Arum Bakir Ehrab

I

From the dark hedge, Arum Bakir Ehrab, the scowling satyr, was watching her… Zilah, exquisite as a first rose, slave of the Temple where Yazuda hid from the sins of the world. Arum, with a sphinx’s silence, feels the fiery whims of withheld pleasure. While the mad fever of his heart burst the arteries with a silent scream, with the nervous thistles of his fingers he crushed—satanic—a dahlia, one of those grown in the garden of his palace, to be offered in the Temple.

And Zilah, indifferent to the feverish siege of Arum Bakir Ehrab, with her muslin sari torn in two down to her amphora waist, and her face wet with tears, leaned out at the gates of the silent lake, calming her anguish and holding back her grief in the sealed flask of her breath. She gazed at the still water, violet beneath the decadent dusk, and traced a relief of reflection and ermine with the snowy phials of her breasts, laid bare by the violence of the impious hand.

II

Zilah was the favorite slave of the temple of Tahgut. The Temple that Arum Bakir Ehrab had ordered built and paid for with his treasures, urged on by the rabbi Yazuda. Yazuda opened Arum’s eyes and showed him how lost his soul was. In that temple, marble carved with fervent love, Yazuda would sometimes furtively hide to bloody his face with lashes of cactus.

One night when she was perhaps dreaming of a vague spell of blackbirds and cherries, the sadistic Yazuda came up to Zilah and with a trembling hand caressed her shamelessly. Zilah slipped away lightly to a corner of the temple, but the rabbi was more cunning: he seized her, and by force stripped the petals from the magnolia of her blossoming years.

And Zilah—fullness of a new rose—with the violated fruit of her nubile innocence, went off to the dark bends of the road, fleeing her own pain, until she lay down beside a lake of silver that half opened like the sullen grimace of a sword lying in wait. Among reeds and lotuses, Zilah gazes at the serene water, and the reflection of the evening on its ripples. And she weeps.

III

Arum Bakir Ehrab watched Zilah come running toward him, with her sari in shreds and tears on her face. He sensed what had happened and felt a heat of hell. His eyes were stained a charred red, and he clenched in his hand the flower he was carrying to the temple that evening. In his convulsed fingers the dahlia fell apart.

Arum Bakir Ehrab, on Yazuda’s advice, had turned from impious renegade into diligent ascetic. By the rabbi’s word, he had silenced the voracious appetite of the flesh and dammed the river of all pleasures. He built the Temple of Tahgut with his jewels and his lands, and cast diamonds and anklets into the seas. In the garden of his palace his slaves grew roses, geraniums and dahlias to offer in the Temple. Since then, his soul had been reflected serenely in his eyes.

That is why, when Zilah sensed his presence, she hastily covered herself with two almond leaves and snatched her image from the mirror of the lake. Her soul was still bleeding out upon the sands.

IV

Arum Bakir Ehrab, the scowling satyr, drew near through the shadows to the lake of silver. With the silent love of a thousand days, held back in his chest, he looked at Zilah tenderly, without the fleeting presence of a word. He brushed with his fingers the silken half-light of her curls and tormented the serene stream of her eyes with naked lust in his gaze.

And Zilah, trembling—a lily bud before the rigor of a reed—on discovering in those eyes the deep waiting of Arum Bakir Ehrab, offered him the homage of a tear.

And Arum Bakir Ehrab fell to his knees and kissed her sandals.

Beneath the ashen blue of a dying sun, the scowling satyr, with venomous wrath in his heart, girded his saber at his waist and vanished into the mosque of the violet evening. Between the melodious adventure of a plea and the colorless ashes of the flowers, he went deep into the recesses of the Temple. Yazuda’s head rolled as the stars came out, staining with red the snowy marble of the Tahgut.

Two slave women led Zilah into the palace of Arum Bakir Ehrab. They anointed her with perfumes and laid her down on silks.

At the break of dawn, two eunuchs brought, for the slave Zilah, a basket of roses and geraniums, which Arum Bakir Ehrab had plucked in his gardens…