Pictura

The Cyprian

Wes Callihan

She came through the doorway as I was talking with the bishop; her robe flashed white as she left the sunlight for the dimness of the bare room, then she sat beside me, facing him. He gave her a long look, then raised an eyebrow at me.

"You weren't exaggerating."

I shrugged. "I have eyes, sir."

"It would be the better thing to do," he said. "Think, make petition, and we'll talk when you pass through again. But I wouldn't delay. Times are less evil now, and much can be accomplished in the world by settled men."

I thought a moment, then rose; she stood and followed me out of the doorway. He followed, took my hand, and blessed me in his ancient voice, then shaded his eyes against the sun descending over the Great Sea, as we walked away toward the hills.

"What were you talking about?" she asked, after a time.

"You," I said. Then, "Where did you go?"

She smiled. "Into Kupros. We can buy tomorrow; no one has been through the island for weeks and the merchants are desperate to sell." Many Travelers like us imitated the Apostle and plied our mundane trades to support ourselves rather than be a burden to those we visited. She had good business sense, which was why she traveled with me; trading was a good living, but I paid more attention to our primary business, and might have starved without her help.

But there was a difficulty: she was beautiful. This had been a problem lately; for me, admittedly, but more for the scandal-mongers in the towns we and others like us passed through. The bishops had intervened several times and pacified the churches, but some said there would soon be an end to this sort of thing; the "weaker brethren," as they called them, were making policy. I knew why, and so did the others -- there is generally a reason for scandal -- but still it troubled me, and now to distract myself, I complimented her on what was evidently a purchase from the village, a finely worked bracelet of copper, that metal so abundant on the island after which it was named.

"Thank you. It has a figure on it, with an inscription which I can't make out. Perhaps you can tell what it says." She held out her arm for me to read the markings. I forced myself to ignore the smooth olive skin and the very faint perfume; I deliberately paid no attention to the tiny golden hairs on the back of her slim hand and the small dark veins at her wrists; I concentrated (something I had learned to do well lately) on the job at hand. The characters were of a very ancient Cyprian dialect.

"It says 'Joined to Fire' or something of the sort," I said, "and the figure -- perhaps Aphrodite, who was born and worshipped in this island, but I can't be sure. . . ."

She gazed curiously at the bracelet. "But she wasn't the goddess of Fire."

"No," I said, "but her husband was, and so I suppose in a figure she was 'joined to fire.'"

We walked on. The dust rose and mingled with the heat. "Why were you two talking about me?" she asked.

"Well, not only you, really. There was a letter from

Cyprianus at Carthage, and he's concerned about all of us."

"Oh. Many have fallen?"

"Yes; and scandal, it seems, no longer becomes the church."

"No longer?"

"Well, its origin is in scandal, isn't it? 'To the Jews a stumbling-block, and foolishness to the Greeks.'"

"But the Apostle's letter to Corinth? He wrote of our practice, the subintroductae , [*] and praised it as the better way if one is strong. . . "

"Well," I shrugged, "since Decius died, the Christians in Rome write that we will no longer be in danger; Gallus has commmanded that we are not to be harmed. A man no longer need fear for his family, and the Fathers say that therefore the opportunity is open for many to end unnecessary temptation which they no longer seem able to face."

She stopped walking and looked at me. "What do you think?"

"I think," I said, squinting toward the setting sun, "that I'd better do some more thinking."

That night it grew cold in the foothills and in our host's house the blankets were welcome. He retired early, so we did too, but could not sleep immediately and lay talking; her warmth was pleasant and less difficult than previous nights. We talked of business, and of our route, and soon I noticed that whenever she spoke, her breath stirred my hair. I silently recited the doxology. She shifted position, her arm brushing my back, and I ran through the Creed twice, quickly. These were futile measures, I knew, used out of laziness; formula resistance was short-term protection at best. I knew many had given up because that was all the protection they had known; and wasn't succumbing to temptation better than denial for no reward at all?

She was beginning to doze, so I sat up -- carefully, so as not to wake her. I looked at her face and watched her breathe. I knew that I loved her properly, but was there more? Of course. But was it well-directed? So far. But I understood why so many married, and why so many who did not marry in time lost their innocence, as Cyprianus had warned.

