Carmen Boullosa - Cleopatra Dismounts

Hippolyta’s expression changed, as if she were suddenly back with us. Her voice lowered its volume and the musicians responded by falling silent. A gesture from her let us know that she had heard something; it had broken in on her flight, forcing its way into her delirium. Then the galloping of horses resounded in the cave. The sound came from all corners, even from the roof. Hooves were racing, getting closer to us. Nearer and nearer every moment. Shouts in the ears, drops of orange splashed on their eyes, darts hurled into their chests.

The delirious dance of the Amazons ended, stopped by the beating hooves.

They lit more torches, bathing the roof of the cave in light. It was solid rock, without cracks, a huge, unbroken block of stone, on which sounded the rapid passage of numerous horses. The sound became deafening. They were now right above us. Then it stopped. Silence. A moment of total silence, followed by pawing of hooves, loud and close.

By this time my body was free of all the oils. The Amazons were paying me no attention whatsoever. We were all listening intently to the sound of the hooves on the earth above. Underneath them, there in the echoing cave, we were vibrating like a drumskin, an echo of the echo.

Then came a storm with a different sound, a beating of gigantic wings. The sound thundered above our heads. We had all been frozen in place from the moment we heard the hooves. Now menaced by the new sound, we dashed about, terrified. But nothing happened close to us. The wings kept beating, heavily, slowly, frighteningly. But they were not present among us. We turned aside our bodies to avoid being hit, crouching or darting from side to side, dodging a blow that never came.

We were grotesquely disconcerted, like clappers without bells. Then we heard a voice. Of what? A bird? A man? A croaking speech, an eagle’s word or a leopard’s? What did it say? I couldn’t understand. Yet it bordered on the comprehensible. It came from the mouth of the cave. The beautiful face of a bird, with a blunt, rounded beak edged with blood-red band, its round, lidless eyes gleaming intensely, was lit up by the lamp it was carrying. The hand had a human shape, but it still remained an eagle’s claw. The face was both a bird’s and a man’s, though it had no skin on it. It came into the cave. Surrounding its face were masses of dark plumes that were mingled with the thick, well-combed hair of a man, falling to his shoulders. Across its chest hung ten strings of pearly and golden beads. The hips were clad in a linen skirt. It bent its body to move into the low gallery. The cave seemed too small to accommodate the enormous god. It sat down on the second stair and once again pronounced the disturbing words. I wanted to understand them. It was saying something I ought to understand. What was it reciting? Out from the beak came polished words, carefully enunciated by the tongue. Were they words? They were the articulations of a man-eagle, a woman-lion. They sounded like Ethiopian, then Hebrew. Now they were Syrian, now every language I knew in one. It was a troglodyte language, both none and every one simultaneously, the roar of a beast, the song of a nightingale, the voice of the wind and sea. The language of the gods! Is this what poets strive to express?

The words had a strange effect on me. They drove me to shift position; up became down, right became left. I danced, whirling my soul and mind around.

It finished speaking and put the lamp on the ground, lighting up bare feet, enormous handsome legs, and the skirt embroidered with a series of figures carrying the solar disc on the head, supported on the horn of the moon, and then it got up. There was no room for it to stand fully upright. It raised its arms and lifted up the roof of the cave, detaching it from the hilltop with an overpowering sound! The god of the rising sun raised his arms even higher, stretching his body to the full. The stars became visible beside us. The god seemed to grow even more. The roof of the cave moved upwards again, supported by the hands of this terrifying giant, and started to glow red. The stars disappeared from sight, and the centaurs — it was they whose hooves we had heard — started to tumble from the cavetop, all at the same time, down onto the edge of the hill, crowding together as they fought for a foothold. Magnificent, mounts without equal, torsos unparalleled, faces of unrivaled character! Gathered there, they formed a living frieze, so perfect in shape that only their movements proved they were not the finest of stone sculptures! Seeing the Amazons, whose beauty was enhanced by the light of the torches, they hurled themselves upon them, their penises erect, in a rush mad enough to shame Chiron, lascivious, drunken, the long hair of their armpits soaked with sweat, their eyes glittering, panting to gorge on this banquet of women! The Amazons had left their bows and quivers, lances and maces, axes and shields down by the sea, to attend my welcoming ceremony without the least sign of bellicosity, and now they clung to each other, racing around, as their only form of defense. The enormous god, infuriated by the behavior of the lubricious centaurs who were grabbing at any woman who came within reach, blew on them in his rage. His freezing breath put out the torches on the walls and made the centaurs recoil. The Amazons, the musicians, and I, though we were hugging one another, shivered with cold. The god stamped his heel on the ground, making it quiver like a drumskin. He stamped a second time, driving us away from him with the force of the blow. The earth shook and we were sent in the direction of the lusting centaurs, who defied the earth tremors in their desperate desire. From the point where his heel had hit, there burst out a stream of fire, a fountain of steepling flames, and from the depths of the earth we heard the voice of Vulcan complaining: “Who is stealing fire from my forge?”

The flames shot up vertically and the heat warmed the circle we had formed around them. The god blew again toward the centaurs, four times, once into each of the four points of the compass. The centaurs fled, but the four slowest he froze into stone where they stood. The god was ice and fire. Ice his breath. Fire in his extended hands, turning the rock to glowing red. There was fire in his staff, fire in the stamping of his heel, fire in his angry breast, but his breath was freezing. The four petrified centaurs were fixed at the cardinal points and their heads supported the rock. The god lowered his arms and with a gesture invited an Amazon to bring him his extinguished lamp. He lit it in the fountain of fire. Following his example, the Amazons lit their torches in it. Once again, from under the earth, Vulcan protested, “Give back the fire of my forge!”

The bird-headed god with his extraordinary hair stamped again on the ground. The fountain vanished, swallowed by the ground. The four centaurs remained there, turned to illuminated pillars, their stony penises still erect. The rock turned a whitish hue. The Amazons clustered around me.

We left the cave in a hurry. It was now open on all sides, ripped open by the god. I thought to myself, “If the god could violate a vaginal gallery like this, which seemed to defy all attack and whose location was known only to the initiated, how could he fail to inspire in the centaurs a desire to mount the Amazons?” But immediately I rejected my idea. It was an unworthy notion, conceived in darkness, stupid. Though the centaurs were divinely handsome in body, and under other circumstances the Amazons would have been impressed by their beauty, their violent onset had been idiotic. Their misunderstanding of women transformed carnal intercourse into a slapstick farce. They had discerned in the women what was truly alive in them, the alivest part of their living, their desire. And they wanted to steal it, cut it out, snatch it away in order to satisfy their thirst for violence and cruelty. To violate! How repulsive! Through my head there passed the beauty of the centaurs, now tainted with a need to vomit. They were flesh at its most rotten. They were rotten with decay even though they had not yet died. And to think that the poets had described the warring of the Amazons as something ignoble and unworthy. The Amazons commit no rape when the battle is over. They do not inflict violation on women.