing, but only his feet\n\nnothing but his short shivering\n\nhis living \"for,\" his living \"then\" . . .\n\n_18 September 1937_\nVa corriendo, andando, huyendo  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nVa corriendo, andando, huyendo\n\nde sus pies . . .\n\nVa con dos nubes en su nube,\n\nsentado ap\u00f3crifo, en la mano insertos\n\nsus tristes paras, sus entonces f\u00fanebres.\n\nCorre de todo, andando\n\nentre protestas incoloras; huye\n\nsubiendo, huye\n\nbajando, huye\n\na paso de sotana, huye\n\nalzando al mal en brazos,\n\nhuye\n\ndirectamente a sollozar a solas.\n\nAdonde vaya,\n\nlejos de sus fragosos, c\u00e1usticos talones,\n\nlejos del aire, lejos de su viaje,\n\na fin de huir, huir y huir y huir\n\nde sus pies \u2014hombre en dos pies, parado\n\nde t\u00e1nto huir\u2014 habr\u00e1 sed de correr.\n\n\u00a1Y ni el \u00e1rbol, si endosa hierro de oro!\n\n\u00a1Y ni el hierro, si cubre su hojarasca!\n\nNada, sino sus pies,\n\nnada sino su breve calofr\u00edo,\n\nsus paras vivos, sus entonces vivos . . .\n\n_18 setiembre 1937_\nMy Breast Wants and Does Not Want Its Color  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nMy breast wants and does not want its color,\n\nI go weeping with a stick along those harsh roads,\n\nI try to be happy, weeping in my hand;\n\nI remember, I write,\n\nriveting a tear in my cheekbone.\n\nEvil wants its red, good wants its red reddened\n\nby the hanging axe,\n\nby the trot of a wing flying on foot,\n\nbut he doesn't want it and sorely\n\nhe doesn't want this,\n\nhe doesn't want to be inside his\n\nsoul, to the beat of lance-blows on his temple,\n\nthe two-handed creature, the great brute, the great philosopher.\n\nThus, I almost don't exist, I'm on my way down\n\nfrom the plough on which I save my soul\n\nand almost, in proportion, I almost raise myself.\n\nFor knowing why life contains this breast,\n\nwhy I cry, why,\n\nhesitant, helpless, inconstant, I was born\n\nshouting,\n\nto know this, to understand it\n\nthrough the sound of a competent alphabet,\n\nwould be to suffer for someone ungrateful.\n\nBut no! No! No! What scheme, my parameter!\n\nAnguish, yes, firm and frenetic,\n\nleathery, predatory, it wants and does not want, sky and bird,\n\nanguish, yes, with every button of the fly.\n\nWrangle between two laments, theft of one bliss only,\n\npainless road where I suffer in my own out shoes\n\nfrom the velocity of walking blindly.\n\n_22 September 1937_\nQuiere y no quiere su color mi pecho  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nQuiere y no quiere su color mi pecho,\n\npor cuyas bruscas v\u00edas voy, lloro con palo,\n\ntrato de ser feliz, lloro en mi mano,\n\nrecuerdo, escribo\n\ny remacho una l\u00e1grima en mi p\u00f3mulo.\n\nQuiere su rojo el mal, el bien su rojo enrojecido\n\npor el hacha suspensa,\n\npor el trote del ala a pie volando,\n\ny no quiere y sensiblemente\n\nno quiere aquesto el hombre;\n\nno quiere estar en su alma\n\nacostado, en la sien latidos de asta,\n\nel bimano, el muy bruto, el muy fil\u00f3sofo.\n\nAs\u00ed, casi no soy, me vengo abajo\n\ndesde el arado en que socorro a mi alma\n\ny casi, en proporci\u00f3n, casi enalt\u00e9zcome.\n\nQue saber por qu\u00e9 tiene la vida este perrazo,\n\npor qu\u00e9 lloro, por qu\u00e9,\n\ncej\u00f3n, inh\u00e1bil, veleidoso, hube nacido\n\ngritando;\n\nsaberlo, comprenderlo\n\nal son de un alfabeto competente,\n\nser\u00eda padecer por un ingrato.\n\n\u00a1Y no! \u00a1No! \u00a1No! \u00a1Qu\u00e9 ardid, ni paramento!\n\nCongoja, s\u00ed, con s\u00ed firme y fren\u00e9tico,\n\ncori\u00e1ceo, rapaz, quiere y no quiere, cielo y p\u00e1jaro;\n\ncongoja, s\u00ed, con toda la bragueta.\n\nContienda entre dos llantos, robo de una sola ventura,\n\nv\u00eda indolora en que padezco en chanclos\n\nde la velocidad de andar a ciegas.\n\n_22 setiembre 1937_\nThe Peace, the Wasp, the Bung, the Hillsides  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThe peace, the wasp, the bung, the hillsides,\n\nthe dead man, the ten liter, the owl,\n\nthe sites, the ringworm, the tombs, the vase, the dark women,\n\nthe unknowing, the kettle, the altarboy,\n\nthe drops, the forgetfulness,\n\nthe potentate, the cousins, the archangels, the needle,\n\nthe parish priests, the ebony, the spite,\n\nthe part, the type, the stupor, the soul . . .\n\nMalleable, saffroned, external, spotless,\n\nportable, old, thirteen, bloodsmeared,\n\nphotographed, active, tumescent,\n\nconnected, broad, ribboned, perfidious . . .\n\nBurning, comparing,\n\nliving, infuriated,\n\nstriking, analyzing, listening, shuddering,\n\ndying, holding on, locating, weeping . . .\n\nAfter, these, here\n\nafter, overhead,\n\nperhaps, while, behind, so much, so never,\n\nbeneath, maybe, far,\n\nalways, that one, tomorrow, how much,\n\nhow much! . . .\n\nThe horrible, the sumptuous, the slowest,\n\nthe august, the fruitless,\n\nthe ominous, the twitching, the wet, the fatal,\n\nthe all, the most pure, the lugubrious,\n\nthe cruel, the satanic, the tactile, the profound . . .\n\n_25 September 1937_\nLa paz, la avispa, el taco, las vertientes  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nLa paz, la avispa, el taco, las vertientes,\n\nel muerto, los dec\u00edlitros, el b\u00faho,\n\nlos lugares, la ti\u00f1a, los sarc\u00f3fagos, el vaso, las morenas,\n\nel desconocimiento, la olla, el monaguillo,\n\nlas gotas, el olvido,\n\nla potestad, los primos, los arc\u00e1ngeles, la aguja,\n\nlos p\u00e1rrocos, el \u00e9bano, el desaire,\n\nla parte, el tipo, el estupor, el alma . . .\n\nD\u00factil, azafranado, externo, n\u00edtido,\n\nport\u00e1til, viejo, trece, ensangrentado,\n\nfotografiadas, listas, tumefactas,\n\nconexas, largas, encintadas, p\u00e9rfidas . . .\n\nArdiendo, comparando,\n\nviviendo, enfureci\u00e9ndose,\n\ngolpeando, analizando, oyendo, estremeci\u00e9ndose,\n\nmuriendo, sosteni\u00e9ndose, situ\u00e1ndose, llorando . . .\n\nDespu\u00e9s, \u00e9stos, aqu\u00ed,\n\ndespu\u00e9s, encima,\n\nquiz\u00e1, mientras, detr\u00e1s, tanto, tan nunca,\n\ndebajo, acaso, lejos,\n\nsiempre, aquello, ma\u00f1ana, cu\u00e1nto,\n\n\u00a1cu\u00e1nto! . . .\n\nLo horrible, lo suntuario, lo lent\u00edsimo,\n\nlo augusto, lo infructuoso,\n\nlo aciago, lo crispante, lo mojado, lo fatal.\n\nlo todo, lo pur\u00edsimo, lo l\u00f3brego,\n\nlo acerbo, lo sat\u00e1nico, lo t\u00e1ctil, lo profundo . . .\n\n_25 setiembre 1937_\nOf Pure Heat I'm Freezing  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nOf pure heat I'm freezing\n\nsister Envy!\n\nLions lick my shadow\n\nand the mouse gnaws at my name,\n\nmother, soul of mine!\n\nTo the edge of the depths I go,\n\nbrother-in-law Vice!\n\nThe caterpillar plays on its voice,\n\nand the voice plays its caterpillar,\n\nfather, flesh of mine!\n\nMy love is in front of me,\n\ngranddaughter Dove!\n\nOn its knees, my terror\n\nand on its head, my anguish,\n\nmother, soul of mine!\n\nUntil a day without two,\n\nwife Tomb,\n\nmy ultimate brand makes a sound\n\nof a sleeping vipor,\n\nfather, flesh of mine!\n\n_29 September 1937_\nDe puro calor tengo fr\u00edo  \n(For English translation click here)\n\n\u00a1De puro calor tengo fr\u00edo,\n\nhermana Envidia!\n\nLamen mi sombra leones\n\ny el rat\u00f3n me muerde el nombre,\n\n\u00a1madre alma m\u00eda!\n\n\u00a1Al borde del fondo voy,\n\ncu\u00f1ado Vicio!\n\nLa oruga ta\u00f1e su voz,\n\ny la voz ta\u00f1e su oruga,\n\n\u00a1padre cuerpo m\u00edo!\n\n\u00a1Est\u00e1 de frente mi amor,\n\nnieta Paloma!\n\nDe rodillas, mi terror\n\ny de cabeza, mi angustia,\n\n\u00a1madre alma m\u00eda!\n\nHasta que un d\u00eda sin dos,\n\nesposa Tumba,\n\nmi \u00faltimo hierro d\u00e9 el son\n\nde una v\u00edbora que duerme,\n\n\u00a1padre cuerpo m\u00edo!\n\n_29 setiembre 1937_\nTrust in the Eyeglass, Not in the Eye  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nTrust in the eyeglass, not in the eye,\n\nin the stairway, never in the step;\n\nin the wing, not in the bird\n\nand in only you, only you, only you.\n\nTrust in the evil, not in the vicious,\n\nin the glass, never in the liquor;\n\nin the corpse, not in the man\n\nand in only you, only you, only you.\n\nTrust in many, but no longer in one,\n\nin the river bed, never in the current;\n\nin the stockings, not in the legs\n\nand in only you, only you, only you.\n\nTrust in the window, not in the door,\n\nin the mother, not in the nine months;\n\nin the destiny, not in the gilded dice\n\nand in only you, only you, only you.\n\n_5 October 1937_\nConfianza en el anteojo, n\u00f3 en el ojo  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nConfianza en el anteojo, no en el ojo;\n\nen la escalera, nunca en el pelda\u00f1o;\n\nen el ala, no en el ave\n\ny en ti s\u00f3lo, en ti s\u00f3lo, en ti s\u00f3lo.\n\nConfianza en la maldad, no en el malvado;\n\nen el vaso, mas nunca en el licor;\n\nen el cad\u00e1ver, no en el hombre\n\ny en ti s\u00f3lo, en ti s\u00f3lo, en ti s\u00f3lo.\n\nConfianza en muchos, pero ya no en uno;\n\nen el cauce, jam\u00e1s en la corriente;\n\nen los calzones, no en las piernas\n\ny en ti s\u00f3lo, en ti s\u00f3lo, en ti s\u00f3lo.\n\nConfianza en la ventana, no en la puerta;\n\nen la madre, mas no en los nueve meses;\n\nen el destino, no en el dado de oro,\n\ny en ti s\u00f3lo, en ti s\u00f3lo, en ti s\u00f3lo.\n\n_5 octubre 1937_\nMocked, Acclimatized to the Good, Morbid, Tormented  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nMocked, acclimatized to the good, morbid, tormented,\n\nI double over in the extremity of being worldly and play cups,\n\nwhere the destinies end up in flies,\n\nwhere I eat and drink what's cleaning me out.\n\nMonumental pinch,\n\nnumeral bier, those of my debt,\n\nthose of my unpaid balance, when I fall exceedingly,\n\nloudly, livid.\n\nThe lowest depth, then\n\nit's time to moan with the ax,\n\nand it's then the year of the sob,\n\nthe day of the ankle,\n\nthe night of the rib, of the pained respiration.\n\nSterile qualities, monotonous satans,\n\nleap from the flank,\n\nfrom the flank of my substitute mare;\n\nbut, where I eat, how much I think!\n\nbut, how much I drink where I weep!\n\nWell, that's life, life\n\nbeing what it is, way over there, behind\n\nthe infinite, thus, spontaneously\n\nbefore the legislative temple.\n\nThus the string lies buried at the violin's base,\n\nwhen they speak of the air, when\n\nvery leisurely they speak of lightning.\n\nThe wrong cause thus doubles, we take turns\n\nthree by three in unity, thus\n\none plays cups\n\nand those who fold match my bet,\n\nthe destinies end up in bacteria\n\nand one owes all to all.\n\n_7 October 1937_\nEscarnecido, aclimatado al   \nbien, m\u00f3rbido, hurente  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEscarnecido, aclimatado al bien, m\u00f3rbido, hurente,\n\ndoblo el cabo carnal y juego a copas,\n\ndonde acaban en moscas los destinos,\n\ndonde com\u00ed y beb\u00ed de lo que me hunde.\n\nMonumental adarme,\n\nf\u00e9retro numeral, los de mi deuda,\n\nlos de mi deuda, cuando caigo altamente,\n\nruidosamente, amoratadamente.\n\nAl fondo, es hora,\n\nentonces, de gemir con toda el hacha\n\ny es entonces el a\u00f1o del sollozo,\n\nel d\u00eda del tobillo,\n\nla noche del costado, el siglo del resuello.\n\nCualidades est\u00e9riles, mon\u00f3tonos satanes,\n\ndel flanco brincan,\n\ndel ijar de mi yegua suplente;\n\npero, donde com\u00ed, cu\u00e1nto pens\u00e9!\n\npero cu\u00e1nto beb\u00ed donde llor\u00e9!\n\nAs\u00ed es la vida, tal\n\ncomo es la vida, all\u00e1, detr\u00e1s\n\ndel infinito; as\u00ed, espont\u00e1neamente,\n\ndelante de la sien legislativa.\n\nYace la cuerda as\u00ed al pie del viol\u00edn,\n\ncuando hablaron del aire, a voces, cuando\n\nhablaron muy despacio del rel\u00e1mpago.\n\nSe dobla as\u00ed la mala causa, vamos\n\nde tres en tres a la unidad; as\u00ed\n\nse juega a copas\n\ny salen a mi encuentro los que al\u00e9janse,\n\nacaban los destinos en bacterias\n\ny se debe todo a todos.\n\n_7 October 1937_\nStumble between Two Stars  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThere are people so racked they no longer feel\n\ntheir bodies; quantitative the hair\n\nlet down, inch by inch, weighing with genius;\n\nthe mode, angular, upright;\n\ndon't look for the grindstone of oblivion,\n\nthey seem to come out of air, to sum up sighs mentally, to hear\n\nthe sharp blows of their words in their palates!\n\nShedding their skin, scratching at the sarcophagus in\n\nwhich they were born\n\nrising up by their death hour by hour\n\nto fall, through the depth of their frozen alphabet, to\n\nthe ground.\n\nAh for so much! Ah for so little! Ah for all women!\n\nAh in my room listening to them with glasses!\n\nAh in my thorax when they buy suits!\n\nAh for my white grime, joined with their scum!\n\nBeloved be the ears of the sanchez,\n\nbeloved be those who recline,\n\nbeloved be the man unknown and his wife,\n\nneighbor with sleeves, collar and eyes!\n\nBeloved be he who has bedbugs,\n\nthe one wearing torn shoes under the rain,\n\nwho keeps watching over the corpse of a bread with two matches,\n\nthe one watching his finger caught in a door,\n\nthe one with no birthdays,\n\nwho's lost his shadow in fire,\n\nthe animal, the one who looks like a parrot,\n\nthe one who looks like a man, the poor rich,\n\nthe pure miserable, the poor poor!\n\nBeloved be\n\nthe one who has hunger or thirst, but has no\n\nhunger with which to satisfy all his thirst,\n\nneither thirst with which to satisfy all his hungers!\n\nBeloved be he who works by day, by the month, by the hour,\n\nthe one who sweats from pain or from shame.\n\nthe one who goes, by command of his hands to the movies,\n\nthe one who pays sleeps with what he lacks,\n\nthe one who sleeps on his back,\n\nthe one who no longer remembers his childhood; beloved be\n\nthe bald man without a hat,\n\nthe just man without thorns,\n\nthe thief without roses,\n\nthe one who wears a watch and has seen God,\n\nthe one who has honor and does not die!\n\nBeloved be the child that falls and still cries\n\nand the man who has fallen and no longer cries!\n\nAh for so much! Ah for so little! Ah for all men!\n\n_11 October 1937_\nTraspi\u00e9 entre dos estrellas  \n(For English translation click here)\n\n\u00a1Hay gentes tan desgraciadas, que ni siquiera\n\ntienen cuerpo; cuantitativo el pelo,\n\nbaja, en pulgadas, la genial pesadumbre;\n\nel modo, arriba;\n\nno me busques, la muela del olvido,\n\nparecen salir del aire, sumar suspiros mentalmente, o\u00edr\n\nclaros azotes en sus paladares!\n\nVanse de su piel, rasc\u00e1ndose el sarc\u00f3fago en que nacen\n\ny suben por su muerte de hora en hora\n\ny caen, a lo largo de su alfabeto g\u00e9lido, hasta el suelo.\n\n\u00a1Ay de t\u00e1nto! \u00a1ay de tan poco! \u00a1ay de ellas!\n\n\u00a1Ay en mi cuarto, oy\u00e9ndolas con lentes!\n\n\u00a1Ay en mi t\u00f3rax, cuando compran trajes!