Carmen Boullosa - Cleopatra Dismounts

But the time was so brief that my body had no time to react to what at that moment seemed the wisest thing in the world to do. It vanished like a spark. Their songs enchanted me because they were wordless, or, if they had words, I couldn’t distinguish them. They were songs laden with age-old experiences and stories of long ago. I thank the kindly gods for allowing me to hear them. Is there a similar song for women? Will I ever hear it? Will it come whispered to me from the halls of the dead, the last sound I hear in my life on earth, as I breathe in a finer air? Will I hear something like it? Or have I been hearing it for years without allowing it to enter, a sound seeking to penetrate to my soul? That song is what bound me to Mark Antony for fourteen years and fed my desire to meld our two stories into one. Once the sensation had passed, the song sounded to me like spilled honey, annoyingly sticky, with hairs and fluff caught in it. How could it have sounded so different a moment before?

I now became aware of the battle. More aggressive males were making for us. All had a lost look in their eyes, with no will to maintain their composure, sweating profusely. I was sick of seeing their agitated bodies hurtling toward a pointless martyrdom, boldly confronting us instead of pleading for the pity their situation deserved. I raised my eyes to the clifftop. Centaurs with lascivious eyes were watching the battle from caves in the face of the unscalable wall. Indifferent, like us and the eunuchs, to the songs of the monsters, they were enjoying the sunlit spectacle below: handsome women in short clothes pulled tight at the waist, with naked legs, battling with men.

While the centaurs were enjoying the sight of the Amazons’ beauty, the men were blind to it. The deluding song made them prefer the hideous destroyers to their beautiful protectors. They struggled to free themselves from the Amazons, screaming imprecations: “May dogs eat you for having exceeded the proper limits of a woman! You should cut off both your breasts; they’re good for nothing, you beardless men!” and other such ugly curses that brought howls of laughter from the centaurs. The men could not see the beauty right before their eyes, because the promise of knowing everything cast a spell on them. Their desperation brought puzzling phrases to their twisting lips: “Not even a sword could penetrate you and give you children! Wombs of stone! Skirts of scraping rock! Your milk poisons newborns!”

Eunuchs and Amazons continued their work, but the moment arrived when it wasn’t possible for the eunuchs to hold so many beside the rocks. To keep the men back, we rounded up cattle and drove them at them. Some men leaped over the backs of the animals. Others were trampled underfoot or stunned by mauls. But some thrust the animals back, determined to proceed at any price. As we re-formed, we could not drive the cattle toward the rearguard, because the place was a milling throng of donkeys, camels, oxen, ostriches and men. The men had not intended it but their animals were shielding them.

The fight against the rebels was exhausting. Animals whirled around in panic. We had to find human heads to smite among biting animals. The cry “The sea! the sea!” directed us to where we could deliver a blow, after dodging the horns of an ox or the snapping teeth of a donkey. Our formation broke up. As we forced our horses through the mêlée, we left a passage open. Quoting the poet, I called out:

No shepherd am I from the mountain’s steep

Who watches over his wandering sheep!

And I followed up with another verse:

No fisherman I, drawing nets from the deep .

In chains the Sirens I’d like to keep .

I received approving laughter from the Amazons for my wit. It lightened their weariness and renewed their vigor. Hippolyta was standing on the back of her horse and fighting from there. My thighs were hurting me after being squashed for so long by the nervous beasts, trapped in this whirl of violence. I did not need Hippolyta’s shield, because there were no men around to hit me with their fists. But the constant collision with the animals hurt me badly.

Then I saw another contingent of men riding on ostriches. They were dressed in caftans the same color as the plumage of their mounts, but before they collided with the cattle, the singing stopped. Silence. The Sirens had stopped their song. The honeyed melody, which for a second had thrilled me to the core, by this time had left me cloyed beyond belief.

Instantly the infatuated frenzy left the men. Now they started to feel the force of the blows they had received. “Oh, my ribs!”. . “Oh, my jaw!”. . “Oh, my bones!”. . “Oh, oh, oh!” The riverbank was thick with these cries from the tied-up men.

Returned to sanity, their delirium past, those who were still on the battlefield left off pushing against the cattle. Now nobody was interested in going to the sea. A fair number gave way to fear, scared that the Amazons, once aroused, would continue to fight. The bravest of these frightened men exchanged glances with the Amazons, trying to ingratiate themselves, while the cowardly ones tried to race back home, without even a word of thanks. But they found no way out, rounded up like cattle themselves. Beasts of transport and burden, panicky and disorderly, moved here and there unpredictably, even though the men no longer tried to break through. A considerable group of men, with shaven heads like eunuchs but mostly covered with turbans, now appeared on the edge of the battlefield, behind the ostriches and their riders. They were clad in long robes of rough wool, and lowly sandals. They were shepherds, who knowing their job, started to impose order on the animals, separating them out. The frightened animals calmed down under the expert management of these bald heads.

Our stress left us. Over the hard faces of the warriors was spreading a benign smile. Someone let out a cackling laugh. Three others joined in, then ten, then a hundred. In no time at all they were all hooting with laughter. Quite a number of men stopped complaining and laughed, too. Where before they had been keen to scratch and pummel us, now they wanted to hug us, still highly excited but no longer crazy. The most sensible unloosed their companions and made bandages out of the frayed ropes and improvised stretchers for the most seriously wounded. If they had looked incompetent as warriors, now they impressed us with their sense of organization and manly decorum. They exuded cool charm and good-natured courage. The youngest ones with the first growth of hair on their lips collected up from the mud bracelets, necklaces, turbans, and wigs, and formed a human chain to wash them clean in the river. At the water’s edge, those who could walk were washing off the mud that they had picked up while tied to the trees.

The group of Amazons who had taken up their position on the far flank of the hill, far smaller in number than our group, commanded by the fierce and allegedly cruel Melanippe, came and joined up with us. She was accompanied by a large pack of magnificent greyhounds, all the same color, like the horses.

“Hail, Hippolyta! We failed to protect our musicians and poets to the full. We knew from the start that we wouldn’t arrive in time to lock them into their palaces. So we spread a huge net to catch them like fish in the clearing between the hill and the thick clump of fruit trees. It offers the only route to the sea. One by one they blundered into it and we stopped their ears with wax. Then we tied them to the fruit trees to make sure they stayed there. We weren’t aware at the time that Acusilaus had given us the slip.” Melanippe’s face showed her grief and dismay.

The old man had zigzagged his way to the sea. In a zig he had escaped Melanippe’s nets, in a zag he fell into the claws of the monsters.