Carmen Boullosa - Cleopatra Dismounts

The eight lines closed the pass that led to the Sirens and exposed the greatest number of Amazons to the battlefront. To our left, down below, getting their feet wet in the flood that licked the trunks of the trees on the bank, the eunuchs were tying long ropes to the trees in readiness for their role in the fight.

The Amazons’ horses, lined up alongside each other, facing the front the same as their riders, formed up perfectly according to the pattern that Hippolyta had ordered, in which the queen occupied the central position. If they had had the shields of hoplites and not the half-moon shields they did have, which did not interlock with their neighbor’s, they would have composed an invincible rampart against any foe.

Then a small contingent of rebel males came into sight, racing toward us, determined to get past us, escape through the pass, and reach the Sirens. Where the bend in the hill came to an end in what I called the cut and where the cliff-face, now thickening out, again narrowed the road, Hippolyta positioned us, a reserve of armed personnel, a tight defensive wall, to be ready for a stampede of men who were approaching as fast as they could, which wasn’t fast, for they were mounted on shabby beasts of burden. They themselves, in contrast, were dressed in purple caftans and wore wigs, necklaces, and bracelets. Their eyes had a garish makeup and their cheeks were rouged, like those of Lydians. Their eagerness to reach the Sirens left their ranks in disorder and blocked their lines of sight, so that they were unaware of our presence.

Hippolyta shouted, “Stop where you are, you fools!”

But they did not halt. There was a good number of them, but they were badly mounted on nags, oxen, donkeys, mules, and camels. They were advancing in total disorder.

Hippolyta repeated her order: “Stop where you are, you fools. Don’t you recognize the song of the bloodthirsty Sirens? Keep on running and you will meet the worst of deaths! The creatures are waiting on the seashore to devour you. They have the breasts of women, but they have vultures’ heads and lions’ claws. They are monsters!”

Without halting a second, the panting men cried out haphazardly, “Get out the way! Let us through, you useless fools! Open the pass, you mannish women!”

They were without weapons. The most warlike of them carried branches broken from fruit trees as they hurried along. Some branches still had leaves and unripe fruit dangling from them. Did they really plan to use these instead of weapons, to batter our heads with green peaches? Their war cry was as absurd as their weapons. “The sea! the sea!” But even this was a wild confusion of shouts, intermingled with the threat “Death to the Amazons!”

They approached us nervously. We gave a half-turn and quickly took up a battle formation. We watched them come on. On the broad stretch of land chosen as the battleground, they looked like a bunch of rebellious desperadoes. Their principal enemy was their own desperation to answer the Sirens’ call. We received them with calculated coolness. They were distraught and suffering even before we touched them.

The collision between the two unbalanced forces was deadly for the males. The Amazons battered them with mauls, knocking them off their mounts and clouting them viciously with unmitigated rage. Eager at all costs to reach their insane goal, the men could only respond by scratching, biting, and throwing useless punches into the air or against the Amazon shields.

The contingent of men was routed and lay scattered on the ground, their caftans torn, the wigs lost, bones broken, bodies thrashed and beaten. The Amazons retired to let the eunuchs sweep the battlefield clean of the defeated. They pushed them down the slippery slope that led to the rocky river bank. In addition to the beating the Amazons had handed out, the eunuchs hustled the males down with less compassion than they’d have for animals, not caring if a leg was broken or a body crashed into the rocks below.

On the ledge of the bank where the waters of the river were rising, the prisoners were tied to the trees. They still resisted, spitting, scratching, and biting. “The sea! the sea!” they kept shouting. Half a dozen Amazons exchanged blows with the few men who still had the energy to try to move toward the pass. Now a second contingent of men was on its way. Equally badly prepared for battle, they came puffing and panting toward us. We lined up in the same formation as before, seven lines, seven protruding wedges, and we received the attack. The result was the same again. The men went tumbling down. We fell back. The eunuchs got on with their job. A third group now appeared. These males showed the same desperation as the others, but they were dressed differently. They wore caftans of scarlet and gray made of rough wool, double tunics of the sort worn by petty kings — the outer one, the kandys , with long sleeves dyed a Phoenician purple, with figures on fighting falcons embroidered in gold, the inner one, the chiton , with white spots on it.

The Sirens had not quit singing. The noise of battle had not dimmed the appeal of their song for the men. Now the sound of steel was stilled and the frightened cattle were lowing quietly, but the bleating of the men, “The sea! the sea!” was counter-pointed by the continuing song of the Sirens. The noise of battle had been only background noise to the insidiously seductive voices of these monsters. “It’s the auditory equivalent,” I thought to myself, “of the smell the Amazons were giving off last night.” But at once I rejected the thought and put both my hands to my ears. True, I had rejected the thought but it persisted. “It sounds exactly like the smell of masturbating female bodies. That’s why men can’t resist it.” I fought off the idea again, telling myself, “This sound is as sticky-sweet as honey, and the smell of the Amazon genitals was strong, almost rotten, a sea-smell like shellfish.” Then the idea counterattacked. “But you must realize that this song sounds the way men perceive it. Yesterday you were smelling things the way women smell them. Today you’re hearing things the way men hear them. It’s the same thing. If there is a difference, it’s because what you perceived yesterday when you got whiff of the women is now passing through the hearing of males, but essentially it’s the same thing.” In answer to this thought, I said, “Thank my lucky stars for being born a woman!” Then I added, rebuking myself, “That will do, Cleopatra! You’re getting carried away by the combative spirit of the Amazons!”

Throughout all the fighting, I had stuck close to the fiery Hippolyta, who used her half-moon shield to protect us both from the scratches, bites, and feeble blows of the males. Cleopatra stood out among our troop for various reasons, my Greek clothes, my not having my own horse and for the standard I carried, but above all, for my coolheadedness, my long tousled hair, and the curl on my forehead hidden by a helmet feather. Otherwise I was one of them. I was the standard-bearer for the defenders, until bedeviled perhaps by the rash idea of the identity of the smell of vulvas and the Sirens’ song, I heard, for the smallest fraction of an instant, an atom of time, exactly what the men were hearing. To me its sound was like the most delightful sexual delirium blown toward me on a gust of wind, without kisses but as if I had been struck by lightning, as if tiny tingling sensations were creeping all over my naked body, on the verge of breaking my skin but drawing no blood in the end. I was tempted for that fraction of a second to turn round, hurl Hippolyta off the horse, and gallop right into the throat of the Sirens, if that would have made the sound any more intense.