\n\n\u00a1Ay de mi mugre blanca, en su hez mancomunada!\n\n\u00a1Amadas sean las orejas s\u00e1nchez,\n\namadas las personas que se sientan,\n\namado el desconocido y su se\u00f1ora,\n\nel pr\u00f3jimo con mangas, cuello y ojos!\n\n\u00a1Amado sea aquel que tiene chinches,\n\nel que lleva zapato roto bajo la lluvia,\n\nel que vela el cad\u00e1ver de un pan con dos cerillas,\n\nel que se coge un dedo en una puerta,\n\nel que no tiene cumplea\u00f1os,\n\nel que perdi\u00f3 su sombra en un incendio,\n\nel animal, el que parece un loro,\n\nel que parece un hombre, el pobre rico,\n\nel puro miserable, el pobre pobre!\n\n\u00a1Amado sea\n\nel que tiene hambre o sed, pero no tiene\n\nhambre con qu\u00e9 saciar toda su sed,\n\nni sed con qu\u00e9 saciar todas sus hambres!\n\n\u00a1Amado sea el que trabaja al d\u00eda, al mes, a la hora,\n\nel que suda de pena o de verg\u00fcenza,\n\naquel que va, por orden de sus manos, al cinema,\n\nel que paga con lo que le falta,\n\nel que duerme de espaldas,\n\nel que ya no recuerda su ni\u00f1ez; amado sea\n\nel calvo sin sombrero,\n\nel justo sin espinas,\n\nel ladr\u00f3n sin rosas,\n\nel que lleva reloj y ha visto a Dios,\n\nel que tiene un honor y no fallece!\n\n\u00a1Amado sea el ni\u00f1o, que cae y a\u00fan llora\n\ny el hombre que ha ca\u00eddo y ya no llora!\n\n\u00a1Ay de t\u00e1nto! \u00a1Ay de tan poco! \u00a1Ay de ellos!\n\n_11 octubre 1937_\nFarewell, Remembering a Goodbye  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nFinally, at last, in the end,\n\nI turn, went back and having just finished, cry to you giving you\n\nthe key, my hat, this little letter for all.\n\nAt last the key is in the lock so we might learn\n\nto separate the gilding from the gold, with each turn,\n\nand is lying at the end of my hat, this poor badly combed brain,\n\nand, last glass of smoke, with its dramatic paper,\n\nlies down this practical dream of the soul, in the grave.\n\nGoodbye, brothers Saint Peters,\n\nHeraclitus, Erasmus, Spinozas!\n\nGoodbye, sad Bolshevik bishops!\n\nGoodbye, governors in disorder!\n\nGoodbye, wine which in water is like wine!\n\nGoodbye, alcohol that's in the rain!\n\nAlso I said goodbye to myself,\n\ngoodbye, formal flight of the milligrams!\n\nAlso, goodbye, in exactly the same way,\n\ncold of cold and cold of heat!\n\nFinally, at last, in the end, the logic,\n\nthe borders of fire,\n\nthe farewell remembering the goodbye.\n\n_12 October 1937_\nDespedida recordando un adi\u00f3s  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nAl cabo, al fin, por \u00faltimo,\n\ntomo, volv\u00ed y ac\u00e1bome y os gimo, d\u00e1ndoos\n\nla llave, mi sombrero, esta cartita para todos.\n\nAl cabo de la llave est\u00e1 el metal en que aprendi\u00e9ramos\n\na desdorar el oro, y est\u00e1, al fin\n\nde mi sombrero, este pobre cerebro mal peinado,\n\ny, \u00faltimo vaso de humo, en su papel dram\u00e1tico,\n\nyace este sue\u00f1o pr\u00e1ctico del alma.\n\n\u00a1Adi\u00f3s, hermanos san pedros,\n\nher\u00e1clitos, erasmos, espinosas!\n\n\u00a1Adi\u00f3s, tristes obispos bolcheviques!\n\n\u00a1Adi\u00f3s, gobernadores en desorden!\n\n\u00a1Adi\u00f3s, vino que est\u00e1 en el agua como vino!\n\n\u00a1Adi\u00f3s, alcohol que est\u00e1 en la lluvia!\n\n\u00a1Adi\u00f3s tambi\u00e9n, me digo a m\u00ed mismo,\n\nadi\u00f3s, vuelo formal de los mil\u00edgramos!\n\n\u00a1Tambi\u00e9n adi\u00f3s, de modo id\u00e9ntico,\n\nfr\u00edo del fr\u00edo y fr\u00edo del calor!\n\nAl cabo, al fin, por \u00faltimo, la l\u00f3gica,\n\nlos linderos del fuego,\n\nla despedida recordando aquel adi\u00f3s.\n\n_12 octubre 1937_\nThe Book of Nature  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nProfessor of sobs\u2014I said to a tree\u2014\n\nbludgeon, linden tree\n\nmurmuring, to the banks of the Marne, a good student\n\nreads your fortune in your withered leaves\n\nbetween evident water and false sun,\n\nyour three of cups, your horse of gold.\n\nRector of chapels in the sky,\n\nof the ardent fly, of the laborious calm in donkeys;\n\nrector of profound ignorance, a bad student\n\nreads your fortune in your withered leaves,\n\nhunger of reason that maddens\n\nand the thirst of dementia drives him crazy.\n\nMechanical screams, aware and strong upright tree,\n\nwater moving, sun-like, double, fanatic,\n\nconnoisseur of cardinal roses, completely\n\nshaved, almost to the drawing of blood, stinging, a student\n\nreads your fortune in your withered leaves,\n\nyour precocious king, telluric, volcanic, king of swords.\n\nOh professor for having not known so much!\n\nOh rector for having trembled in this air!\n\nOh technician for so much that bends you!\n\nOh linden tree! Oh musing stick by the Marne!\n\n_21 October 1937_\nEl libro de la naturaleza  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nProfesor de sollozo\u2014he dicho a un \u00e1rbol\u2014\n\npalo de azogue, tilo\n\nrumoreante, a la orilla del Mame, un buen alumno\n\nleyendo va en tu naipe, en tu hojarasca,\n\nentre el agua evidente y el sol falso,\n\nsu tres de copas, su caballo de oros.\n\nRector de los cap\u00edtulos del cielo,\n\nde la mosca ardiente, de la calma manual que hay en los asnos;\n\nrector de honda ignorancia, un mal alumno\n\nleyendo va en tu naipe, en tu hojarasca,\n\nel hambre de raz\u00f3n que le enloquece\n\ny la sed de demencia que le aloca.\n\nT\u00e9cnico en gritos, \u00e1rbol consciente, fuerte,\n\nfluvial, doble, solar, doble, fan\u00e1tico,\n\nconocedor de rosas cardinales, totalmente\n\nmetido, hasta hacer sangre, en aguijones, un alumno\n\nleyendo va en tu naipe, en tu hojarasca,\n\nsu rey precoz, tel\u00farico, volc\u00e1nico, de espadas.\n\n\u00a1Oh profesor, de haber t\u00e1nto ignorado!\n\n\u00a1oh rector, de temblar t\u00e1nto en el aire!\n\n\u00a1oh t\u00e9cnico, de t\u00e1nto que te inclinas!\n\n\u00a1Oh tilo! \u00a1oh palo rumoroso junto al Marne!\n\n_21 octubre 1937_\nI Have a Terrible Fear of Being an Animal  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI have a terrible fear of being an animal\n\nof white snow, and keeping father\n\nwith only my veined circulation and mother alive\n\nand this splendid day, solar and archbishoprical,\n\nday that thus represents this night\n\nlineally\n\nthis animal avoids being content, breathing\n\nand changing itself and having silver.\n\nIt would be a great deal of pain\n\nif I were a man to that great a degree.\n\nA blunder, a very fruitful premise\n\nsuccumbs to an occasional yoke\n\nthe spiritual hinge of my waist.\n\nAn absurdity . . . In the meantime,\n\nso it is, nearer to the head of God,\n\nin the tablets of Locke, of Bacon, in the livid neck\n\nof the beast, in the snout of the soul.\n\nAnd, in aromatic, logic,\n\nI have this practical fear, this splendid day\n\nlunar, to be that one, this one perhaps,\n\nto whose nose the ground smells of death.\n\nThe live absurdity and the dead blunder.\n\nOh tread upon yourself, be, cough, attack yourself,\n\nattack the doctrine, the temple, of one shoulder to another,\n\nremove yourself, cry, give for eight\n\nor for seven or for six, for five or give it\n\nthe life that has three potentials.\n\n_22 October 1937_\nTengo un miedo terrible de ser un animal  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nTengo un miedo terrible de ser un animal\n\nde blanca nieve, que sostuvo padre\n\ny madre, con su sola circulaci\u00f3n venosa,\n\ny que, este d\u00eda espl\u00e9ndido, solar y arzobispal,\n\nd\u00eda que representa as\u00ed a la noche,\n\nlinealmente\n\nelude este animal estar contento, respirar\n\ny transformarse y tener plata.\n\nSer\u00eda pena grande\n\nque fuera yo tan hombre hasta ese punto.\n\nUn disparate, una premisa ub\u00e9rrima\n\na cuyo yugo ocasional sucumbe\n\nel gonce espiritual de mi cintura.\n\nUn disparate . . . En tanto,\n\nes as\u00ed, m\u00e1s ac\u00e1 de la cabeza de Dios,\n\nen la tabla de Locke, de Bacon, en el l\u00edvido pescuezo\n\nde la bestia, en el hocico del alma.\n\nY, en l\u00f3gica arom\u00e1tica,\n\ntengo ese miedo pr\u00e1ctico, este d\u00eda\n\nespl\u00e9ndido, lunar, de ser aqu\u00e9l, \u00e9ste talvez,\n\na cuyo olfato huele a muerto el suelo,\n\nel disparate vivo y el disparate muerto.\n\n\u00a1Oh revolcarse, estar, toser, fajarse,\n\nfajarse la doctrina, la sien, de un hombro al otro,\n\nalejarse, llorar, darlo por ocho\n\no por siete o por seis, por cinco o darlo\n\npor la vida que tiene tres potencias.\n\n_22 octubre 1937_\nThe Anger Which Breaks a Man into Children  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThe anger which breaks a man into children,\n\nwhich breaks the child into equal birds,\n\nand from there, the bird into small eggs;\n\nthe anger of the poor\n\nhas one oil against two vinegars.\n\nThe anger which breaks a tree into leaves,\n\nand the leaf into uneven buds\n\nand the bud, into telescopic grooves;\n\nthe anger of the poor\n\nhas two rivers against many seas.\n\nThe anger which breaks the good into doubts\n\nand doubt, into three similar arcs\n\nand the arc, at once, into unforeseeable tombs;\n\nthe anger of the poor\n\nhas one steel against two daggers.\n\nThe anger which breaks the soul into bodies,\n\nthe body into dissimilar organs\n\nand the organ, into octave meditations;\n\nthe anger of the poor\n\nhas one central fire against two craters.\n\n_26 October 1937_\nLa c\u00f3lera que quiebra al hombre en ni\u00f1os  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nLa c\u00f3lera que quiebra al hombre en ni\u00f1os,\n\nque quiebra al ni\u00f1o en p\u00e1jaros iguales,\n\ny el p\u00e1jaro, despu\u00e9s, en huevecillos;\n\nla c\u00f3lera del pobre\n\ntiene un aceite contra dos vinagres.\n\nLa c\u00f3lera que al \u00e1rbol quiebra en hojas,\n\nla hoja en botones desiguales\n\ny al bot\u00f3n, en ranuras telesc\u00f3picas;\n\nla c\u00f3lera del pobre\n\ntiene dos r\u00edos contra muchos mares.\n\nLa c\u00f3lera que quiebra al bien en dudas,\n\na la duda, en tres arcos semejantes\n\ny al arco, luego, en tumbas imprevistas;\n\nla c\u00f3lera del pobre\n\ntiene un acero contra dos pu\u00f1ales.\n\nLa c\u00f3lera que quiebra al alma en cuerpos,\n\nal cuerpo en \u00f3rganos desemejantes\n\ny al \u00f3rgano, en octavos pensamientos;\n\nla c\u00f3lera del pobre\n\ntiene un fuego central contra dos cr\u00e1teres.\n\n_26 octubre 1937_\nIntensity and Heights  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI want to write but spume comes out of me,\n\nI want to say so much, but stick in mire;\n\nthere's no cipher spoken, not a sum,\n\nthere's no pyramid written without sprouts.\n\nI want to write, but feel myself puma;\n\nI want laurels but I'm wreathed in garlic.\n\nThere's no cough spoken that doesn't arrive to the mist,\n\nno god nor son of god without evolution.\n\nLet's go, then, therefore, and eat grass,\n\nmeat of weeping, fruit of moan,\n\nour melancholic soul canned.\n\nLet's go! Let's go! I'm wounded;\n\nlet's go to drink what we've already drunk,\n\nlet's go, raven, and impregnate your female jackdaw.\n\n_27 October 1937_\nIntensidad y altura  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nQuiero escribir, pero me sale espuma,\n\nquiero decir much\u00edsimo y me atollo;\n\nno hay cifra hablada que no sea suma,\n\nno hay pir\u00e1mide escrita, sin cogollo.\n\nQuiero escribir, pero me siento puma;\n\nquiero laurearme, pero me encebollo.\n\nNo hay toz hablada, que no llegue a bruma,\n\nno hay dios ni hijo de dios, sin desarrollo.\n\nV\u00e1monos, pues, por eso, a comer yerba,\n\ncarne de llanto, fruta de gemido,\n\nnuestra alma melanc\u00f3lica en conserva.\n\nV\u00e1monos! V\u00e1monos! Estoy herido;\n\nv\u00e1monos a beber lo ya bebido,\n\nv\u00e1monos, cuervo, a fecundar tu cuerva.\n\n_27 octubre 1937_\nGuitar  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThe pleasure of suffering, of hating, discolors\n\nthe throat with plastic poisons,\n\nthe swine who implants his magic order,\n\nhis bullish greatness, between the first\n\nand the sixth\n\nand the eight liar, all suffer.\n\nThe pleasure of suffering . . . Who? To whom?\n\nWho, the teeth? . . . To whom, the society?\n\nThe carbide of rage of the gums?\n\nHow to be\n\nand being, without infuriating the neighbor?\n\nYou are worth more than my number, lonely man,\n\nand they're worth more than all the dictionary,\n\nwith its prose in verse,\n\nwith its verse in prose,\n\nyour eagle-like function,\n\nyour mechanical tiger, soft fellow creature.\n\nThe pleasure of suffering,\n\nof waiting hopes on the table,\n\nSunday with all the languages,\n\nSaturday with Chinese hours, Belgiums,\n\nthe week, with two spittings.\n\nThe pleasure of waiting in slippers,\n\nwaiting fearfully behind a verse,\n\nwaiting with power and bad poison;\n\nthe pleasure of suffering, slapped with the left hand of a woman,\n\ndead with a stone in the waist,\n\nand dead between the string and the guitar,\n\ncrying days and singing months.\n\n_28 October 1937_\nGuitarra  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEl placer de sufrir, de odiar, me ti\u00f1e\n\nla garganta con pl\u00e1sticos venenos,\n\nmas la cerda que implanta su orden m\u00e1gico,\n\nsu grandeza taurina, entre la prima\n\ny la sexta\n\ny la octava mendaz, las sufre todas.\n\nEl placer de sufrir . . . \u00bfQui\u00e9n? \u00bfa qui\u00e9n?\n\n\u00bfqui\u00e9n, las muelas? \u00bfa qui\u00e9n la sociedad,\n\nlos carburos de rabia de la enc\u00eda?\n\n\u00bfC\u00f3mo ser\n\ny estar, sin darle c\u00f3lera al vecino?\n\nVales m\u00e1s que mi n\u00famero, hombre solo,\n\ny valen m\u00e1s que todo el diccionario,\n\ncon su prosa en verso,\n\ncon su verso en prosa,\n\ntu funci\u00f3n \u00e1guila,\n\ntu mecanismo tigre, blando pr\u00f3jimo.\n\nEl placer de sufrir,\n\nde esperar esperanzas en la mesa,\n\nel domingo con todos los idiomas,\n\nel s\u00e1bado con horas chinas, belgas,\n\nla semana, con dos escupitajos.\n\nEl placer de esperar en zapatillas,\n\nde esperar encogido tras de un verso,\n\nde esperar con pujanza y mala po\u00f1a;\n\nel placer de sufrir: zurdazo de hembra\n\nmuerta con una piedra en la cintura\n\ny muerta entre la cuerda y la guitarra,\n\nllorando d\u00edas y cantando meses.\n\n_28 octubre 1937_\nPantheon  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nI have seen yesterday common noises,  \ndying,  \npunctually recede,\n\nwhen I heard the sun setting  \nsadly,\n\nexactly an arc, a rainbow.\n\nI saw the generous time of a minute,  \nimmensely\n\ninsanely tied to the greater time,\n\nwell it was the hour  \nsoftly,\n\nswollen tightly with two hours.\n\nLet yourself understand, to call, the earth  \nearthly;\n\nbrutally denying that way my past,\n\nand if I saw, they listen to me, well, united,\n\nif I touch this machine, that they  \nmay slowly see,\n\ngently, greedily, my darkness.