The night grew colder. Irritated at myself for falling into repetition, for none of these thoughts were new, I finally sought Grace in earnest, abandoning my formulas. I could not ignore the warmth next to me, full of potentialities. I had forgone them for the promise of a more direct line elsewhere, through conscious redirection of my natural response to them, but they still urged, always urged. Yet it was still subject to my control. She was happy, perhaps not so much as I, for she seemed to benefit less from this campaign of sublimation, but I had seen her great strength expended for my benefit, but then that too became part of the urging, and the urging was a chained animal, exhilarating in its ferocity and power, and always on the edge of chaos. Some had been destroyed in foolish attempts to rise even higher by deliberately dancing on the fleshly edge and found, too late, that they could not return from that edge, for that edge was already the fall. I had no desire to make such an irretrieveable mist ake; desire there was in abundance, but not for that.

I prayed. This was the moment for which we lived this way, and hard as it was to remember that when the natural temptation was upon me, the reward of remembering and sublimating was one that men would rarely know in after years. In the familiar pain of temptation and my struggle for the way through it, I recognized Grace, and He raised me and made me remember pains He had known by similar and greater denials, pains for which I and the others now traveled and attempted our feeble imitations of His footsteps. There were joys He had never known -- like the one implicit in her next to me -- although He had made those joys and blessed them and given them. There were pains that only He knew, and those also He had blessed and given. I forgot my own as I prayed, and when His blessing came on me, I forgot to be quiet, woke her, and she sat up and listened. Even as I received His blessing I realized that although there would always be communion, this might truly be the last time for this, for there was no promise f or the future, only a benediction on an obedient present, and I was reluctant to have it end. I lay down finally, exhausted, and she covered me, and I heard her voice, praying for me. Peace had returned, and my thoughts went beyond the stars.

I awoke later in the night. My mouth was dry and I raised myself partially and blinked in the darkness. Our blanket lay heaped at our feet, and I was sweltering. My eyes adjusted. Our legs were bare to the knees, and in my fog I couldn't help but admire her delicate ankles and slim legs. Her outline was indistinct, but graceful, as though even sleeping she were trying to please me, as she did for more mercenary reasons in the agora, where an attractive Greek couple does easier business than the beggars that lumber the market corners. Outside, the sinking evening star, she who was born in this island and poured on it her influences, reclined, sultry and majestic on the horizon.

As I watched her in the dimness, she turned, and her dark hair fell across my arm and her robe parted below her neck. Perspiration broke out on my forehead as I caught the scent of heady perfume. It filled my nostrils and I could do nothing but breathe it in; it mixed with the light of the heavy, cupreous star and bathed my face in fire. I stared, panic-stricken, at the lines of her face -- lips that had prayed for me now innocently breathed up into my face the scent of dark, fertile, cypress forests and hot, humid, night air and the semi-obscene musk of wild animals seeking mates in a blood-fed fever. I shook my head, still staring, but I seemed to move slowly and beads of sweat fell on her slim neck and glistened like diamonds under water, jewels for the divers of Ithaka, her skin the surface of an Aegean bay, beneath her white robe the breakers rising and falling, and I panted in the heat rising from the beach and was besieged with a sudden, violent longing to throw myself into the breakers to be carri ed under and out. . .

My wild eyes were drawn to the bracelet on her arm. The dim light of the hot setting star struck it, and the etching grew clear and every line was dark red fire streaming off onto her smooth arm; the figure of the goddess of Cyprus swam in the fire and pulsed, and with every pulsation the perfume grew in strength and Panic wildness, and with every surge of those breakers against that white sand the fire surged across her form -- until suddenly it was me that the fire touched, and as it seared me I had one last blessing of clarity.

I lunged to my feet and flung myself through the window. I slipped on the frosty ground, and the heavy shock of the fall jarred my senses free. I lay gasping next to the wall for a moment, wondering at the sudden cold; then hearing through the window her stirring sounds, I limped hastily around to the back of the house where I stood trembling, unable to think, as the evening star sank below the horizon.

Then it came to me. Of course! Hephaistos may have been the god of fire, but where did he get his fire? Who was he married to? And so, who, after all, was joined to Fire? I fell headlong into the grain crib and lay stunned and half-buried, until morning.

The bishop hadn't expected me back so soon, but he was surprised to find that I was in no mood for further discussion. Seeing first her laughing face, then my drawn one, he gave in and proceeded. After the ceremony, I embraced her with none of my former caution. Cyprianus was a man of understanding, as the old bishop had said, and even when the persecutions began again two years later under Valerianus, we were spared by Grace, and never regretted our decision.

And she left the bracelet with the bishop. She needed no help from the Cyprian.