Carmen Boullosa - Cleopatra Dismounts

Prepare me to be raped by gods of lust,

Display my limbs to men no one can trust,

Who pass their aching nights with open eyes.

Let slaves sing out the beauty of my thighs.

Let boys beat drums and ring out chiming bells

And touch my woman’s body where it swells,

Desiring to consume me with their lips —

But let them know for gods alone my hips

And thighs are meant, for them alone.

So let men weep and make their fruitless moan!

They walked for a long stretch, carrying me on their shoulders, still singing. A good part of the way I had to lean back, because we were going uphill. Then they halted and stopped singing. The music was long gone. They uncovered my eyes and removed the bandages from the rest of my body. They lowered my feet to the ground on what appeared to be the final section of a steep, muddy road. Stars were blinking bright as if extremely close to my face, hurting my eyes with their brightness. The dusk that had been prolonged since the bull ran off with me had finally ended. The sun’s disc had been swallowed by the earth. Once again I closed my eyes, afraid that my stare might fix them immovably in place, but I had to open them again when the Amazons whispered to me to walk at their pace.

The air, full of cool dampness, was pleasant to my skin. It was night and I had no clothes on, but I wasn’t cold. The air smelled of greenery, as if thick vegetation were nearby. It wrapped me round with its strong smell. I was dressed in green air, my naked skin clad in airy greenness.

With a few steps we reached the crown of the hill. The path gave onto a level surface that, as far as I could determine, was circular. In its center stood a grove, its trees silhouetted against the sky. As I approached, its branches bathed me in moist aromas, as if they were stretching their buds out toward me, and their the leaves were sticking to my skin. Perhaps this sensation was the result of the Amazons’ hypnotic songs. Cleopatra was absorbed by the trees. My veins were the trees’ veins, the channels of their leaves. I was Spring, wreathed in flowers. I was Summer, naked and carrying a garland of wheat. I was Autumn, with dirtied feet — though not with grape juice but with the mud of the path — and I was Winter with my hair tousled, whitened here and there by the starlight. I was possessed by the spirit of the wood. I wanted to halt there amid the trees and wait till I sent out roots. A madness overwhelmed me, an arboreal fever. On my tongue I felt small leaves sprouting, their tips playfully tickling my lips.

I wanted to run through the trees but my fever held me in place, motionless, transformed into tree. I let the Amazons carry me a few steps more along the hilltop. Then down a slope, then through the foothills, where they ended in a precipice. Here was no more mud, only rock. They lowered me to a low ledge and I clung there to a projection of rock. They followed and we entered the mouth of an almost inaccessible cave in the sheer cliff face. Inside were three steps lit by flickering torches. Above lay a long, broad gallery with a low smooth ceiling. There were gathered about three hundred women and the blind musicians. The queen of the Amazons, stretched out on an enormous polished stone, as black as river rock, was singing as follows:

Through my mouth will pass your words.

Listen, Cleopatra, and repeat them.

But it was she who repeated them to a hypnotic melody, reinforced by the chords of the blind musicians. They had covered her upper body with a thick layer of clay and grass that by now was practically dry. The mud hid her feminine curves. Her torso was rounded like an egg with her arms inside the covering. She fell silent, and the musicians beat on resonant drums.

They placed me on a rock similar to Hippolyta’s, but less shiny. The gray stone was cold but it was as smooth as a jewel. Hippolyta started her song again, first in a low key and with a stately rhythm. Then, after a few phrases, the tone harshened and its piercing notes nearly deafened me. She sang rapidly like a woman possessed or disturbed, and she made me uneasy. While she was singing, they bathed me in aromatic water and with the palms of their hands beat on the dry clay over her chest, one after another, not violently but as on a drum, each one giving it a couple of beats, then turning aside to make way for the next. Then after touching her, they began to dance with feverish frenzy.

Hippolyta was singing,

I am the mouth of my dead.

I am the mouth of the bodies.

I am the body of the mouth of their bodies.

I am the lips of their dead.

I am the body of their dead.

I am the life of their dead in my body.

I am the vulva that the bull failed to penetrate,

the vulva that gives life to the voices of their dead

through a channel of shining semen from the handsomest youth.

My two legs are the two lips of the mouth of my dead.

My torso is the tongue of the dead.

My two arms are the thousand words the dead speak.

My hair is the laughter of the dead.

Behind her, a chorus of Amazons was speaking words that I could hear because they were repeated over and over.

You have placenta in your center,

You have placenta in your center.

I forbid you fear, hear me, O hear!

You have placenta in your center.

At the same time Hippolyta was going on with her song:

My curl is the loving kiss of the dead.

My nipples are the coughing of the dead.

My knees are the folds in the lips of my dead.

My mouth is the mouth of the living, the mouth of the dead.

In my vulva is an eye. .

When she said, “In my vulva is an eye,” the mud that covered her broke into two pieces. The mud was dark, but inside it were visible streaks of lighter soils with which it had been mixed. The handsome torso of Hippolyta was perfectly clean. Left naked in this way, the ever-youthful Amazon, stretched on the black stone between the two pieces of her shell of clay, was dazzling, the most lovely of lovely women. Imprinted on the underside of the clay, the dazzle of her beauty was echoed there, as she continued:

In my vulva is the eye that looks into the well of life.

Her long, dark, thick hair slid in a tangle over her shoulders. Her cheeks were burning, her expression was entirely detached from those of us who surrounded her. She responded to nothing going on around her. Her face showed no trace of her knowing where she was. She was speaking into the ear of the gods, she was present among them, we were invisible to her, she had detached herself, gone to the furthest extreme, and was singing from a city of shadows. Her olive skin seemed light in comparison to her dark, enormous nipples which were of the same color as her fleshy lips, her scanty, black pubic hair and her deeply dark vulva which she left visible by keeping her legs apart and bent. Of the same dark color was the hair in her armpits, as dark as the mane of the horse who was her daily companion.

I am the mouth of my dead.

I am the mouth of their bodies.

She had taken up again her disturbing song, this time in a trance from its beginning. Dozens of Amazons were dancing by now, performing graceful but feverish movements. As they danced, they were going off, perhaps, to the same city where their queen was singing. They were the drop of oil that turns the iron to gold, the firewood to gold, the ashes to gold, the water of the sea into coins minted from gold. A dance of gold. Those dance movements were the drop that transforms the flesh into gold. They beat their heels on the floor; they were beatings of the winds. They swirled their arms; they were flashes of brightness, scales of the fish that the fisherman’s knife scrapes off. Their thighs were pealing bells, they were metals clashing, they were water and tide, the gold of the bone, the blood that kindles the color in gold.