\n\nAnd if I saw in the wound of the answer,  \nclearly,\n\nthe mental wound of the icognite,\n\nif I heard, if I imagine my small windows\n\nnasal, funerals, temporally,  \nfraternally,\n\npiously throw me to the philosophers.\n\nBut no more hasty warping\n\nclearly singing, and no more\n\nruddy bones, the sound of the soul  \nsadly\n\nerected equestrianly in my spine,\n\nsince, in sum, life is,  \nimplacably,\n\nimpartially hideous, I'm sure.\n\n_31 October 1937_\nPante\u00f3n  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nHe visto ayer sonidos generales,  \nmortuoriamente,  \npuntualmente alejarse,\n\ncuando o\u00ed desprenderse del ocaso  \ntristemente,\n\nexactamente un arco, un arco\u00edris.\n\nVi el tiempo generoso del minuto,  \ninfinitamente\n\natado locamente al tiempo grande,\n\npues que estaba la hora  \nsuavemente,\n\npremiosamente henchida de dos horas.\n\nDej\u00f3se comprender, llamar, la tierra  \nterrenalmente;\n\nneg\u00f3se brutalmente, as\u00ed a mi historia,\n\ny si vi, que me escuchen, pues, en bloque,\n\nsi toqu\u00e9 esta mec\u00e1nica, que vean  \nlentamente,\n\ndespacio, vorazmente, mis tinieblas.\n\nY si vi en la lesi\u00f3n de la respuesta,  \nclaramente,\n\nla lesi\u00f3n mentalmente de la inc\u00f3gnita,\n\nsi escuch\u00e9, si pens\u00e9 en mis ventanillas\n\nnasales, funerales, temporales,  \nfraternalmente,\n\npiadosamente echadme a los fil\u00f3sofos.\n\nMas no m\u00e1s inflexi\u00f3n precipitada\n\nen canto llano, y no m\u00e1s\n\nel hueso colorado, el son del alma  \ntristemente\n\nerguida ecuestremente en mi espinazo,\n\nya que, en suma, la vida es  \nimplacablemente,\n\nimparcialmente horrible, estoy seguro.\n\n_31 octubre 1937_\nA Man Is Watching a Woman  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nA man is watching a woman,\n\nis watching her immediately,\n\nwith his of sumptuous land sickness\n\nand sees with both hands\n\nmoving her between two men.\n\nI question myself, oppressing me against\n\nthe enormous, white, steel rib:\n\nWould not have this man,\n\nthen, a child, growing into a father?\n\nAnd this woman, a child\n\nas a builder of her evident sex?\n\nAlthough I do see a child now,\n\na centipede child, energetic, impassioned;\n\nI see that they don't see him\n\nstanding between them, wriggling, dressing itself;\n\nalthough I accept them,\n\nshe in augmentative condition,\n\nhe bending the blond hay.\n\nAnd I cry out, then, without stopping\n\neither of living, without turning\n\neither in the joust I venerate:\n\nHappiness followed!\n\ntoo late by the Father,\n\nby the Son and by the Mother!\n\ncircular instant,\n\nfamiliar, now that no one feels or loves!\n\nFrom what silent, dyed clear light\n\nejects the Song of Songs!\n\nFrom what trunk, the florid carpenter!\n\nFrom what perfect armpit, the fragile oar!\n\nFrom what skull, both skull forwarders!\n\n_2 November 1937_\nUn hombre est\u00e1 mirando a una mujer  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nUn hombre est\u00e1 mirando a una mujer,\n\nest\u00e1 mir\u00e1ndola inmediatamente,\n\ncon su mal de tierra suntuosa\n\ny la mira a dos manos\n\ny la tumba a dos pechos\n\ny la mueve a dos hombres.\n\nPreg\u00fantome entonces, oprimi\u00e9ndome\n\nla enorme, blanca, ac\u00e9rrima costilla:\n\nY este hombre\n\n\u00bfno tuvo a un ni\u00f1o por creciente padre?\n\n\u00bfY esta mujer, a un ni\u00f1o\n\npor constructor de su evidente sexo?\n\nPuesto que un ni\u00f1o veo ahora,\n\nni\u00f1o ciempi\u00e9s, apasionado, en\u00e9rgico;\n\nveo que no le ven\n\nsonarse entre los dos, colear, vestirse;\n\npuesto que los acepto,\n\na ella en condici\u00f3n aumentativa,\n\na \u00e9l en la flexi\u00f3n del heno rubio.\n\nY exclamo entonces, sin cesar ni uno\n\nde vivir, sin volver ni uno\n\na temblar en la justa que venero:\n\n\u00a1Felicidad seguida\n\ntard\u00edamente del Padre,\n\ndel Hijo y de la Madre!\n\n\u00a1Instante redondo,\n\nfamiliar, que ya nadie siente ni ama!\n\n\u00a1De qu\u00e9 deslumbramiento \u00e1fono, tinto,\n\nse ejecuta el cantar de los cantares!\n\n\u00a1De qu\u00e9 tronco, el florido carpintero!\n\n\u00a1De qu\u00e9 perfecta axila, el fr\u00e1gil remo!\n\n\u00a1De qu\u00e9 casco, ambos cascos delanteros!\n\n_2 noviembre 1937_\nThe Nine Monsters  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nUnfortunately, every moment\n\npain grows in the world,\n\nit grows thirty minutes each second, step by step,\n\nand the nature of the pain is twice the pain,\n\nand the condition of martyrdom, carnivorous, ravenous,\n\nit is twice the pain\n\nand the function of the purest herb,\n\ntwice the pain,\n\nand the goodness of being, is twice the pain for us.\n\nNever, human men,\n\nhad there been so much pain in the breast, in the lapel, in the briefcase,\n\nin the glass, in the butcher-shop, in the arithmetic!\n\nNever so much affectionate pain,\n\nnever so nearby attacking the far away,\n\nnever the fire, never\n\nplayed better its game of cold death!\n\nNever, Mr. Minister of Health, was health\n\nmore mortal,\n\nand the migraine extracted too much forehead from the forehead!\n\nAnd the furniture had in its drawer, pain,\n\nthe little lizard in its drawer, pain.\n\nThis misfortune grows, brothers,\n\nquicker than the machine grows into ten machines, and it\n\ngrows with the head of Rousseau, with our beards\n\nthe bad grows with reasons which we ignore\n\nand it floods itself in its own liquid,\n\nwith its own mud and its own solid cloud!\n\nThe suffering changes positions,\n\nin which the aquous humor is vertical\n\nto the pavement,\n\nthe eye sees and this ear hears,\n\nand in this ear sounds nine times the bell at the\n\nhour of the sun, and nine laughs\n\nat the hour of the wheat, and nine female sounds\n\nat the hour of the cry, and nine songs\n\nat the hour of hunger, and nine explosions\n\nand nine beatings, minus a cry.\n\nBrothers, the pain seizes us, brothers\n\nfrom behind, by side face\n\nand drives us crazy in the movies\n\nnailing us to the gramophones,\n\nnot nailing us to beds, to fall perpendicular\n\nto our tickets, to our letters,\n\nand suffering so gravely, one is able to pray . . .\n\nThen, as a result\n\nof the pain, there are\n\nsome who are born, others grown, others die,\n\nand others are born and don't die, others\n\nwithout having been born, die and others\n\nare not born nor die (this is the majority).\n\nAnd also as a result\n\nof the suffering, I am sad\n\nto the head, and saddest to the ankle,\n\nseeing the bread, crucified, the turnip\n\nbloodied,\n\ncrying, to the onion,\n\nto the cereal, generally, flour,\n\nto the salt, turning to dust, the water, flowing\n\nto the wine, behold the man\n\nso pale as snow, the burning sun!\n\nHow, human brothers,\n\nnot telling you that I can't and\n\nthat I'm unable with so much box,\n\nand so many minutes, so\n\nmany lizards, and so\n\nmuch inversion, so far and so much thirst for more thirsts!\n\nMr. Minister of Health! What can I do?\n\nOh, unfortunately, brothers,\n\nthere is, brothers, so much to do.\n\n_3 November 1937_\nLos nueve monstruos  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nY, desgraciadamente,\n\nel dolor crece en el mundo a cada rato,\n\ncrece a treinta minutos por segundo, paso a paso,\n\ny la naturaleza del dolor, es el dolor dos veces\n\ny la condici\u00f3n del martirio, carn\u00edvora, voraz,\n\nes el dolor dos veces\n\ny la funci\u00f3n de la yerba pur\u00edsima, el dolor\n\ndos veces\n\ny el bien de ser, dolernos doblemente.\n\nJam\u00e1s, hombres humanos,\n\nhubo tanto dolor en el pecho, en la solapa, en la cartera,\n\nen el vaso, en la carnicer\u00eda, en la aritm\u00e9tica!\n\nJam\u00e1s tanto cari\u00f1o doloroso,\n\njam\u00e1s tanta cerca arremeti\u00f3 lo lejos,\n\njam\u00e1s el fuego nunca\n\njug\u00f3 mejor su rol de fr\u00edo muerto!\n\nJam\u00e1s, se\u00f1or ministro de salud, fue la salud\n\nm\u00e1s mortal\n\ny la migra\u00f1a extrajo tanta frente de la frente!\n\nY el mueble tuvo en su caj\u00f3n, dolor,\n\nel coraz\u00f3n, en su caj\u00f3n, dolor,\n\nla lagartija, en su caj\u00f3n, dolor.\n\nCrece la desdicha, hermanos hombres,\n\nm\u00e1s pronto que la m\u00e1quina, a diez m\u00e1quinas, y crece\n\ncon la res de Rousseau, con nuestras barbas;\n\ncrece el mal por razones que ignoramos\n\ny es una inundaci\u00f3n con propios l\u00edquidos,\n\ncon propio barro y propia nube s\u00f3lida!\n\nInvierte el sufrimiento posiciones, da funci\u00f3n\n\nen que el humor acuoso es vertical\n\nal pavimento,\n\nel ojo es visto y esta oreja o\u00edda,\n\ny esta oreja da nueve campanadas a la hora\n\ndel rayo, y nueve carcajadas\n\na la hora del trigo, y nueve sones hembras\n\na la hora del llanto, y nueve c\u00e1nticos\n\na la hora del hambre y nueve truenos\n\ny nueve l\u00e1tigos, menos un grito.\n\nEl dolor nos agarra, hermanos hombres,\n\npor detr\u00e1s, de perfil,\n\ny nos aloca en los cinemas,\n\nnos clava en los gram\u00f3fonos,\n\nnos desclava en los lechos, cae perpendicularmente\n\na nuestros boletos, a nuestras cartas;\n\ny es muy grave sufrir, puede uno orar . . .\n\nPues de resultas\n\ndel dolor, hay algunos\n\nque nacen, otros crecen, otros mueren,\n\ny otros que nacen y no mueren, otros\n\nque sin haber nacido, mueren, y otros\n\nque no nacen ni mueren (son los m\u00e1s).\n\nY tambi\u00e9n de resultas\n\ndel sufrimiento, estoy triste\n\nhasta la cabeza, y m\u00e1s triste hasta el tobillo,\n\nde ver al pan, crucificado, al nabo,\n\nensangrentado,\n\nllorando, a la cebolla,\n\nal cereal, en general, harina,\n\na la sal, hecha polvo, al agua, huyendo,\n\nal vino, un ecce-homo,\n\ntan p\u00e1lida a la nieve, al sol tan ardido!\n\n\u00a1C\u00f3mo, hermanos humanos,\n\nno deciros que ya no puedo y\n\nya no puedo con tanto caj\u00f3n,\n\ntanto minuto, tanta\n\nlagartija y tanta\n\ninversi\u00f3n, tanto lejos y tanta sed de sed!\n\nSe\u00f1or Ministro de Salud: \u00bfqu\u00e9 hacer?\n\n\u00a1Ah! desgraciadamente, hombre humanos,\n\nhay, hermanos, much\u00edsimo que hacer.\n\n_3 noviembre 1937_\nA Man Passes with a Loaf of Bread on His Shoulders  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nA man passes with a loaf of bread on his shoulders\n\nAm I going, thereafter, to write about my double?\n\nAnother sits, scratches himself, removes a louse from his armpit, kills it\n\nWith what value talk about psychoanalysis?\n\nAnother has entered my chest with a club in his hand\n\nShall I then talk about Socrates with the doctor?\n\nA cripple walks by giving his arm to a child\n\nAfter that, I'm supposed to read Andr\u00e9 Breton?\n\nAnother shivers with cold, coughs, spits up blood\n\nWill it be a way to refer to the profound I?\n\nAnother searches in mud for bones and for husks\n\nHow then can I write about the infinite?\n\nA bricklayer falls from the roof, dies before breakfast\n\nAfter that how can I innovate the troupe, the metaphor?\n\nA merchant steals a gram from a customer\n\nHow then can I talk about the fourth dimension?\n\nA banker falsifies his balance\n\nWith which face weep in the theater?\n\nAn outcast sleeps with one foot on his shoulder\n\nShall I, later on, speak of Picasso?\n\nSomeone is sobbing at the side of a grave\n\nHow can I get into The Academy?\n\nSomeone cleans his rifle in the kitchen\n\nWith what courage can one speak of the next world?\n\nSomeone walks by counting on his fingers\n\nHow can I speak of the not-I without crying out?\n\n_5 November 1937_\nUn hombre pasa con un pan al hombro  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nUn hombre pasa con un pan al hombro\n\n\u00bfVoy a escribir, despu\u00e9s, sobre mi doble?\n\nOtro se sienta, r\u00e1scase, extrae un piojo de su axila, m\u00e1talo\n\n\u00bfCon qu\u00e9 valor hablar del psicoan\u00e1lisis?\n\nOtro ha entrado en mi pecho con un palo en la mano\n\n\u00bfHablar luego de S\u00f3crates al m\u00e9dico?\n\nUn cojo pasa dando el brazo a un ni\u00f1o\n\n\u00bfVoy, despu\u00e9s, a leer a Andr\u00e9 Bret\u00f3n?\n\nOtro tiembla de fr\u00edo, tose, escupe sangre\n\n\u00bfCabr\u00e1 aludir jam\u00e1s al Yo profundo?\n\nOtro busca en el fango huesos, c\u00e1scaras\n\n\u00bfC\u00f3mo escribir, despu\u00e9s del infinito?\n\nUn alba\u00f1il cae de un techo, muere y ya no almuerza\n\n\u00bfInnovar, luego, el tropo, la met\u00e1fora?\n\nUn comerciante roba un gramo en el peso a un cliente\n\n\u00bfHablar, despu\u00e9s, de cuarta dimensi\u00f3n?\n\nUn banquero falsea su balance\n\n\u00bfCon qu\u00e9 cara llorar en el teatro?\n\nUn paria duerme con el pie a la espalda\n\n\u00bfHablar, despu\u00e9s, a nadie de Picasso?\n\nAlguien va en un entierro sollozando\n\n\u00bfC\u00f3mo luego ingresar a la Academia?\n\nAlguien limpia un fusil en su cocina\n\n\u00bfCon qu\u00e9 valor hablar del m\u00e1s all\u00e1?\n\nAlguien pasa contando con sus dedos\n\n\u00bfC\u00f3mo hablar del no-y\u00f3 sin dar un grito?\n\n_5 noviembre 1937_\nSome Days a Fruitful, Cautious Longing   \nComes Over Me  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nSome days a fruitful, cautious longing comes over me,\n\nto love and kiss affection on both cheeks,\n\nand from afar there comes to me,\n\ndemonstrative, a wish, a different wish of loving, strong,\n\nthe one who hates me, the one who tears up his role, the little boy,\n\nthe one who weeps for one who has been weeping,\n\nking of wine, slave of water\n\nthe one who hides in his own wrath\n\nthe one who sweats, the one who passes by, the one who\n\nshakes himself within my soul.\n\nThe pleasure to arrange a braid of hair\n\nof one who talks to me, the soldier's hair;\n\none's light, the great; one's greatness to the boy.\n\nI want to iron a handkerchief at one\n\nfor the one who cannot weep\n\nand, when I'm sad or when good fortune pains me,\n\nto patch up geniuses and children.\n\nI want to help the good man be a little bad\n\nand have an urge to sit\n\non the right of the left-handed, answer the dumb,\n\ntrying to be useful in what\n\nI can, wanting very much\n\nto wash the cripple's foot,\n\nand help my one-eyed neighbor sleep.\n\nOh, this love of mine, this world-wide love,\n\ninterhuman, parochial, fulfilled!\n\nIt comes just right,\n\nfrom the foundations, from the public groin,\n\nand coming from afar it makes one want to kiss\n\nthe singer's scarf,\n\nto kiss the one who suffers, in his roasting-pan,\n\nthe dumb, in his deaf cranial murmur, dauntless;\n\nthe one who gives me what I had forgotten in my breast,\n\non his Dante, on his Chaplin, on his shoulders.\n\nTo sum up, I should like,\n\nwhen I am on the famous verge of violence,\n\nor when my heart is brave, I should like\n\nto help the one who smiles to laugh,\n\nplace a little bird square on the scruff of a villain's neck,\n\nnurse the sick by provoking them,\n\nbuy to kill from the killer\u2014a dreadful thing\u2014\n\nand be at peace within myself\n\nin everything.