Carmen Boullosa - Cleopatra Dismounts

But I knew immediately, as if in answer to my suspicion, that the bull and I had ourselves been the fearful whirlpool across from the rocks. We ourselves were a twofold threat to ships. Behind our lustful pleasures lay the menace we fear and cannot avoid on our trip through life: the dangerous love for another and for that other’s body. The invocation of the sea-nymphs and their answering presence had drawn us away from the island where the rocks lay shrouded in smoke and fire.

The beautiful nymphs with their green hair were like sisters, different in feature but with some traits in common. There were some fifty in number. They followed us along, perched on the backs of whales. After them appeared the Tritons, swirling around us. We all moved along at a furious speed, the Greek garments of the females blown open like sails by the wind. My bull proved to be the swiftest of ships. The sun, round and enormous, like an orangey peach, pursued us relentlessly, blazing continually from the line of the horizon. One after another, the nymphs swerved from their tracks to introduce themselves to me.

“Cleopatra, my name is Galatea. I am as white as milk.” Really she was as white as the sea-foam left by our passage. On her green hair lay a spattering of white foam, and on her white breasts too.

“I am Actaea, she who shifts the restless sands. Greetings, royal queen!” Her skin was the color of sand. Her gleaming eyes were gold-tinted.

Each one was as enviably beautiful as the other. Beautiful! The evening sun was covering them with its velvety light and made them even more beautiful. How was it possible that these delightful bodies had ventured to interrupt the infinite pleasure the bull had been giving me? Compared with them, the bull was now nothing but a brute animal. The waters had darkened its coloring, dulling its appeal.

“I’m Euagore, my queen, she who murmurs softly.”

The Nereids did not crowd me or come all at once in a discourteous rush. First one and then another, giving me time to enjoy studying the shapes of the clouds or bathing in the foam raised by the dances of the chubby Tritons who performed the most unexpected moves, accompanied by their shoals of fish. I’d laugh, laugh with gusto, in admiration for the way their human-looking arms cut through the air like fins through water, forceful, elegant, swift. I’d listen to them trumpeting on their immense seashells. Then along would come another nymph, waving a branch of coral. Then another Triton, this one bearing an iron trident rusted and crusted by its long contact with salt water.

Though this scene was fascinating, it did not make the lasting impression that the simple act of crouching to get into the Roman cart had made on me. Nor did it thrill me the way my contact with the bull’s body had done. My brain started spinning from the rush of sensations. “Let’s begin at the beginning, Cleopatra,” I told myself, in an effort to compose myself mentally. “To begin, the bull repeats the myth of Europa’s journey, undertaken after her dreaming that two continents were fighting over her beauty. Why did you come for me, dear bull? So that Cleopatra will wage a struggle over two continents?” As I thought the words, Jupiter let out a howl, as if he’d been transfixed by a spear, and all the nymphs disappeared from sight. The Tritons fell silent, swallowed by the sea. The sun skulked behind a cloud. Slowly the bull sank into the water, which climbed up above my feet, covering my legs, thighs, and waist. “Cleopatra, you’ve misread things,” I told myself. “Think again!” And the sinking ceased.

I cried aloud, “The truth is that the number of the continents is not two but three, and they cannot belong to any queen, even though she were the darling of the gods and the living incarnation of Egypt’s Isis. Yet if the gods gave her their vote and set her astride the bull’s back to send her across the sea, the queen is able to unite the continents in loving friendship, arranging from Africa’s shore a marriage between the two, to form one single territory.”

The words were barely out of my mouth, when Selene appeared above the sea, her moonlight glistening on the white horns of the bull, on its head, its neck, its broad back. The nymphs reappeared, as beautiful as before, and the Tritons returned from their golden palace beneath the waves and sounded their horns, trumpeting vigorously but without the terrible violence they employ to rout the enemies of the gods.

“A single Earth!” I repeated. The Tritons raised themselves farther above the surface to reveal their majestic tails, and the whales and the nymphs turned into waterspouts. “A single continent that is two in one, one in two, each at peace with the other. With neither trying to impose itself on the other, their gods will dine together in convivial ease.”

I raised myself by grasping one of the wet horns and with the other pressed back down the floating folds of my purple robe, for the bull had picked up speed again, swimming like a dolphin. My broad cloak rippled gaily on my shoulders; I would create a single continent, where gods and animals walked side by side in harmony.

Here the bull addressed me, while my thighs navigated its course: “Cleopatra, there is only one way to hold on to power. Not to harangue, not to bribe, not to chastise, not to fail in your administration, not to make gold out of stones — all these are sound guidelines for a ruler. But your only way to preserve your throne is to be Isis incarnate and make yourself a queen of kings. Be Isis! Be the glory of womankind!”

The Tritons approached me and, each fondling in his fist something that could have been an erect penis, they sang to me in fluting tones that imitated women’s voices.

I am the sovereign mistress of the earth.

Hermes himself first taught me writing’s worth

To scribe all things, both sacred and profane.

My laws control mankind, where’er I reign.

Cronos, my father, rules in Heaven’s house;

Osiris is my brother and my spouse.

I bring the earth’s best fruits to mortal men.

Each night I make the stars shine bright again.

Then the vastness of the sea rumbled thunderously, as if its profound and enormous tongue were playing tricks, and there on the ruffled surface appeared an opening from which arose Neptune, god of the seas, a huge, bearded giant, as white as marble, with purple eyes and red lips. He turned his head to stare at me. He was grasping in his right hand his erect penis, extraordinary, beautiful, and his arm jerked up and down and he spattered the sea with drops of his silvery jism.

Then he spoke:

Be thou the goddess dear to women all.

For thee they built Bubastis’ mighty wall.

’Twas thou who marked off earth from heaven’s height

And thou who taught the stars to shine their light

And Sun and Moon to course through day and night.

Thou guide of ocean’s ever-restless tides,

Thou teacher of where human good abides,

Bringing to men the partners that they need

That in nine months may come forth love’s ripe seed.

Thou taught to offspring how to pay due heed

To parents and before thy rod have quailed

All those who in their pious duty failed;

Then aided by Osiris, limits set

To ills that fragile human lives beget.

Turning toward me, he showed me the lowest part of his belly, opened like a vaginal eye. “You have, O goddess, the eye that sees all things from the flesh. You gave it to women and closed it in men, so that women might find in them the pleasure that heals the pain that comes from seeing all. Between their legs men carry the organ women need to make the pain of being bearable.”