Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite Part 39

"It is written:

I remember thy love when thou wast young.

For of old thou hast broken thy yoke.

And burst thy bonds; And thou hast said: I will no longer serve.

But upon every high hill, And under every green tree, Thou hast wandered, playing the harlot. [1]

"It is written:

I will follow after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my wine, And my wool and my flax, And my oil and my wine. [2]

"It is written:

How canst thou say: I am not polluted?

See thy way in the valley, Know what thou hast done, O thou dromedary traversing her ways, O thou wild a.s.s, Painting and ever l.u.s.tful, Who could prevent thee from satisfying thy desire? [3]

"It is written:

_She has played the harlot in the land of Egypt._ She has doted upon paramours Whose flesh is as the flesh of a.s.ses, And whose issue is like the issue of horses.

Thus thou callest to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, In bruising thy teats by the Egyptians For the paps of thy youth." [4]

"Oh!" she cried. "It is I! It is I!"

"And it is written again:

Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers, And thou wouldst return again to me! saith the Lord. [5]

"But my chastis.e.m.e.nt also is written:

Behold: I raise up thy lovers against thee: They shall judge thee according to their judgments.

They shall take away thy nose and thine ears, And thy remnant shall fall by the sword. [6]

"And again:

She is undone; she is stripped naked, she is led away Her servants wail like doves captive And tabor upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. [7]

"But does one know what the Scripture says?"

she added to console herself. "Is it not written elsewhere:

I will not punish your daughters when they commit wh.o.r.edom. [8]

"And elsewhere does not Scripture give this advice:

Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart: for G.o.d now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white, and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest. [9]

She shivered, and repeated in a low voice:

For there is no work, nor device nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, _whither thou goest!_

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is to see the sun. [10]

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart and in the sight of thine eyes, or ever thou goest to thy long home and the mourners go about the streets: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, or the dust return to the earth as it was. [11]

Shivering once more, she repeated slowly:

Or the dust return to the earth as it was.

And as she took her head in her hands in order to stifle her thoughts, she suddenly felt, without having foreseen it, the mortuary form of her cranium through the living skin: the empty temples, the enormous...o...b..ts, the flat nose under the cartilage, and the protruding jaws.

Horror! this it was, then, that she was about to become! With frightful lucidity, she had the vision of her corpse, and she pa.s.sed her hands over her whole body in order to probe to the bottom an idea which, though simple, had never yet occurred to her--that she bore _her skeleton within her_, that it was not a result of death, a metamorphosis, a culmination, but a thing one carries about, a spectre inseparable from the human form, and that the framework of life is already the symbol of the tomb.

A furious desire to live, to see everything again, to begin everything again, to do everything again, suddenly came over her. It was a revolt in the presence of death: the impossibility of admitting that she would never see the evening of the dawning day: the impossibility of understanding how this beauty, this body, this active thought, this opulent life of the flesh could cease to be, in its zenith, and go to rottenness.

The door opened quietly.

Demetrios entered.

[1] _Jeremiah_ II, 2, 20.

[2] _Hosea_ II, 7.

[3] _Jeremiah_ II, 23, 24.

[4] _Ezekiel_ XXIII, 20, 21.

[5] _Jeremiah_ III, 1.

[6] _Ezekiel_ XXIII, 22, 25.

[7] _Nab.u.m_ III, 8.

[8] _Hosea_ IV, 14.

[9] _Ecclesiastes_ IX, 7, 10.

[10] _Ecclesiastes_ XI, 7.

[11] _Ecclestiastes_ XII, 1, 8, 9.