\n\n_6 November 1937_\nMe viene, hay d\u00edas, una gana ub\u00e9rrima, pol\u00edtica  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nMe viene, hay d\u00edas, una gana ub\u00e9rrima, pol\u00edtica,\n\nde querer, de besar al cari\u00f1o en sus dos rostros,\n\ny me viene de lejos un querer\n\ndemostrativo, otro querer amar, de grado o fuerza,\n\nal que me odia, al que rasga su papel, al muchachito,\n\na la que llora por el que lloraba,\n\nal rey del vino, al esclavo del agua,\n\nal que ocult\u00f3se en su ira,\n\nal que suda, al que pasa, al que sacude su persona en mi alma.\n\nY quiero, por lo tanto, acomodarle\n\nal que me habla, su trenza; sus cabellos, al soldado;\n\nsu luz, al grande; su grandeza, al chico.\n\nQuiero planchar directamente\n\nun pa\u00f1uelo al que no puede llorar\n\ny, cuando estoy triste o me duele la dicha,\n\nremendar a los ni\u00f1os y a los genios.\n\nQuiero ayudar al bueno a ser su poquillo de malo\n\ny me urge estar sentado a la diestra del zurdo, y responder al mudo,\n\ntratando de serle \u00fatil\n\nen todo lo que puedo y tambi\u00e9n quiero much\u00edsimo\n\nlavarle al cojo el pie,\n\ny ayudarle a dormir al tuerto pr\u00f3ximo.\n\n\u00a1Ah querer, \u00e9ste, el m\u00edo, \u00e9ste, el mundial,\n\ninterhumano y parroquial, provecto!\n\nMe viene a pelo,\n\ndesde el cimiento, desde la ingle p\u00fablica,\n\ny, viniendo de lejos, da ganas de besarle\n\nla bufanda al cantor,\n\ny al que sufre, besarle en su sart\u00e9n,\n\nal sordo, en su rumor craneano, imp\u00e1vido;\n\nal que me da lo que olvid\u00e9 en mi seno,\n\nen su Dante, en su Chaplin, en sus hombros.\n\nQuiero, para terminar,\n\ncuando estoy al borde c\u00e9lebre de la violencia\n\no lleno de pecho el coraz\u00f3n, querr\u00eda\n\nayudar a re\u00edr al que sonr\u00ede,\n\nponerle un pajarillo al malvado en plena nuca,\n\ncuidar a los enfermos enfad\u00e1ndolos,\n\ncomprarle al vendedor,\n\nayudarle a matar al matador\u2014cosa terrible\u2014\n\ny quisiera yo ser bueno conmigo\n\nen todo.\n\n_6 noviembre 1937_\nPalms and Guitar  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nHere between us, now\n\ncome with me, bring my hand to your body\n\nlet's dine together and for an instant let's turn life\n\ninto two lives giving to each a piece of our death.\n\nNow come with yourself, do me the favor\n\nif murmuring my name in the light of the tenebrous night\n\nin which you bring my hand to your soul\n\nso we flee on tiptoe from ourselves.\n\nYes, come to me and to you, yes\n\nwith soft step, seeing both of us with uneven steps,\n\nnothing the gentle farewell.\n\nUntil we return! Until we may return!\n\nUntil we read, ignorant!\n\nUntil we may return, bid us farewell!\n\nThese guns are of no importance to me,\n\nlisten to me;\n\nlisten to me, of what significance are they to me,\n\nif the bullets already circulate in the range of my signature?\n\nWhy do you care for the bullets\n\nif the gun is now smoking in your scent?\n\nThis very day we will weigh\n\nour stars in the arms of a blind man,\n\nand when you sing to me then we'll cry.\n\nThis very day, beautiful one, your gentle step\n\nand your confidence alarms me.\n\nWe will leave ourselves, two by two.\n\nUntil we are blinded!\n\nUntil\n\nwe cry returning so many times!\n\nNow,\n\nbetween us, bring\n\nby the hand your sweet character\n\nand let's eat and pass an instant of life\n\nletting go of the very same death within us.\n\nNow, come with yourself, do me the favor\n\nof singing something\n\nand sing in your soul, clapping hands.\n\nUntil we may return! Until then!\n\nUntil we depart, let's say goodbye!\n\n_8 November 1937_\nPalmas y guitarra  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nAhora, entre nosotros, aqu\u00ed,\n\nven conmigo, trae por la mano a tu cuerpo\n\ny cenemos juntos y pasemos un instante la vida\n\na dos vidas y dando una parte a nuestra muerte.\n\nAhora, ven contigo, hazme el favor\n\nde quejarte en mi nombre y a la luz de la noche teneblosa\n\nen que traes a tu alma de la mano\n\ny hu\u00edmos en puntillas de nosotros.\n\nVen a m\u00ed, s\u00ed, y a ti, s\u00ed,\n\ncon paso par, a vemos a los dos con paso impar,\n\nmarcar el paso de la despedida.\n\n\u00a1Hasta cuando volvamos! \u00a1Hasta la vuelta!\n\n\u00a1Hasta cuando leamos, ignorantes!\n\n\u00a1Hasta cuando volvamos, despid\u00e1monos!\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 me importan los fusiles?\n\nesc\u00fachame;\n\nesc\u00fachame, \u00bfqu\u00e9 imp\u00f3rtenme,\n\nsi la bala circula ya en el rango de mi firma?\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 te importan a ti las balas,\n\nsi el fusil est\u00e1 humeando ya en tu olor?\n\nHoy mismo pesaremos\n\nen los brazos de un ciego nuestra estrella\n\ny, una vez que me cantes, lloraremos.\n\nHoy mismo, hermosa, con tu paso par\n\ny tu confianza a que lleg\u00f3 mi alarma,\n\nsaldremos de nosotros, dos a dos.\n\n\u00a1Hasta cuando seamos ciegos!\n\n\u00a1Hasta\n\nque lloremos de t\u00e1nto volver!\n\nAhora,\n\nentre nosotros, trae\n\npor la mano a tu dulce personaje\n\ny cenemos juntos y pasemos un instante la vida\n\na dos vidas y dando una parte a nuestra muerte.\n\nAhora, ven contigo, hazme el favor\n\nde cantar algo\n\ny de tocar en tu alma, haciendo palmas.\n\n\u00a1Hasta cuando volvamos! \u00a1Hasta entonces!\n\n\u00a1Hasta cuando partamos, despid\u00e1monos!\n\n_8 noviembre 1937_\nThe Soul That Suffered from Being Its Body  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nYou suffer from an endocrine gland, that's obvious,\n\nor, perhaps,\n\nyou suffer from me, from my tacit tight-lipped sagacity.\n\nYou suffer from the translucent anthropoid there, near,\n\nwhere the tenebrous darkness lies.\n\nYou walk around the sun, clutching onto your soul,\n\nspraying out your corporeal juanes\n\nadjusting out your collar; that's obvious.\n\nYou know what hurts you,\n\nwhat leaps onto your haunch,\n\nwhat lowers through you with a rope to the ground.\n\nYou, poor man, live; don't deny it,\n\nif you die from your age, ah! And from your epoch.\n\nAnd even if you cry, you drink,\n\nand even if you bleed, you nourish your hybrid tooth,\n\nyour sad candle and your parts.\n\nYou suffer, you endure, and again suffer horribly,\n\nunlucky monkey,\n\nlittle Darwinian offspring,\n\nconstable who spies on me, atrocious microbe.\n\nAnd you know this so well,\n\nyou ignore it, bursting into tears.\n\nYou, then, have been born; also\n\nthat can be seen from afar, and unhappy,\n\nso shut up and endure the road you're destined to be on\n\nand questioning your navel: Where? How?\n\nMy friend, you're completely up\n\nto your hair, in the year '38,\n\nNicholas or Santiago, such or which,\n\nwhether you are yourself with your miscarriage or with me\n\nor caught in your enormous liberty,\n\ndragged along by your autonomous Hercules . . .\n\nbut if you calculate on your fingers up to two,\n\nit's worse; don't deny it, little brother.\n\nNo? Yes? Nevertheless no?\n\nPoor monkey! . . . Gimme your paw! . . . No. The hand, I say.\n\nCheers! And suffer!\n\n_8 November 1937_\nEl alma que sufri\u00f3 de ser su cuerpo  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nT\u00fa sufres de una gl\u00e1ndula endocr\u00ednica, se ve,\n\no, quiz\u00e1,\n\nsufres de m\u00ed, de mi sagacidad escueta, t\u00e1cita.\n\nT\u00fa padeces del di\u00e1fano antropoide, all\u00e1, cerca,\n\ndonde est\u00e1 la tiniebla tenebrosa.\n\nT\u00fa das vuelta al sol, agarr\u00e1ndote el alma,\n\nextendiendo tus juanes corporales\n\ny ajust\u00e1ndote el cuello; eso se ve.\n\nT\u00fa sabes lo que te duele,\n\nlo que te salta al anca,\n\nlo que baja por ti con soga al suelo.\n\nT\u00fa, pobre hombre, vives; no lo niegues,\n\nsi mueres; no lo niegues,\n\nsi mueres de tu edad \u00a1ay! y de tu \u00e9poca.\n\nY, aunque llores, bebes,\n\ny, aunque sangres, alimentas a tu h\u00edbrido colmillo,\n\na tu vela tristona y a tus partes.\n\nT\u00fa sufres, t\u00fa padeces y t\u00fa vuelves a sufrir horriblemente,\n\ndesgraciado mono,\n\njovencito de Darwin,\n\nalguacil que me atisbas, atroc\u00edsimo microbio.\n\nY t\u00fa lo sabes a tal punto,\n\nque lo ignoras, solt\u00e1ndote a llorar.\n\nT\u00fa, luego, has nacido; eso\n\ntambi\u00e9n se ve de lejos, infeliz y c\u00e1llate,\n\ny soportas la calle que te dio la suerte\n\ny a tu ombligo interrogas: \u00bfd\u00f3nde? \u00bfc\u00f3mo?\n\nAmigo m\u00edo, est\u00e1s completamente, .\n\nhasta el pelo, en el a\u00f1o treinta y ocho,\n\nnicol\u00e1s o santiago, tal o cual,\n\nest\u00e9s contigo o con tu aborto o conmigo\n\ny cautivo en tu enorme libertad,\n\narrastrado por tu h\u00e9rcules aut\u00f3nomo . . .\n\nPero si t\u00fa calculas en tus dedos hasta dos,\n\nes peor; no lo niegues, hermanito.\n\n\u00bfQue n\u00f3? \u00bfQue s\u00ed, pero que n\u00f3?\n\n\u00a1Pobre mono! . . . \u00a1Dame la pata! . . . No. La mano, he dicho.\n\n\u00a1Salud! \u00a1Y sufre!\n\n_8 noviembre 1937_\nThe One Who Will Come Has Just Passed By  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThe one who will come has just passed by,\n\nforbidden, to sit himself in my triple evolution;\n\nhe just passed like a criminal.\n\nHe just seated himself over there,\n\nat body's length from my soul,\n\nhe who came is an ass trying to weaken me;\n\nhe just seated himself standing, livid.\n\nHe just gave me what's finished,\n\nthe heat of fire and the immense pronoun\n\nthat the animal nurtured under his tail.\n\nHe just\n\nexpressed his doubts to me on distant hypotheses\n\nthat he separates, even more, with a glance.\n\nHe just finished doing the honors to the good\n\nby virtue of the vile pachyderm\n\nfor what's dreamt in me and in him murdered.\n\nHe just finished fixing me (there is no first)\n\nto his second affliction in full loins,\n\nand his third sweat in full tears.\n\nThe one who comes has just passed without having come.\n\n_12 November 1937_\nAcaba de pasar el que vendr\u00e1  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nAcaba de pasar el que vendr\u00e1\n\nproscrito, a sentarse en mi triple desarrollo;\n\nacaba de pasar criminalmente.\n\nAcaba de sentarse m\u00e1s ac\u00e1,\n\na un cuerpo de distancia de mi alma,\n\nel que vino en un asno a enflaquecerme;\n\nacaba de sentarse de pie, l\u00edvido.\n\nAcaba de darme lo que est\u00e1 acabado,\n\nel calor del fuego y el pronombre inmenso\n\nque el animal cri\u00f3 bajo su cola.\n\nAcaba\n\nde expresarme su duda sobre hip\u00f3tesis lejanas\n\nque \u00e9l aleja, a\u00fan m\u00e1s, con la mirada.\n\nAcaba de hacer al bien los honores que le tocan\n\nen virtud del infame paquidermo,\n\npor lo so\u00f1ado en mi y en \u00e9l matado.\n\nAcaba de ponerme (no hay primera)\n\nsu segunda aflixi\u00f3n en plenos lomos\n\ny su tercer sudor en plena l\u00e1grima.\n\nAcaba de pasar sin haber venido.\n\n_12 noviembre 1937_\nThe Evil Man Might Come with a Throne on His Shoulder  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThe evil man might come with a throne on his shoulder,\n\nand the good accompanying the evil, walking,\n\nthey said, \"yes\" the sermon, \"no\" to the prayer\n\nand it may cut the road in two rocks . . .\n\nI may begin by climbing the mountain,\n\nby oar the sprout, by rudder the cedar\n\nand they will wait two-hundred to sixty\n\nand the meat may return to its three titles . . .\n\nThere's too much snow in the idea of fire,\n\nthe corpse will go to bed to look at us,\n\nthe lightning being with loud thunderclaps,\n\nand the saurians will arch to be birds . . .\n\nIt will lack excavation near the dung,\n\nshipwreck to the river in order to slide,\n\njail for the free man, in order to be it,\n\nand an atmosphere to the sky and iron to gold . . .\n\nThey will demonstrate discipline, smell, the wild beast\n\nmay paint the passion of a soldier,\n\nI may be in pain because learning of the rushes,\n\nthe lie that infects and helps me . . .\n\nIt might happen like this and placing\n\nwith what hand to awaken?\n\nwith what foot to die?\n\nwith what to be poor?\n\nwith what voice to silence?\n\nwith how much to understand and, then, to whom?\n\nNot to forget nor remember,\n\nthat by closing it too often, the door has been stolen,\n\nand of suffering so little, I am very resentful,\n\nand with thinking so much, I'm now lacking a mouth.\n\n_19 November 1937_\nViniere el malo, con un trono al hombro  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nViniere el malo, con un trono al hombro,\n\ny el bueno, a acompa\u00f1ar al malo a andar,\n\ndijeren \u00abs\u00ed\u00bb el serm\u00f3n, \u00abno\u00bb la plegaria\n\ny cortare el camino en dos la roca . . .\n\nComenzare por monte la monta\u00f1a,\n\npor remo el tallo, por tim\u00f3n el cedro\n\ny esperaren doscientos a sesenta\n\ny volviere la carne a sus tres t\u00edtulos . . .\n\nSobrare nieve en la noci\u00f3n del fuego,\n\nse acostare el cad\u00e1ver a mirarnos,\n\nla centella a ser trueno corpulento\n\ny se arquearen los saurios a ser aves . . .\n\nFaltare excavaci\u00f3n junto al esti\u00e9rcol,\n\nnaufragio al r\u00edo para resbalar,\n\nc\u00e1rcel al hombre libre, para serlo,\n\ny una atm\u00f3sfera al cielo, y hierro al oro . . .\n\nMostraren disciplina, olor, las fieras,\n\nse pintare el enojo de soldado,\n\nme dolieren el junco que aprend\u00ed,\n\nla mentira que inf\u00e9ctame y soc\u00f3rreme . . .\n\nSucediere ello as\u00ed y as\u00ed poni\u00e9ndolo,\n\n\u00bfcon qu\u00e9 mano despertar?\n\n\u00bfcon qu\u00e9 pie morir?\n\n\u00bfcon qu\u00e9 ser pobre?\n\n\u00bfcon qu\u00e9 voz callar?\n\n\u00bfcon cu\u00e1nto comprender, y, luego, a qui\u00e9n?\n\nNo olvidar ni recordar\n\nque por mucho cerrarla, rob\u00e1ronse la puerta,\n\ny de sufrir tan poco estoy muy resentido\n\ny de t\u00e1nto pensar, no tengo boca.\n\n_19 noviembre 1937_\nThat Is the Place Where I Put On  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nThe place where I put on\n\nmy pants, is a house where\n\nI take off my shirt loudly\n\nand where I have a floor, a soul, and a map of my Spain.\n\nJust now I was talking to myself\n\nabout myself, and I put\n\na large piece of bread on a small book,\n\nand then, later, I may have moved it,\n\nwishing to hum a bit, the right side\n\nof life to the left side;\n\nmuch later I washed everything, my stomach\n\nvigorous worthy;\n\nI turned around to see what was dirty,\n\nI scraped as I turned the parts of me that are closest,\n\nI've arranged very well the map that\n\nnodding with sleep or crying, I don't know.\n\nMy house, unfortunately, is a house\n\na floor at most, where lives\n\nwith its inscription my beloved little spoon,\n\nmy dear skeleton already without song,\n\nthe razor, a permanent cigar.\n\nTruthfully, when I think\n\nof what life is,\n\nI can't avoid saying to Georgette,\n\nfor the purpose of eating something enjoyable and taking a walk,\n\nin the evening, to buy a good newspaper,\n\nguarding the day for when there is not one,\n\nalso a night for when there is one,\n\n(they express it this way in Peru\u2014please excuse me);\n\nthe same way, I suffer with great care,\n\nfor not crying or screaming, still the eyes\n\nindependent of each other, possess your needs,\n\nI mean, your function, something\n\nthat slips from the soul and the soul falls.