Ivan Yefremov - Thais of Athens

The rocking and singing continued. The priestess moved her feet with the skill and control of a dancer as she approached the serpent. Having reached the right moment, she took his head into her hands, kissed it, then darted away again. The serpent struck with the barely perceptible speed, but each time the ruler of serpents guessed his intentions exactly and moved away even faster. Three times the young woman kissed the serpent’s head, evading his bite with incomprehensible ease, or offering him the edge of her apron, into which he sunk his long, poisonous fangs.

Finally, the irritated serpent rose up in a spiral, struck at the woman, missed and froze, then rocked and aimed again. The priestess bent her back, clapped her hands and in one lightning fast movement pressed her lips to the serpent’s mouth. The snake struck at that second, but this time he did not stop. He chased after the priestess, but incredibly, she managed to evade him, slipping through the narrow door behind the grate, which had been opened and shut by a fourth assistant in advance.

The clang of metal, the thud of the serpent’s body and the angry beast’s hissing reverberated along Thais’ nerves like a force of nature.

“What happens now?” she exclaimed in the Attic dialect, causing the Indians to glance at her with surprise.

Lysippus translated and the elder priest chuckled. “Nothing. We shall leave, the torches will be put out, and Nag will return to his cave. There is a platform where he can warm himself in the sun. The door will be shut while he is out there.”

“Is he very poisonous?” Thais asked.

“Come closer to my sister,” the priest replied.

Respectfully, and not without trepidation the Athenian approached the woman, who stood without anxiety or arrogance, regarding the Helenians. Sensing a strong smell which resembled that of a crushed corn lily leaf, Thais saw that the snake ruler’s apron was covered in yellow green liquid which dripped slowly to the floor.

“Poison,” the priest said. “With each strike, Nag prepares to bite and sprays it from his teeth.”

“Is this poison very strong?” Lysippus asked.

“This is one of the largest and most poisonous snakes in India. It can kill a horse or an elephant in one minute. A man or a tiger can live longer, up to two minutes, using your time scale. This poison is enough to kill thirty people.”

“Is he tame at all?” Eris asked.

“Nag cannot be tamed. The creature knows no gratitude, attachment, fear or anxiety. He is devoid of nearly all feelings typical for a creature with warm blood, and is like the worst kind of people in that respect. Only the incredible skill of our Nagini saves her from death, which waits for her at each moment.”

“Then why does she do this?” Thais glanced at the priestess, who was carefully rolling up the poison-covered apron. She looked like an ancient bronze statue with the strong outlines of a woman used to hard labor on the farm.

“Each one of us needs to test himself in the art, especially if it is dangerous and unknown to other people. In addition, the power of the Tantric training gives her reliable protection.”

“If Tantra can influence feelings, heart and body so strongly, can you cure the young artist of the overbearing and hopeless love for my friend?”

“Artists reside in the middle, between the ascetics and the followers of Tantra. Poetic thought does not fear temptation because its position is rooted in love, which is desire, and desire is a hope for continued life. True poetry discards all falsehoods and in that is akin to asceticism, but it also burns in the fire of Eros toward a lover or a Muse. This dual ability of an artist makes the cure difficult. But we shall try.”

“What is the essence of the healing process?”

“Each thought has an outward expression if one’s attention is strongly focused upon it. Persistent desire causes the necessary result.”

“Do you mean satep-sa? Hypnosis?”

“That too. However, it is more important to emphasize his yearning for Khado-Lilith, hidden in the heart of each man. Just like you Helenians, we have a legend of several races of people who preceded the current one. Helenians believe in races of the golden, silver and copper ages, which proves the common origins of such myths. There is one essential difference. We consider prior races to be more heavenly in origin, while you consider them more earthbound than contemporary people and therefore less evolved.”

“You are incorrect, priest,” Lysippus interrupted. “Are the titans and titanides inferior to the living people? Prometheus and his followers sacrificed themselves to save people from ignorance.”

“ … And ended up only increasing their suffering with increased responsibility, having given them a dream of free will, but not elevated them from the darkness of limited life,” the tall priest added.

“According to our myths, Chronos devours his children from Rhea-Gaea. Uranus also slaughters them. In other words, Time and Heaven wipe their fruits from the face of Earth. Does the legend mean that Earth, Nature or Shakhty are incapable of creating truly godlike people?”

“It means that humankind must ultimately recreate itself, evolving in knowledge and self-perfection. Our sacred texts speak of prior races of creatures who were spirits. I will not speak of the first three, as they are distant from us. Immediately preceding us was the fourth race with beautiful women of heavenly origin. Hebrew mythology does not acknowledge the series of various races but only includes once-created pairs of people, identical to modern humans.

However, they too have a legend that the first of men, Adam, had another wife before his human wife, Eve. Her name was Lilith. The legend made her into a harmful demon, beautiful but constantly causing harm to Eve until God sent three angels who exiled Lilith to the desert.

“Indian Liliths are different. They too can fly through the air, but they are endlessly kind toward people. The queen of these forewomen we call Khado. Then she was called Sangie Khado, and her beauty surpassed all imagination. Unlike the apsaras, Khado did not possess intelligence. They only had emotions. The dream of a beautiful human body and inhuman power of Eros lives among us as the memory of these Liliths.”

“I heard from the eastern people the legend of peri, the heavenly beauties born of fire. They also fly through the air and descend to their chosen mortal lovers,” Thais said, remembering her stay at the lakes near Persepolis.

“Undoubtedly it too is an echo of the memory of Lilith,” the elder priest said, paying increasingly greater attention to Thais. “Our task is to awaken this memory in the artist’s heart, guide it, and let the particularly skilled sacred dancers do the rest, displacing in the heart of the artist his deadly passion toward a model not wishing to unite her fate with his.”

“I have seen a real Lilith of the ancient Mesopotamians near the Euphrates.” Thais told them about the small sanctuary along the mountain path with the image of a winged woman in the niche over the altar. “I think of all the ancient female images, that goddess had the most perfect body. May I peek at your skilled dancers?”

The elder priest smiled indulgently, struck a small bronze disk and nodded at the interpreter, ordering him to leave the room. The Babylonian smoothed down his beard and rushed out. Apparently, the chosen temple dancers did not appear before just anyone. Eris suddenly remembered something and rushed off as well.

Two girls appeared from behind a hidden door between the statues of two elephants. The dancers wore identical metallic jewelry on their dark smooth bodies including wide, slanting gold sashes, necklaces, anklets, large round earrings and tiaras with glittering rubies in their short coarse hair. Their faces were as motionless as masks. With their narrow, slanting eyes, short noses and wide, full mouths, the two looked like twins. The peculiar build of their bodies was also much alike. They had narrow shoulders, slender arms, small pert breasts and thin torsos. This nearly maidenly fragility was in sharp contrast to the lower portion of the body. They were massive, with wide, thick hips and muscular legs, falling just short of giving the impression of brute force. From explanations made by the elder priest, the Helenians derived that these girls were from the distant eastern mountains beyond the River of Sands. They embodied most clearly the duality of people with their ethereally light upper bodies and massive lower halves, filled with earthy power.