\n\nHaving been through\n\nfifteen years; fifteen before and fifteen after,\n\nactually, one feels silly,\n\nit's natural, but in vain, what can I do!\n\nAnd what if I stopped doing, which is worse!\n\nBut to live, but to come into being,\n\nwhat is one in a million\n\nof breads, between thousands of wines, between hundreds of mouths,\n\nbetween the sun and its ray that comes from the moon\n\nand between the mass, the bread, the wine and my soul.\n\nToday is Sunday and for that reason\n\nan idea comes to my head, to my breast, a cry\n\nand to my throat like a great tumor.\n\nToday is Sunday and this\n\nhas many centuries; otherwise\n\nit could be, Monday, perhaps, and the idea should come to my heart,\n\nto the brain, and the weeping\n\nand to the throat, a dreadful appetite to drown\n\nwhat I feel now\n\nas the man that I am and that which I've suffered.\n\n_21 November 1937_\nEllo es que el lugar donde me pongo  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEllo es que el lugar donde me pongo\n\nel pantal\u00f3n, es una casa donde\n\nme quito la camisa en alta voz\n\ny donde tengo un suelo, un alma, un mapa de mi Espa\u00f1a.\n\nAhora mismo hablaba\n\nde m\u00ed conmigo, y pon\u00eda\n\nsobre un peque\u00f1o libro un pan tremendo\n\ny he, luego, hecho el traslado, he trasladado,\n\nqueriendo canturrear un poco, el lado\n\nderecho de la vida al lado izquierdo;\n\nm\u00e1s tarde, me he lavado todo, el vientre,\n\nbriosa, dignamente;\n\nhe dado vuelta a ver lo que se ensucia,\n\nhe raspado lo que me lleva tan cerca\n\ny he ordenado bien el mapa que\n\ncabeceaba o lloraba, no lo s\u00e9.\n\nMi casa, por desgracia, es una casa,\n\nun suelo por ventura, donde vive\n\ncon su inscripci\u00f3n mi cucharita amada,\n\nmi querido esqueleto ya sin letras,\n\nla navaja, un cigarro permanente.\n\nDe veras, cuando pienso\n\nen lo que es la vida,\n\nno puedo evitar de dec\u00edrselo a Georgette,\n\na fin de comer algo agradable y salir,\n\npor la tarde, comprar un buen peri\u00f3dico.\n\nguardar un d\u00eda para cuando no haya,\n\nuna noche tambi\u00e9n, para cuando haya\n\n(as\u00ed se dice en el Per\u00fa\u2014me excuso);\n\ndel mismo modo, sufro con gran cuidado,\n\na fin de no gritar o de llorar, ya que los ojos\n\nposeen, independientemente de uno, sus pobrezas,\n\nquiero decir, su oficio, algo\n\nque resbala del alma y cae al alma.\n\nHabiendo atravesado\n\nquince a\u00f1os; despu\u00e9s, quince, y, antes, quince,\n\nuno se siente, en realidad, tontillo,\n\nes natural, por lo dem\u00e1s \u00a1qu\u00e9 hacer!\n\n\u00bfY qu\u00e9 dejar de hacer, que es lo peor?\n\nSino vivir, sino llegar\n\na ser lo que es uno entre millones\n\nde panes, entre miles de vinos, entre cientos de bocas,\n\nentre el sol y su rayo que es de luna\n\ny entre la misa, el pan, el vino y mi alma.\n\nHoy es domingo y, por eso,\n\nme viene a la cabeza la idea, al pecho el llanto\n\ny a la garganta, as\u00ed como un gran bulto.\n\nHoy es domingo, y esto\n\ntiene muchos siglos; de otra manera,\n\nser\u00eda, quiz\u00e1, lunes, y vendr\u00edame al coraz\u00f3n la idea,\n\nal seso, el llanto\n\ny a la garganta, una gana espantosa de ahogar\n\nlo que ahora siento,\n\ncomo un hombre que soy y que he sufrido.\n\n_21 noviembre 1937_\nAnother Bit of Calm, Comrade  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nAnother bit of calm, comrade;\n\na very immense, septentrional, complete,\n\nferocious, by the little calm,\n\nto the minor service of each triumph\n\nand in the fearless servitude of failure.\n\nYou have excess rapture, and there's not\n\nas much madness in the mind as in\n\nyour muscular rationality, and there's not\n\nnothing more erroneously rational than your experience.\n\nBut speaking more clearly\n\nand thinking it in gold you are steel\n\non condition you're not\n\na fool and refuse\n\nto be enthusiastic for death so much\n\nand for the life, with only your tomb.\n\nIt's necessary that you know how\n\nto contain your volume, without running, without grieving\n\nyour entire molecular reality\n\nand beyond that, the march of your life\n\nand near here, your legends die.\n\nYou're made of steel, as they say,\n\nas long as you don't tremble and don't\n\nexplode, godfather\n\nof my calculation, emphatic godson\n\nof my luminous salts!\n\nGo right ahead; resolve,\n\nconsider your crisis, sum it up, continue,\n\ntrim it, diminish it, crumple it up;\n\nthe destiny, the intimate energies, the fourteen\n\nverses of bread: how many diplomas\n\nand powers, to the authentic brink of your passion!\n\nHow many details in synthesis you're made of!\n\nHow much identical pressure at your feet!\n\nHow much rigor, and how much protection!\n\nIt's idiotic\n\nthis method of enduring,\n\nthat modulated and virulent light,\n\nin which you alone calmly make serious\n\nsigns, characteristically fatal.\n\nLet's see, man;\n\nlet me know what's happening to me, in spite of my gripe,\n\nI enact your strict orders.\n\n_28 November 1937_\nOtro poco de calma, camarada  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nOtro poco de calma, camarada;\n\nun mucho inmenso, septentrional, completo,\n\nferoz, de calma chica,\n\nal servicio menor de cada triunfo\n\ny en la audaz servidumbre del fracaso.\n\nEmbriaguez te sobra, y no hay\n\ntanta locura en la raz\u00f3n, como este\n\ntu raciocinio muscular, y no hay\n\nm\u00e1s racional error que tu experiencia.\n\nPero, hablando m\u00e1s claro\n\ny pens\u00e1ndolo en oro, eres de acero,\n\na condici\u00f3n que no seas\n\ntonto y rehuses\n\nentusiasmarte por la muerte t\u00e1nto\n\ny por la vida, con tu sola tumba.\n\nNecesario es que sepas\n\ncontener tu volumen sin correr, sin afligirte,\n\ntu realidad molecular entera\n\ny m\u00e1s all\u00e1, la marcha de tus vivas\n\ny m\u00e1s ac\u00e1, tus mueras legendarios.\n\nEres de acero, como dicen,\n\ncon tal que no tiembles y no vayas\n\na reventar, compadre\n\nde mi c\u00e1lculo, enf\u00e1tico ahijado\n\nde mis sales luminosas!\n\nAnda, no m\u00e1s; resuelve,\n\nconsidera tu crisis, suma, sigue,\n\nt\u00e1jala, b\u00e1jala, \u00e1jala;\n\nel destino, las energ\u00edas \u00edntimas, los catorce\n\nvers\u00edculos del pan: \u00a1cu\u00e1ntos diplomas\n\ny poderes, al borde fehaciente de tu arranque!\n\n\u00a1Cu\u00e1nto detalle en s\u00edntesis, contigo!\n\n\u00a1Cu\u00e1nta presi\u00f3n id\u00e9ntica, a tus pies!\n\n\u00a1Cu\u00e1nto rigor y cu\u00e1nto patrocinio!\n\nEs idiota\n\nese m\u00e9todo de padecimiento,\n\nesa luz modulada y virulenta,\n\nsi con s\u00f3lo la calma haces se\u00f1ales\n\nserias, caracter\u00edsticas, fatales.\n\nVamos a ver, hombre;\n\ncu\u00e9ntame lo que me pasa,\n\nque yo, aunque grite, estoy siempre a tus \u00f3rdenes.\n\n_28 noviembre 1937_\n\n_C\u00e9sar Vallejo_\n\nPhoto: Juan Larrea Collection\/Archives Malanga\n_from_\n\nESPA\u00d1A, APARTA DE M\u00cd ESTE C\u00c1LIZ\n\n_September, October, November 1937_\nI  \nHymn to the Volunteers of the Republic  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nVolunteer for Spain, militant hero,\n\nyour reliable bones, when your heart marches to die,\n\nwhen it marches to kill with its global agony,\n\nI truly don't know\n\nwhat to do, where to stand; I make room, write, applaud,\n\ncry, scrutinize, shatter, extinguish things, I say\n\nto my heart that it's over, to the good that comes,\n\nand I try to disgrace myself;\n\nuncover my impersonal forehead till I touch\n\nthis vessel of blood, restrain myself,\n\nmy size obstructed by the famous architect's decline,\n\nthrough which the animal honoring me, honors itself;\n\nmy instincts flow back to their ropes,\n\njoy smokes before my tomb,\n\nand again, without knowing what to do, without anything, leave me,\n\nfrom my white stone, leave me\n\nalone,\n\na hunched-over human, closer, much further off,\n\nunable to hold in my hands your ecstasy,\n\nwith your cutting-edge swiftness, I offer my humble self\n\ncostumed in greatness against your double-edged speed!\n\nOne intent, clear and fertile day\n\nOh biennale, you of the lugubrious and supplicant half-years,\n\nthrough which gunpowder went biting its elbows!\n\nOh bitter pain, and splintered rock more bitter still!\n\nOh bits clenched in the people's teeth!\n\nOh day in their captive match, prayed in fury\n\nand sovereignty, fulfilled and circular,\n\ntheir birthright shut with the hands of choice;\n\nthe despots who drag their padlocks,\n\nand in the padlocks, their dead bacterias . . .\n\nBattles? No! Passions! And passions preceded\n\nby sorrows with grids of hopes,\n\nby sorrows common with the hopes of men!\n\ndeath and passion for peace, the populace!\n\ndeath and passion at war among the olive groves, let's understand   \neach other!\n\nAs in your breath the winds change their atmospheric needle,\n\nand in your breast, tombs exchanging keys,\n\nyour frontal bone rising itself to the first kingdom of martyrdom.\n\nThe world exclaims: \"These are Spanish matters!\" And it's true.  \nConsider,\n\nduring a balance, point-blank,\n\nCalderon, asleep on the tail of a dead amphibian,\n\nor Cervantes, saying: \"My kingdom is of this world, but\n\nalso of the next\": the sword's point and edge on two bits of paper!\n\nContemplate Goya kneeling in prayer before a mirror,\n\nColl, the paladin in whose Cartesian assault\n\none could see his easy step had the sweat of the clouds walking slowly,\n\nor Quevedo, that instantaneous grandfather of the dynamitens,\n\nor Cajal, devoured by his infinite smallness, or still\n\nTeresa, woman, dying because she doesn't die,\n\nor Lina Odena, conflicted on more than one point with Teresa . . .\n\n(Every act or cheerful voice comes from the people,\n\nand goes back toward them,\n\ndirectly or conveyed\n\nby incessant fragments, by the pink smoke\n\nof bitter passwords which failed.)\n\nSo your child, civilian fighter, your bloodless child,\n\nstirred by a motionless stone,\n\nsacrifices itself, vanishes,\n\nfalls away upward and through its incombustible flame rises,\n\nclimbs to the weak,\n\ngiving Spains to the bulls,\n\nbulls to the doves . . .\n\nThe universal dying of the proletarian in what frenetic harmony\n\nwill be ended your greatness, your misery, your propelling whirlwind,\n\nyour methodical violence, your practical and theoretical chaos,\n\nyour Dantesque and very Spanish desire of loving your enemy, even so betraying him!\n\nLiberator girded with shackles,\n\nwithout whose effort the unholdable extensions would continue till this very day,\n\nnails would wander headless,\n\nancient, slow, flushed, the day\n\nour beloved helmets unburied!\n\nfarmer falling with your green leafage for the man,\n\nwith the social inflection of your little finger,\n\nwith your ox standing with his heels dug in,\n\nalso with your word lashed to a pole,\n\nand your rented sky\n\nand with the day driven into your fatigue\n\nand caught under your nails marching!\n\nBuilders,\n\nfarmers, civilians, and soldiers\n\nof active teeming eternity; it was written\n\nthat you would make light, shielding\n\nyour eyes with the death;\n\nthat, in the cruel fall of your mouths,\n\nabundance would come on seven platters, everything\n\nin the world would be suddenly turned into gold,\n\nand the gold,\n\nfabulous beggars of your own secretion of blood,\n\nso the gold would at that time be of gold!\n\nAll men will love each other\n\nand will eat together from the corners of your sad handkerchief\n\nand will drink together in the name\n\nof your accursed throats!\n\nThey will take a rest from this run walking to the foot,\n\nthey will weep thinking of your orbits, they will be fortunate\n\nin and to the sound\n\nof your atrocious return, blooming, innate,\n\nthey will settle up their affairs of the day, their dreamed\n\nand sung figures!\n\nThe same shoes will fit the man who ascends\n\nwithout roads to his body\n\nand to that man who climbs down to the form of his soul!\n\nEmbracing, the dumb will speak, the cripple will walk!\n\nReturning, the blind will see,\n\nand the deaf palpitating will hear!\n\nThe ignorant will be wise and the wise will be ignorant!\n\nKisses that could not be given are given!\n\nOnly death will die! The ant\n\nwill bring crumbs of bread to the elephant shackled\n\nto his brutal delicacy;\n\nthe aborted children will be born again perfect, spatial,\n\nand all men will toil,\n\nall men will bear fruit,\n\nall men will embrace once again!\n\nWorkman, savior, our redeemer,\n\nbrother, forgive us our trespasses!\n\nAs the drum rolls in its adagios;\n\n\"So that your back never be so ephemeral!\n\nThat ever so changing, your profile!\"\n\nItalian volunteer, among whose animals of battle\n\nthe Abyssinian lion is limping!\n\nSoviet volunteer, marching at the head of your universal chest!\n\nVolunteers from the south, from the north, from the east,\n\nand you, western man, closing the funereal song of the dawn!\n\nKnown soldier, whose name marches in the sound of an embrace!\n\nWarrior raised by the earth, arming yourself\n\nwith dust,\n\nshod with positive magnets,\n\nyour personal beliefs in force,\n\nyour character different, your intimate ferule,\n\ncomplexion immediate,\n\nyour language put on your shoulders,\n\nand your soul crowned with pebbles!\n\nVolunteer swathed in your cold,\n\ntemperate, or torrid zone,\n\nheroes all around,\n\nvictim in a column of conquerors;\n\nin Spain, in Madrid, you are called\n\nto kill. Volunteers in the service of life!\n\nBecause they kill in Spain, others kill\n\nthe boy, and his toy, which comes to a stop,\n\nthe resplendent mother Rosenda,\n\nthe old Adam who talked aloud to his horse,\n\nand to the dog that used to sleep on the stairs.\n\nThey kill the book, fire on its auxiliary verbs,\n\nat its defenseless first page!\n\nThey kill the exact case of the statue,\n\nthe wise man, his stick, his colleague,\n\nthe barber next door\u2014all right he might have possibly cut me,\n\nbut he was a good man, and, soon, an unfortunate one,\n\nthe beggar who yesterday was singing opposite,\n\nthe nurse who today passed crying,\n\nthe priest staggering under the stubborn height of his knees . . .\n\nVolunteers,\n\nfor life, for the good ones, kill\n\ndeath, kill the evil ones.\n\nDo it for the freedom of all,\n\nfor the exploited and the exploiter,\n\nfor painless peace\u2014I sense it\n\nwhen I sleep at the foot of my forehead\n\nand more when I run shouting\u2014\n\nand I do it, I keep saying to you,\n\nfor the illiterate to whom I write,\n\nfor the barefoot genius with his flocks,\n\nfor the fallen comrades,\n\ntheir ashes embracing the corpse on the road!\n\nThat you\n\nvolunteers for Spain and for the world, should come,\n\nI dreamed that I was good, and that I should see\n\nyour blood, volunteers!\n\nIt's a long heart's time since many griefs and\n\ncamels of an age came to pray.\n\nToday the good, burning, marches on your side,\n\nand the reptiles of immanent eyelids follow you with love\n\nand two steps behind, one step away,\n\nthe direction of water rushing to see its limit before burning away.\nI  \nHimno a los voluntarios de la Rep\u00fablica  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nVoluntario de Espa\u00f1a, miliciano\n\nde huesos fidedignos, cuando marcha a morir tu coraz\u00f3n,\n\ncuando marcha a matar con su agon\u00eda\n\nmundial, no s\u00e9 verdaderamente\n\nqu\u00e9 hacer, d\u00f3nde ponerme; corro, escribo, aplaudo,\n\nlloro, atisbo, destrozo, apagan, digo\n\na mi pecho que acabe, al que bien, que venga,\n\ny quiero desgraciarme;\n\ndesc\u00fabrome la frente impersonal hasta tocar\n\nel vaso de la sangre, me detengo,\n\ndetienen mi tama\u00f1o esas famosas ca\u00eddas de arquitecto\n\ncon las que se honra el animal que me honra;\n\nrefluyen mis instintos a sus sogas,\n\nhumea ante mi tumba la alegr\u00eda\n\ny, otra vez, sin saber qu\u00e9 hacer, sin nada, d\u00e9jame,\n\ndesde mi piedra en blanco, d\u00e9jame,\n\nsolo,\n\ncuadrumano, m\u00e1s ac\u00e1, mucho m\u00e1s lejos,\n\nal no caber entre mis manos tu largo rato ext\u00e1tico,\n\nquiebro con tu rapidez de doble filo\n\nmi peque\u00f1ez en traje de grandeza!\n\nUn d\u00eda diurno, claro, atento, f\u00e9rtil\n\n\u00a1oh bienio, el de los l\u00f3bregos semestres suplicantes,\n\npor el que iba la p\u00f3lvora mordi\u00e9ndose los codos!\n\n\u00a1oh dura pena y m\u00e1s duros pedernales!\n\n\u00a1oh frenos los tascados por el pueblo!\n\nUn d\u00eda prendi\u00f3 el pueblo su f\u00f3sforo cautivo, or\u00f3 de c\u00f3lera\n\ny soberanamente pleno, circular,\n\ncerr\u00f3 su natalicio con manos electivas;\n\narrastraban candado ya los d\u00e9spotas\n\ny en el candado, sus bacterias muertas . . .\n\n\u00bfBatallas? \u00a1No! Pasiones. Y pasiones precedidas\n\nde dolores con rejas de esperanzas,\n\nde dolores de pueblos con esperanzas de hombres!\n\n\u00a1Muerte y pasi\u00f3n de paz, las populares!\n\n\u00a1Muerte y pasi\u00f3n guerreras entre olivos, entend\u00e1monos!\n\nTal en tu aliento cambian de agujas atmosf\u00e9ricas los vientos\n\ny de llave las tumbas en tu pecho,\n\ntu frontal elev\u00e1ndose a primera potencia de martirio.\n\nEl mundo exclama: \u00ab\u00a1Cosas de espa\u00f1oles!\u00bb Y es verdad.  \nConsideremos,\n\ndurante una balanza, a quemarropa,\n\na Calder\u00f3n, dormido sobre la cola de un anfibio muerto\n\no a Cervantes, diciendo: \u00abMi reino es de este mundo, pero\n\ntambi\u00e9n del otro\u00bb: \u00a1punta y filo en dos papeles!\n\nContemplemos a Goya, de hinojos y rezando ante un espejo,\n\na Coll, el palad\u00edn en cuyo asalto cartesiano\n\ntuvo un sudor de nube el paso llano\n\no a Quevedo, ese abuelo instant\u00e1neo de los dinamiteros\n\no a Cajal, devorado por su peque\u00f1o infinito, o todav\u00eda\n\na Teresa, mujer que muere porque no muere\n\no a Lina Odena, en pugna en m\u00e1s de un punto con Teresa . . .\n\n(Todo acto o voz genial viene del pueblo\n\ny va hacia \u00e9l, de frente o transmitidos\n\npor incesantes briznas, por el humo rosado\n\nde amargas contrase\u00f1as sin fortuna)\n\nAs\u00ed tu criatura, miliciano, as\u00ed tu exang\u00fce criatura,\n\nagitada por una piedra inm\u00f3vil,\n\nse sacrifica, ap\u00e1rtase,\n\ndecae para arriba y por su llama incombustible sube,\n\nsube hasta los d\u00e9biles,\n\ndistribuyendo espa\u00f1as a los toros,\n\ntoros a las palomas . . .\n\nProletario que mueres de universo, \u00a1en qu\u00e9 fren\u00e9tica armon\u00eda\n\nacabar\u00e1 tu grandeza, tu miseria, tu vor\u00e1gine impelente,\n\ntu violencia met\u00f3dica, tu caos te\u00f3rico y pr\u00e1ctico, tu gana\n\ndantesca, espa\u00f1ol\u00edsima, de amar, aunque sea a traici\u00f3n,   \na tu enemigo!\n\n\u00a1Liberador ce\u00f1ido de grilletes,\n\nsin cuyo esfuerzo hasta hoy continuar\u00eda sin asas la extensi\u00f3n,\n\nvagar\u00edan ac\u00e9falos los clavos,\n\nantiguo, lento, colorado, el d\u00eda,\n\nnuestros amados cascos, insepultos!\n\n\u00a1Campesino ca\u00eddo con tu verde follaje por el hombre,\n\ncon la inflexi\u00f3n social de tu me\u00f1ique,\n\ncon tu buey que se queda, con tu f\u00edsica,\n\ntambi\u00e9n con tu palabra atada a un palo\n\ny tu cielo arrendado\n\ny con la arcilla inserta en tu cansancio\n\ny la que estaba en tu u\u00f1a, caminando!\n\n\u00a1Constructores\n\nagr\u00edcolas, civiles y guerreros,\n\nde la activa, hormigueante eternidad: estaba escrito\n\nque vosotros har\u00edais la luz, entornando\n\ncon la muerte vuestros ojos;\n\nque, a la ca\u00edda cruel de vuestras bocas,\n\nvendr\u00e1 en siete bandejas la abundancia, todo\n\nen el mundo ser\u00e1 de oro s\u00fabito\n\ny el oro,\n\nfabulosos mendigos de vuestra propia secreci\u00f3n de sangre,\n\ny el oro mismo ser\u00e1 entonces de oro!\n\n\u00a1Se amar\u00e1n todos los hombres\n\ny comer\u00e1n tomados de las puntas de vuestros pa\u00f1uelos tristes\n\ny beber\u00e1n en nombre\n\nde vuestras gargantas infaustas!\n\nDescansar\u00e1n andando al pie de esta carrera,\n\nsollozar\u00e1n pensando en vuestras \u00f3rbitas, venturosos\n\nser\u00e1n y al son\n\nde vuestro atroz retorno, florecido, innato,\n\najustar\u00e1n ma\u00f1ana sus quehaceres, sus figuras so\u00f1adas y cantadas!\n\n\u00a1Unos mismos zapatos ir\u00e1n bien al que asciende\n\nsin v\u00edas a su cuerpo\n\ny al que baja hasta la forma de su alma!\n\n\u00a1Entrelaz\u00e1ndose hablar\u00e1n los mudos, los tullidos andar\u00e1n!\n\n\u00a1Ver\u00e1n, ya de regreso, los ciegos\n\ny palpitando escuchar\u00e1n los sordos!\n\n\u00a1Sabr\u00e1n los ignorantes, ignorar\u00e1n los sabios!\n\n\u00a1Ser\u00e1n dados los besos que no pudisteis dar!\n\n\u00a1S\u00f3lo la muerte morir\u00e1! \u00a1La hormiga\n\ntraer\u00e1 pedacitos de pan al elefante encadenado\n\na su brutal delicadeza; volver\u00e1n\n\nlos ni\u00f1os abortados a nacer perfectos, espaciales\n\ny trabajar\u00e1n todos los hombres,\n\nengendrar\u00e1n todos los hombres,\n\ncomprender\u00e1n todos los hombres!\n\n\u00a1Obrero, salvador, redentor nuestro,\n\nperd\u00f3nanos, hermano, nuestras deudas!\n\nComo dice un tambor al redoblar, en sus adagios:\n\nqu\u00e9 jam\u00e1s tan ef\u00edmero, tu espalda!\n\nqu\u00e9 siempre tan cambiante, tu perfil!\n\n\u00a1Voluntario italiano, entre cuyos animales de batalla\n\nun le\u00f3n abisinio va cojeando!\n\n\u00a1Voluntario sovi\u00e9tico, marchando a la cabeza de tu pecho universal!\n\n\u00a1Voluntarios del sur, del norte, del oriente\n\ny t\u00fa, el occidental, cerrando el canto f\u00fanebre del alba!\n\n\u00a1Soldado conocido, cuyo nombre\n\ndesfila en el sonido de un abrazo!\n\n\u00a1Combatiente que la tierra criara, arm\u00e1ndote\n\nde polvo,\n\ncalz\u00e1ndote de imanes positivos,\n\nvigentes tus creencias personales,\n\ndistinto de car\u00e1cter, \u00edntima tu f\u00e9rula,\n\nel cutis inmediato,\n\nand\u00e1ndote tu idioma por los hombros\n\ny el alma coronada de guijarros!\n\n\u00a1Voluntario fajado de tu zona fr\u00eda,\n\ntemplada o t\u00f3rrida,\n\nh\u00e9roes a la redonda,\n\nv\u00edctima en columna de vencedores:\n\nen Espa\u00f1a, en Madrid, est\u00e1n llamando\n\na matar, voluntarios de la vida!\n\n\u00a1Porque en Espa\u00f1a matan, otros matan\n\nal ni\u00f1o, a su juguete que se para,\n\na la madre Rosenda esplendorosa,\n\nal viejo Ad\u00e1n que hablaba en alta voz con su caballo\n\ny al perro que dorm\u00eda en la escalera.\n\nMatan al libro, tiran a sus verbos auxiliares,\n\na su indefensa p\u00e1gina primera!\n\nMatan el caso exacto de la estatua,\n\nal sabio, a su bast\u00f3n, a su colega,\n\nal barbero de al lado\u2014me cort\u00f3 posiblemente,\n\npero buen hombre y, luego, infortunado;\n\nal mendigo que ayer cantaba enfrente,\n\na la enfermera que hoy pas\u00f3 llorando,\n\nal sacerdote a cuestas con la altura tenaz de sus rodillas . . .\n\n\u00a1Voluntarios,\n\npor la vida, por los buenos, matad\n\na la muerte, matad a los malos!\n\n\u00a1Hacedlo por la libertad de todos,\n\ndel explotado, del explotador,\n\npor la paz indolora\u2014la sospecho\n\ncuando duermo al pie de mi frente\n\ny m\u00e1s cuando circulo dando voces\u2014\n\ny hacedlo, voy diciendo,\n\npor el analfabeto a quien escribo,\n\npor el genio descalzo y su cordero,\n\npor los camaradas ca\u00eddos,\n\nsus cenizas abrazadas al cad\u00e1ver de un camino!\n\nPara que vosotros,\n\nvoluntarios de Espa\u00f1a y del mundo, vinierais,\n\nso\u00f1\u00e9 que era yo bueno, y era para ver\n\nvuestra sangre, voluntarios . . .\n\nDe esto hace mucho pecho, muchas ansias,\n\nmuchos camellos en edad de orar.\n\nMarcha hoy de vuestra parte el bien ardiendo,\n\nos siguen con cari\u00f1o los reptiles de pesta\u00f1a inmanente\n\ny, a dos pasos, a uno,\n\nla direcci\u00f3n del agua que corre a ver su l\u00edmite antes que arda.\nIII  \nWith His Index Finger He Writes on the Air  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nWith his index finger he writes on the air:\n\n\"Long live the comrades! Pedro Rojas,\"\n\nfrom Miranda del Ebro, father and man,\n\nhusband and man. Pedro and his two deaths.\n\nPaper of wind, they killed him: it's gone!\n\nFeather of flesh, they killed him: it's gone!\n\nInform all comrades hurry up!\n\nPole on which they hung his piece of wood,\n\nthey've killed him;\n\nthey've killed him to the base of his thumb!\n\nthey killed, at one, Pedro and Rojas!\n\nLong live the comrades\n\nat the head of his writing in air!\n\nLong live the V of the vulture in the guts\n\nof Pedro\n\nand of Rojas, of the hero and martyr!\n\nAfter his death they opened him up\n\ndown the middle finding within him a body big enough\n\nto hold the soul of the world,\n\nand in his coat pocket a dead spoon.\n\nPedro also used to eat\n\namong the creatures of his flesh, to clean and\n\npaint the table and living softly\n\nin representation of all the world.\n\nAnd this spoon walked always in his coat,\n\nawake or asleep, always, at all times,\n\nthat spoon with its living death, and her symbols.\n\nInform all comrades at once!\n\nLong live the comrades at the foot of this spoon forever and ever!\n\nThey killed him, forced him to die,\n\nPedro, Rojas, the worker, the man, the one\n\nwho was once a child looking up toward the sky,\n\nand then he grew up, turning red,\n\nand fought with his cells, his no, his yet, his hungers, his pieces.\n\nThey've killed him sweetly\n\nbetween the hair of his wife, the Juana Vasquez,\n\nin the hour of fire, at the year of the bullet,\n\nand just when he was getting close to all.\n\nPedro Rojas, after his death,\n\nraised himself up, kissed his bloodstained coffin,\n\nhe wept for Spain,\n\nand wrote with his finger on the air!\n\n\"Long live the comrades! Pedro Rojas.\"\n\nHis corpse was full of the world.\nIII  \nSol\u00eda escribir con su dedo grande en el aire  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nSol\u00eda escribir con su dedo grande en el aire:\n\n\u00ab\u00a1Viban los compa\u00f1eros! Pedro Rojas\u00bb,\n\nde Miranda de Ebro, padre y hombre,\n\nmarido y hombre, ferroviario y hombre,\n\npadre y m\u00e1s hombre, Pedro y sus dos muertes.\n\nPapel de viento, lo han matado: \u00a1pasa!\n\nPluma de carne, lo han matado: \u00a1pasa!\n\n\u00a1Abisa a todos compa\u00f1eros pronto!\n\nPalo en el que han colgado su madero,\n\nlo han matado;\n\n\u00a1lo han matado al pie de su dedo grande!\n\n\u00a1Han matado, a la vez, a Pedro, a Rojas!\n\n\u00a1Viban los compa\u00f1eros\n\na la cabecera de su aire escrito!\n\n\u00a1Viban con esta b del buitre en las entra\u00f1as\n\nde Pedro\n\ny de Rojas, del h\u00e9roe y del m\u00e1rtir!\n\nRegistr\u00e1ndole, muerto, sorprendi\u00e9ronle\n\nen su cuerpo un gran cuerpo, para\n\nel alma del mundo,\n\ny en la chaqueta una cuchara muerta.\n\nPedro tambi\u00e9n sol\u00eda comer\n\nentre las criaturas de su carne, asear, pintar\n\nla mesa y vivir dulcemente\n\nen representaci\u00f3n de todo el mundo.\n\nY esta cuchara anduvo en su chaqueta,\n\ndespierto o bien cuando dorm\u00eda, siempre,\n\ncuchara muerta viva, ella y sus s\u00edmbolos.\n\n\u00a1Abisa a todos compa\u00f1eros pronto!\n\n\u00a1Viban los compa\u00f1eros al pie de esta cuchara para siempre!\n\nLo han matado, oblig\u00e1ndole a morir\n\na Pedro, a Rojas, al obrero, al hombre, a aqu\u00e9l\n\nque naci\u00f3 muy ni\u00f1\u00edn, mirando al cielo,\n\ny que luego creci\u00f3, se puso rojo\n\ny luch\u00f3 con sus c\u00e9lulas, sus nos, sus todav\u00edas, sus hambres,   \nsus pedazos.\n\nLo han matado suavemente\n\nentre el cabello de su mujer, la Juana V\u00e1squez,\n\na la hora del fuego, al a\u00f1o del balazo\n\ny cuando andaba cerca ya de todo.\n\nPedro Rojas, as\u00ed, despu\u00e9s de muerto,\n\nse levant\u00f3, bes\u00f3 su catafalco ensangrentado,\n\nllor\u00f3 por Espa\u00f1a .\n\ny volvi\u00f3 a escribir con el dedo en el aire:\n\n\u00ab\u00a1Viban los compa\u00f1eros! Pedro Rojas.\u00bb\n\nSu cad\u00e1ver estaba lleno de mundo.\nIX  \nA Brief Funeral Prayer for a Hero of the Republic  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nA book at the edge of his dead waist,\n\na book sprouting from this corpse.\n\nThey took the hero away,\n\nand his corporeal and sad mouth entered in our courage;\n\nwe all sweat, our navel a burden,\n\nthe wandering moons follow us;\n\nthe dead man, too, sweats from grief.\n\nAnd a book, at the Battle of Toledo,\n\na book, behind a book, above a book, a book nevertheless,\n\nwas sprouting from the corpse.\n\nPoetry of the purple cheekbones, between speaking or\n\nremaining silent,\n\npoetry in the moral letter accompanying\n\nhis heart.\n\nThe book remains, and nothing else\n\nthat there are no insects in the tomb,\n\nand remains at the edge of his sleeve, the air soaking itself\n\nand becoming gaseous, infinite.\n\nAll of us sweat, the navel on shoulders,\n\nthe dead man also sweating of sadness\n\nand the book, I, myself, see it regretfully,\n\na book, behind a book, above a book,\n\nsprouts from this corpse abruptly.\n\n_10 September 1937_\nIX  \nPeque\u00f1o responso a un h\u00e9roe de la rep\u00fablica  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nUn libro qued\u00f3 al borde de su cintura muerta,\n\nun libro reto\u00f1aba de su cad\u00e1ver muerto.\n\nSe llevaron al h\u00e9roe,\n\ny corp\u00f3rea y aciaga entr\u00f3 su boca en nuestro aliento;\n\nsudamos todos, el ombligo a cuestas;\n\ncaminantes las lunas nos segu\u00edan;\n\ntambi\u00e9n sudaba de tristeza el muerto.\n\nY un libro, en la batalla de Toledo,\n\nun libro, atr\u00e1s un libro, arriba un libro, reto\u00f1aba del cad\u00e1ver.\n\nPoes\u00eda del p\u00f3mulo morado, entre el decirlo\n\ny el callarlo,\n\npoes\u00eda en la carta moral que acompa\u00f1ara\n\na su coraz\u00f3n.\n\nQued\u00f3se el libro y nada m\u00e1s, que no hay\n\ninsectos en la tumba,\n\ny qued\u00f3 al borde de su manga el aire remoj\u00e1ndose\n\ny haci\u00e9ndose gaseoso, infinito.\n\nTodos sudamos, el ombligo a cuestas,\n\ntambi\u00e9n sudaba de tristeza el muerto\n\ny un libro, yo lo vi sentidamente,\n\nun libro, atr\u00e1s un libro, arriba un libro\n\nreto\u00f1\u00f3 del cad\u00e1ver ex abrupto.\n\n_10 setiembre 1937_\nXII  \nMass  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nAt the end of the battle,\n\nand dead the fighter a man came up to him\n\nand said: \"Don't die, I love you so much!\"\n\nBut the corpse alas! Went on dying.\n\nTwo more men came to him and whispered repeatedly:\n\n\"Don't leave us! Courage! Return to life!\"\n\nBut the corpse alas! Went on dying.\n\nThen came twenty more, one hundred, one thousand, five thousand\n\nclaiming: \"So much love, and to be powerless against death!\"\n\nBut the corpse alas! Went on dying.\n\nMillions of individuals surrounded him\n\nwith a common prayer: \"Stay, brother!\"\n\nBut the corpse alas! Went on dying.\n\nThen, all the men of the earth\n\nsurrounded him; the corpse gazing up at the crowd, sadly,\n\ndeeply moved, he raised up slowly,\n\nand put his arms around the first man who spoke, and began to walk . . .\n\n_10 November 1937_\nXII  \nMasa  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nAl fin de la batalla,\n\ny muerto el combatiente, vino hacia \u00e9l un hombre\n\ny le dijo: \u00ab\u00a1No mueras, te amo tanto!\u00bb\n\nPero el cad\u00e1ver \u00a1ay! sigui\u00f3 muriendo.\n\nSe le acercaron dos y repiti\u00e9ronle:\n\n\u00ab\u00a1No nos dejes! \u00a1Valor! \u00a1Vuelve a la vida!\u00bb\n\nPero el cad\u00e1ver \u00a1ay! sigui\u00f3 muriendo.\n\nAcudieron a \u00e9l veinte, cien, mil, quinientos mil,\n\nclamando \u00ab\u00a1Tanto amor y no poder nada contra la muerte!\u00bb\n\nPero el cad\u00e1ver \u00a1ay! sigui\u00f3 muriendo.\n\nLe rodearon millones de individuos,\n\ncon un ruego com\u00fan: \u00ab\u00a1Qu\u00e9date hermano!\u00bb\n\nPero el cad\u00e1ver \u00a1ay! sigui\u00f3 muriendo.\n\nEntonces todos los hombres de la tierra\n\nle rodearon; les vio el cad\u00e1ver triste, emocionado;\n\nincorpor\u00f3se lentamente,\n\nabraz\u00f3 al primer hombre; ech\u00f3se a andar . . .\n\n_10 noviembre 1937_\nXV  \nSpain, Take This Cup from Me  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nChildren of the world\n\nif Spain falls\u2014I say, if it should happen\u2014\n\nif they tear down from the sky\n\nline her forearm, held in a sling\n\nshot by two terrestrial rings;\n\nchildren, how old the hollow temples!\n\nHow premature in the sun what was spoken to you!\n\nHow soon in your chest the ancient outcry!\n\nHow old the numeral 2 in your notebook!\n\nChildren of the world, this\n\nMother Spain is with her belly lying down,\n\nour school teacher with her authority,\n\nour mother and teacher,\n\ncross and wood, taking you to the heights!\n\ndizziness and division and addition, children;\n\nwhile her elders stood to accuse!\n\nIf she falls\u2014I say, if it should happen this way\u2014if\n\nfrom the earth to the lowest depths,\n\nchildren, you will be stunted in the prime of your youth!\n\nHow the year will punish the month!\n\nHow will you remain with your ire in ten to those teeth,\n\nIn the drumstick, the diphthong, the medallions in tears!\n\nHow the little lamb stays\n\nwith its foot tied to the big inkstand!\n\nHow will you descend from the stone steps of the alphabet\n\nuntil you reach the letter where suffering is born?\n\nChildren,\n\noffspring of warriors, meanwhile\n\nlower your voice, Spain is distributing right now\n\nenergy among the animal kingdom,\n\nthe little flowers, the comets, and man.\n\nLower your voice, because she is\n\nwith her vigor that's great without knowing\n\nwhat to do, holds in her hand\n\nthe skull, that speaks and speaks and speaks,\n\nthe skull, with braids of hair,\n\nthe skull, that one of the living!\n\nLower your voice, I tell you;\n\nlower your voice, the song of the syllables, the wailing\n\nof the subject matter and the lesser sounds of the pyramids, and even\n\nof the temples which throb like the rubbing of two stones!\n\nLower the breath, and if\n\nthe forearm drops dead\n\nto its side, if the splints sleep, if it is night,\n\nif the sky fits into two terrestrial limbos\n\nthat can never be closed,\n\nif there are creakings in the threshold sounds,\n\nif I am late,\n\nif sooner or later no one is seen on the streets, if you're frightened\n\nthose pencils without nibs, if the mother\n\nSpain falls\u2014I repeat, just supposing it happens\u2014\n\ngo forth, children, of the world; and go out to find her! . . .\nXV  \nEspa\u00f1a, aparta de m\u00ed este c\u00e1liz  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nNi\u00f1os del mundo,\n\nsi cae Espa\u00f1a\u2014digo, es un decir\u2014\n\nsi cae\n\ndel cielo abajo su antebrazo que asen,\n\nen cabestro, dos l\u00e1minas terrestres;\n\nni\u00f1os, \u00a1qu\u00e9 edad la de las sienes c\u00f3ncavas!\n\n\u00a1qu\u00e9 temprano en el sol lo que os dec\u00eda!\n\n\u00a1qu\u00e9 pronto en vuestro pecho el ruido anciano!\n\n\u00a1qu\u00e9 viejo vuestro 2 en el cuaderno!\n\n\u00a1Ni\u00f1os del mundo, est\u00e1\n\nla madre Espa\u00f1a con su vientre a cuestas;\n\nest\u00e1 nuestra madre con sus f\u00e9rulas,\n\nest\u00e1 madre y maestra,\n\ncruz y madera, porque os dio la altura,\n\nv\u00e9rtigo y divisi\u00f3n y suma, ni\u00f1os;\n\nest\u00e1 con ella, padres procesales!\n\nSi cae\u2014digo, es un decir\u2014si cae\n\nEspa\u00f1a, de la tierra para abajo,\n\nni\u00f1os \u00a1c\u00f3mo vais a cesar de crecer!\n\n\u00a1c\u00f3mo va a castigar el a\u00f1o al mes!\n\n\u00a1c\u00f3mo van a quedarse en diez los dientes,\n\nen palote el diptongo, la medalla en llanto!\n\n\u00a1C\u00f3mo va el corderillo a continuar\n\natado por la pata al gran tintero!\n\n\u00a1C\u00f3mo vais a bajar las gradas del alfabeto\n\nhasta la letra en que naci\u00f3 la pena!\n\nNi\u00f1os,\n\nhijos de los guerreros, entre tanto,\n\nbajad la voz que Espa\u00f1a est\u00e1 ahora mismo repartiendo\n\nla energ\u00eda entre el reino animal,\n\nlas florecillas, los cometas y los hombres.\n\n\u00a1Bajad la voz, que est\u00e1\n\nen su rigor, que es grande, sin saber\n\nqu\u00e9 hacer, y est\u00e1 en su mano\n\nla calavera, aquella de la trenza;\n\nla calavera, aquella de la vida!\n\n\u00a1Bajad la voz, os digo;\n\nbajad la voz, el canto de las s\u00edlabas, el llanto\n\nde la materia y el rumor menos de las pir\u00e1mides, y aun\n\nel de las sienes que andan con dos piedras!\n\n\u00a1Bajad el aliento, y si\n\nel antebrazo baja,\n\nsi las f\u00e9rulas suenan, si es la noche,\n\nsi el cielo cabe en dos limbos terrestres,\n\nsi hay ruido en el sonido de las puertas,\n\nsi tardo,\n\nsi no veis a nadie, si os asustan\n\nlos l\u00e1pices sin punta, si la madre\n\nEspa\u00f1a cae\u2014digo, es un decir\u2014\n\nsalid, ni\u00f1os, del mundo; id a buscarla! . . .\n\n_Top: C\u00e9sar Vallejo in Paris  \nBottom: C\u00e9sar Vallejo drawing used on Peruvian currency_\n\nPhotos: Juan Larrea Collection\/Archives Malanga\nCLOSING POEM\n\n_by Gerard Malanga_\n\nTranlated from the original English by   \nPatricia Daniela Alverte\nVision 1938 Paris  \n(For Spanish translation click here)\n\nIn the very busy Saint Germain-des-Pr\u00e8s, not too distant\n\nfrom the Caf\u00e9 Flore, I saw a man in an old suit\n\nthat was more than merely a covering for his body,\n\nit was part of the man himself.\n\nIt had suffered with him.\n\nIt was like a brownish grazed skin.\n\nThe man was not standing and was not walking.\n\nAs he walked he stood still,\n\nand as he stood still he moved forward a little.\n\nHis face was gentle and rosy, but from his forehead\n\nand cheeks furrows crowded into his face.\n\nHis eyes looked out high above everything they met,\n\nand yet they were waiting. From near at hand\n\nthe left arm was held close to the body,\n\nas if the body wouldn't let go of the arm,\n\nand yet he held his hand stretched out slightly.\n\nI put a note into it, and then I didn't know,\n\nwhether the hand went back to the man,\n\nand whether he put the note in his pocket,\n\nor did the hand move on out,\n\nseeking for another hand. This man\n\nwas living in the center between giving and taking,\n\nbetween distance and nearness,\n\nbetween old age and youth.\n\nA few days passed. I went to call on this man;\n\nbut the concierge at the building\n\nwhere he lived in one small room,\n\ntold me that he had died only a few days previous;\n\non April 15th, Good Friday.\n\nThe cause of death was never determined;\n\nbut at last today I remembered this man. He sits\n\nat a table just to the left of the doorway inside the Flore,\n\nand as a boy I would sit with him for hours.\n\nGerard Malanga\n\n_29:IV:71 NYC_\nVisi\u00f3n 1938 Paris  \n(For English translation click here)\n\nEn la muy transitada Saint Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s, no muy lejos\n\ndel Caf\u00e9 Flore, vi a un hombre en un viejo sobretodo\n\nel cual era m\u00e1s que un simple abrigo para su cuerpo,\n\nera parte del hombre en s\u00ed.\n\nHab\u00eda sufrido con \u00e9l.\n\nEra como de un parduzco cuero gastado.\n\nEl hombre no estaba quieto ni tampoco caminando.\n\nMientras caminaba permanec\u00eda quieto,\n\ny mientras permanec\u00eda quieto avanzaba un poco.\n\nSu rostro era apacible y fresco, pero desde su frente\n\ny mejillas, arrugas se abarrotaban en su cara.\n\nSus ojos miraban por encima de todo con lo que se topaban,\n\ny sin embargo ellos estaban esperando. Cerca de la mano\n\nel brazo izquierdo colgaba pegado al cuerpo,\n\ncomo si el cuerpo no dejara ir al brazo,\n\ny aun as\u00ed manten\u00eda su mano ligeramente extendida.\n\nPuse una nota sobre ella, y en ese momento no supe,\n\nsi la mano regres\u00f3 hacia el hombre,\n\ny si hab\u00eda puesto la nota en su bolsillo,\n\no si la mano se movi\u00f3,\n\nbuscando otra mano. Este hombre\n\nestaba viviendo entre el dar y el recibir,\n\nentre distancia y cercan\u00eda,\n\nentre vejez y juventud.\n\nPasaron unos pocos d\u00edas. Pas\u00e9 a buscar a este hombre;\n\npero el conserje del edificio\n\ndonde viv\u00eda en un cuarto peque\u00f1o,\n\nme dijo que hab\u00eda fallecido unos pocos d\u00edas antes;\n\nel 15 de Abril, Buen Viernes.\n\nLa causa de la muerte nuca fue determinada;\n\npero finalmente hoy record\u00e9 a este hombre. \u00c9l se sienta\n\na la mesa justo a la izquierda de la entrada dentro del Flore,\n\ny como un ni\u00f1o me sentar\u00eda con \u00e9l por horas.\n\nGerard Malanga\n\n_29:IV:71 NYC_\n\n_Gerard Malanga reading his C\u00e9sar Vallejo translations at the Vallejo burial plot, Cimetiere du Montparnasse\/12th Division, Paris. Mid-November, 1992_\n\nPhoto by Julia Friar\/\u00a9 Archives Malanga\nTHE LETTERS\n\n_from Georgette Vallejo  \n_ _to Gerard Malanga_\n\nTranslated from the original Spanish by   \nPatricia Daniela Alverte\n\n3\/12\/71\n\nDistinguished Mr. Malanga:\n\nI'm surprised not having received an answer to my last letter.\n\nIf you had given up your project, I would appreciate it you letting me know about it.\n\nI remind you that there can be no publishing of your English version of Vallejo's poems without previously establishing an editing contract with a publisher who states and certifies the authorization that you requested. I hope to receive news from you soon about this matter.\n\nIn this waiting, distinguished Mr. Malanga, I send you my more cordial greetings and my vows for this so near New Year.\n\nGeorgette de Vallejo  \n5241-301 A. Arequipa  \nMiraflores  \nLIMA\/PERU.\n\nLima, 9\/2\/71  \nVery dear sir and friend:\n\nI beg you to forgive a silence which must rightfully seem to you inexplicable. Unfortunately, I live (if this can be called living) since 19 years in \"Horrible Lima \"   \n(how the great poet C\u00e9sar Moro used to name this city that pretends to be a capitol),  \na city where one suffer depression after depression until one becomes abnormal.\n\nAs soon as received, I read your authentic poet's translations. I was going to reply to you immediately, but one thing held me back: sometimes, your version is really far from the original . . .\n\nRight away, I copied\u2014as you can see\u2014the Spanish text right next to your English version to facilitate the confrontation, and I called a friend of mine who knows a lot about your language. But in vain, I waited for his telephone call over two months . . . (all lime\u00f1os are despicable in some aspect).\n\nAnother friend of mine, [ . . . . . . . . . ], an American born in Latin America, irreplaceable for this case, was sick back then :asthma, ulcers and other things not less severe. However, as time went by, I decided to bring him your work . We got together this past Saturday. Our opinions match. I send you the first fourteen poems (chronologically) so you can see some modifications (essential in some cases) . . . You'll see. We keep reading.\n\nI'm surprised not to find anything from \"Prose Poems\"[1] in your selection (among others: \"The good sense\"[2] \"Languidly his liquor\"[3], \"I will speak of hope . . . \"[4], \"Finding of life\"[5]). I feel the same way about the total absence of fragments from \"Hymn to the Republic Volunteers\"[6] and \"Battles\"[7], and from \"Spanish image of death\"[8].\n\nI wish your selection, not just for its exceptional quality, but also for its amplitude, will make forget the horrendous and trivial translations of this [ . . . . . . . . . ]. No one can suspect what kind of a blow has been for me. It's a cancer.\n\nI would like to propose something to you. [ . . . . . . . . . ], who had projected to translate HUMAN POEMS, has his English version of 25 poems of this volume ready (of course different of those included on your selection). His health forced him to leave his project. Would you have any inconveniences in your book having a second part in the end which includes these poems? I would be infinitely grateful if you would agree\u2014since you would evidently be the main author, the \"star\" so to speak, of your publication.\n\nWaiting to read your next letter and reiterating my most sincere apologies, please receive, my much estimated Malanga, my most sincere regards.\n\n5241-301 A. Arequipa  \nMiraflores-LIMA\/PERU\n\nThe poems are the following:\n\n-La voz del espejo (HN)\/-The voice of the mirror (HN)  \n-Est\u00e1is muertos (Trilce)\/-You're dead (Trilce)  \n-He aqu\u00ed que hoy saludo . . . (P. en P.)\/-Behold I greet today (P. in P.)  \n-Sombrero, abrigo, guantes . . . (PH) \/-Hat, coat, gloves . . . (PH)  \n-Confianza en el anteojo . . . \/-Trust in the eyeglass . . .  \n-Al cavilar en la vida . . . \/-While pondering in life . . .  \n-Los nueve monstrous\/-The nine monsters  \n-Guitarra\/-Guitar  \n-Va corriendo\/-It goes running . . .  \n-Un pilar soportando Consuelos\/-A pillar tolerating solaces  \n-Pante\u00f3n\/-Pantheon  \n-Acaba de pasar\/-Just passed . . .  \n-Palmas y guitarra\/-Claps and guitar  \n-Y si despu\u00e9s de tantas palabras . . . \/-And if after so many words . . .  \n-Despedida recordando un adios\/-Farewell remembering a goodbye  \n-Oh botella sin vino! . . . \/-Oh bottle without wine! . . .  \n-Encarnecido, aclimatado . . . \/-Mocked, acclimatized . . .  \n-El libro de la naturaleza\/-The book of nature  \n-Tengo un miedo terrible . . . \/-I have a terrible fear  \n-La c\u00f3lera que quiebra al hombre . . . \/-The anger which breaks a men . . .  \n-Viniera el malo . . . \/-Comes the bad  \n-Ello que es el lugar . . . \/-That is the place\n\n_In the original letter_\n\n[1] Poemas en Prosa\/Prose poems\n\n[2] El buen sentido\/The good sense\n\n[3] L\u00e1nguidamente su licor\/Languidly his spirit\n\n[4] Voy a hablar de la esperanza\/ I'm going to speak about hope\n\n[5] Hallazgo de la vida\/Discovery of life\n\n[6] Himno a los voluntarios de la Rep\u00fablica\/Hymm to the volunteers of the Republic\n\n[7] Batallas\/Battles\n\n[8] Imagen espa\u00f1ola de la muerte\/Spanish image of the death\n\n5\/4\/71  \nVery dear Malanga:  \nDo apologize, once more, this reply delayed on my end.\n\nEven though I understand that, in your opinion, it wouldn't be convenient that Vallejo resulted \"strange in English\"[1], Vallejo, however, \"is strange\"[2] in all languages as he is in his own. But Vallejo is Vallejo, and nothing and nobody can explain what this new thing is about, above all indefinable, that permeates and affirms more and more his poetic work. To me, Vallejo's poems are poems, not poetry . . . I don't know if you will accept this purely subjective tint.\n\nContinuing my reading, I've seen that, very often, you change the original text (making me doubt that, who knows, you may have missed the real meaning); other times, you explain it. First at all, you must never explain a poem. Secondly, one can fail in the interpretation. When you add to the verse \"Me acuerdo que nos hac\u00edamos llorar, hermano, en aquel juego\"[3] from so much laughing[4], you add something incorrect because the children weren't crying for so much laughter, but, forgetting in fact that they were playing, they took things so seriously that they ended up crying because the more real anguish.\n\nThen, you absolutely cannot add something to the original. An example among the numerous cases, as you may know. In the last verse of MASA (Espa\u00f1a aparta de m\u00ed este c\u00e1liz[5], You add: \"My brothers, may God give you peace\"[6]. That is fundamentally serious, as this added verse alters, even spiritually, the author's thinking.\n\nIf I get scared and recommend you to severely look over your version is because you can't ignore the virulent criticism and even the sarcasm that [ . . . ], naturally vulgar, low and prosaic, will shower over your work. He told me once when he was in Lima: \"You oppose the publishing of my translations, but you have authorized [ . . . ] (the German translator) awful translations. I told him that this was because, happily, I don't speak a word of German.\n\nLastly, I would like to trust entirely on your word to be faithful to the original, because in this damned city I've lost the spirit and mood which I would need to help you. As I've said before, it is necessary to present an anthology of the five volumes, but I can't take the commitment to revise your version. I beg you to translate without worrying about explanations that even the author won't give, or fear that Vallejo will turn out \"strange in English.\" I've had big difficulties in French as well; the arrangement of the word is very important in giving meaning to poetics. I've had the satisfaction of seeing people amazed of what it had achieved. Perhaps, do you understand French?\n\nAs you haven't replied to certain aspects of my last letter, I deduce you don't agree with me.\n\nWith my most sincere regards,\n\nPS: I forget to clarify, that you are to make the selection of the fragments which inspire you most of \"Hymn to the volunteers. . .\"[7] and from \"Spain. . . \"[8] choosing, of course, the ones more fit into translation.\n\n[1] In English in the original\n\n[2] In English in the original\n\n[3] \"I remember we made each other cry, brother, in that game\"\n\n[4] In English in the original\n\n[5] \"Spain, take this cup from me\"\n\n[6] In English in the original\n\n[7] \"Himno a los Voluntarios\" in the original\n\n[8] \"Espa\u00f1a\" in the original\n\nLIMA, Miraflores, 1\/2\/72  \nMister, GERARD MALANGA  \nP.O. BOX 1811  \nF.D.R. Station  \nNEW YORK 10022  \nU.S.A.\n\nDistinguished mister Malanga:\n\nNo: I'm not impatient. There's no reason for that. However, I'm seriously restless because, until this day, you haven't informed if you have made a correction of the translations with the notes I've sent you back.\n\nSecondly, I've just read\u2014chosen at random from the last translations I received\u2014poem 111 from \"Spain, take this cup from me\"[1], and I see, not without bitter disappointment, that you haven't even taken into account my express recommendation: RESPECT THE ORIGINAL TEXT, WITHOUT CHANGING, ADDING OR REMOVING WORDS OR VERSES, AND DON'T ADD WHOLE VERSES COMING ENTIRELY OUT OF YOUR IMAGINATION. I beg you to acknowledge, following these lines, the inexplicable mistakes showing in your version of the above mentioned. As I said, one gets the impression you don't fully understand Spanish, coming to use verbs in the present tense which in the original text determine a past tense, not being able in any way to put a present where there is a verb in the past tense, as you can observe in the following list of mistakes.\n\nThen, as I told you before, a publishing contract is established between the editor and the author\u2014or the person who represents him.\n\nLastly, please understand I cannot revise and correct your translations, not only do I have a lot to do, but I am also exhausted for different reasons.\n\nWaiting hear news from you, yours sincerely.  \nGeorgette de Vallejo  \n5241 A. Arequipa \u2013 Miraflores \u2013 LIMA \u2013 PERU.\n\n[1] Espa\u00f1a, aparta de m\u00ed este c\u00e1liz.\n\nHE USED TO WRITE WITH HIS BIG FINGER IN THE AIR . . .\n\n---\n\n|\n\nStrophe 1\n\nSol\u00eda escribir con su dedo grande en el aire: | (Vallejo says: big finger not index. 2) \"He used\" past\n\nWith his index finger he skywrites on the air: | (tense: he used to write. 3) Not on the air but in the\n\n|\n\n(air. 4) \"Skywrite\" is wrong.\n\nViban los compa\u00f1eros! | (\"Comrades\"? There must be a better word?\n\nLong live the comrades!\n\n|\n\npadre y m\u00e1s hombre, Pedro. . . . | Vallejo says : padre y m\u00e1s hombre: father and\n\nfather\u2014but even more man\u2014Pedro. . . . | (more man, simply. Why \"but even\"?\n\n|\n\nStrophe 2\n\n|\n\n(this strophe has 3 verses, not 4.\n\nPapel de viento, lo han matado: pasa!  | (Vallejo says: Paper of wind, they killed him!\n\nPluma de carne, lo han matado: pasa! | (Pasa! means something like: it's gone, but\n\nAbisa a todos compa\u00f1eros pronto!\n\n|\n\nScrap of paper caught in the air waves | (not \"waves\"\n\nThey killed him (it really happened!) | (feather of flesh, they killed him! It's gone, but not it\n\nFeather of flesh and blood they killed him! | (\"really happened!\" Either \"blood\"\n\nInform all the comrades at once! | (You're removing the tragedy from the last verse   \n(\"lanzado cablegraficamente por el muerto.\" Quote:   \n(Tell all the companions fast! \"At once,\" no. \"The\" no.\n\n|\n\n222 | Strophe 3\n\nPalo en el que han colgado su madero, (Pole on which they hunged his peace of wood (?) peace of wood on which a beam is hung,\n\nLo han matado al pie de su dedo grande! | (to (or at) foot his big finger! | (can you say so in English?)\n\n---|---|---\n\nThey killed him to the base of his forefinger and thumb! | (Why?)\n\n---|---\n\n_(The correct verse is: \"They killed him to his big finger's foot\")_ | |\n\n|  | Strophe 4\n\nA la cabecera de su aire escrito | (Vallejo says:\n\n|\n\nand the honor roll of the aire! | (at the bed side of his written air!\n\nViban con esta V del buitre en las entra\u00f1as | (Why do you add \"Let them . . . long,\" giving it a charity\n\nLet them live long with the V......... | (meaning to the poem?\n\n|\n\n(The correct verse is: \"At the bedside of his written air! Live with this V of vulture in the bowels\") | |\n\n|  | Strophe 5\n\nRegistrandole, muerto, sorprendieronle | (Note: the words \"registrandole y sorprendieronle\" with\n\n|\n\nAfter his death they opened him up | (\"opened him up\" (!) You can say:\n\n|\n\nen su cuerpo un gran cuerpo, para | (Searching him, dead, the found\/in his body a\n\n|\n\nel alma del mundo, | (big body for\/the soul of the world\n\n|\n\ndown the middle finding within him a body big enough | (Too much explanations!, for finally\n\n|\n\nto hold the soul of the world | (changing the real meaning of the verse.\n\n|\n\ncuchara muerta viva\u2014empty spoon | (it's not the same . . .\n\n|\n\nAbout the remaining version of this poem, I must say:  \n\"criaturas de su carne\" a bland and cold translation  \nmembers of his family . . . !\n\n\"pintar\/la mesa y vivir dulcemente en representaci\u00f3n de todo el mundo\" You say:  \nfilled his table with food living confortable\/like anyone else\n\n\"cuchara muerta viva, ella y sus s\u00edmbolos. _(Correct verse: living dead spoon, she and her symbols)_  \nThe spoon with its meaning of life instead of respecting the word symbol in extensive sense, you replace \"meaning of life\" of limited sense, although you repeat it in the following strophe . . . and not in the exact meaning of the text. In this same strophe, you do add again: Let them . . .\n\n\"aunque\/que naci\u00f3 muy ni\u00f1in, mirando al cielo _(Correct verse: although born as a little child, looking at the sky)_  \nThe one\/who was once a child looking up with the sky ???\n\n\"y que luego creci\u00f3, se puso rojo   \n_(Correct verse: \"and then he grew up, and turned red\")_  \ny lucho con sus c\u00e9lulas, sus nos, sus todav\u00edas, sus hambres, sus pedazos  \nstruggling in every cell, block of his body with his quick answers,\/his doubts, his  \nhungers and the pieces of wet bread\/he recognized as himself. ??????  \n _(Correct verse: \"and he fought with his cellule, his no, his yet, his hungers, his pieces\")_\n\n\"Lo han matado suavemente   \n_(Correct verse: \"They have killed him softly\")_  \nentre el cabello de su mujer, La Juana Vazquez,   \n_(Correct verse: \"between his_ woman's hair, La Juana Vazquez\")  \nThey killed him in one clean sweep ????????????????  \nblood on the dress of his wife ??????????????????\n\n\"llor\u00f3 por Espa\u00f1a _(Correct verse \"He cried for Spain\")_  \nwept for Spain real tears\n\n(VALLEJO HAS SAID THAT? For you the fact   \nthat a spaniard cries is lesser and is not enough!)  \nAnd again:  \nLast:\n\non the air waves\n\n\"Su cad\u00e1ver estaba lleno de mundo\"   \n_(Correct verse: \"His corpse was full of world\")_\n\nHis dead body contain(s) all the world | |\n\n(Full of world, doesn't mean that contain(ed) all the world. Also, only you know why putting this verse into the present tense????????\n\n---|---|---\n\nI must say that you don't need to explain a poem.\n\nYou shouldn't try to sounding civilized or soft to certain forms of expression that may seem harsh, strange and even wild. A poem is as it is.\nAbout the Translator\n\nGerard Malanga is acclaimed as a poet, photographer, and filmmaker. He was born in the Bronx in 1943. He is the author of a dozen poetry collections, the most recent being _No Respect: New & Selected Poems,_ the four-volume fanzine set _AM: Archives Malanga, and Tomboy & Other Tales._ His photography books include _Resistance to Memory_ and _Screen Tests Portraits Nudes._ He was a founding editor of _Interview_ magazine, alongside Andy Warhol. Malanga lives in upstate New York.\nBooks from Three Rooms Press\n\nPHOTOGRAPHY-MEMOIR\n\nMike Watt  \n _On & Off Bass_\n\nFICTION\n\nRon Dakron  \n _Hello Devilfish!_\n\nMichael T. Fournier  \n _Hidden Wheel  \nSwing State_\n\nJanet Hamill  \n _Tales from the Eternal Caf\u00e9_   \n(Introduction by Patti Smith)\n\nEamon Loingsigh  \n _Light of the Diddicoy_\n\nRichard Vetere  \n _The Writers Afterlife_\n\nDADA\n\n_Maintenant:  \nJournal of Contemporary   \nDada Art & Literature_   \n(Annual poetry\/art journal,   \nsince 2008)\n\nMEMOIR & BIOGRAPHY\n\nNassrine Azimi and  \nMichel Wasserman   \n_Last Boat to Yokohama:_   \n_The Life and Legacy of  \nBeate Sirota Gordon_\n\nRichard Katrovas   \n_Raising Girls in Bohemia:  \nMeditations of an American Father; A Memoir in Essays_\n\nStephen Spotte  \n _My Watery Self:  \nAn Aquatic Memoir_\n\nSHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY\n\n_Have a NYC:  \nNew York Short Stories_  \nAnnual Short Fiction Anthology\n\nPLAYS\n\nMadeline Artenberg &   \nKaren Hildebrand  \n _The Old In-and-Out_\n\nPeter Carlaftes  \n _Triumph For Rent (3 Plays)  \nTeatrophy (3 More Plays)_\n\nMIXED MEDIA\n\nJohn S. Paul  \n _Sign Language:  \nA Painters Notebook_\n\nTRANSLATIONS\n\nThomas Bernhard   \n_On Earth and in Hell_  \n(poems by the author   \nin German with English   \ntranslations by Peter Waugh)\n\nPatrizia Gattaceca  \n _Isula d'Anima \/ Soul Island_   \n(poems by the author   \nin Corsican with English   \ntranslations)\n\nC\u00e9sar Vallejo   \n_Malanga Chasing Vallejo_  \n(selected poems of C\u00e9sar Vallejo with English translations and additional notes by Gerard Malanga)\n\nGeorge Wallace  \n _EOS: Abductor of Men_   \n(poems by the author in English  \nwith Greek translations)\n\nHUMOR\n\nPeter Carlaftes  \n _A Year on Facebook_\n\nPOETRY COLLECTIONS\n\nHala Alyan  \n _Atrium_\n\nPeter Carlaftes  \n _DrunkYard Dog  \nI Fold with the Hand I Was Dealt_\n\nThomas Fucaloro  \n _It Starts from the Belly and Blooms_\n\n_Inheriting Craziness is Like  \na Soft Halo of Light_\n\nKat Georges  \n _Our Lady of the Hunger_\n\nRobert Gibbons  \n _Close to the Tree_\n\nIsrael Horovitz  \n _Heaven and Other Poems_\n\nDavid Lawton  \n _Sharp Blue Stream_\n\nJane LeCroy  \n _Signature Play_\n\nPhilip Meersman  \n _This is Belgian Chocolate_\n\nJane Ormerod  \n _Recreational Vehicles on Fire_  \n _Welcome to the Museum of Cattle_\n\nLisa Panepinto  \n _On This Borrowed Bike_\n\nGeorge Wallace  \n _Poppin' Johnny_\n\n  |\n\nThree Rooms Press | New York, NY | Current Catalog: www.threeroomspress.com  \nThree Rooms Press books are distributed by PGW\/Perseus: www.pgw.com\n\n---|---\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}