Something About Eve

    And beyond that the way was yet more murky. To this hand and the other hand Gerald could just dimly divine the ruined porticos and domes and pylons of incredibly ancient buildings: he seemed to go among obelisks and many-storied square towers. But all was very gray and dubious. He wandered now in a cloudiness wherein not anything was indisputable.

    He passed across a narrow bridge beneath which showed a dark and sluggish river. In that water Gerald could see moving, many-colored figures which were not strange to him. For Evasherah was there, and Evaine, and Evarvan, and Evadne also, smiling at him now for the last time, and he could see how notably they had all resembled one another. And yet one more woman was there, a blue-clad woman in a crown just such as Maya had worn before she became his wife, but the face of this woman Gerald could not clearly discern.

    And upon the farther bank of the dark river one sat among a herd of black swine, and the eyes of all these swine gleamed meditatively at Gerald through their ragged white lashes. The man arose: and Gerald saw this swine-driver was that same young red-haired Horvendile who was Lord of the Marches of Antan.

    Then Horvendile began to speak.

47. How Horvendile Gave Up the Race

    HORVENDILE spoke of the race of Manuel, and of the joy, and the vexation, too, which the antics of this so inadequate race had been to Horvendile. And it was of Merlin that Gerald was thinking now, for it seemed to him that here was yet another poet who did not any longer delight to shape and to play with puppets, because Horvendile was saying:

    “Now I abandon a race whose needs are insatiable. For tall Manuel lived always wanting what he had not ever found, and never, quite, knowing what thing it was which he wanted, and without which he might not ever be contented. And Jurgen also, after Heaven’s very best had been done to grant him what he sought for, could reply only that he was Jurgen who sought he knew not what. And all their descendants have been like these maddening two in this at least, all seeking after they could not say what. Nobody can do anything for such a race! For their needs have stayed insatiable: their journeying has been, in every land and in every time, a foiled journeying: and in the end, in the inevitable unvarying end, each one of you treads that gray quiet way of ruins which leads hither and to no other place.”

    “Well, for that matter,” Gerald said, “it seems that you too, Horvendile, have some engagement in this hog wallow.”

    “I endeavor, in point of fact, to become familiar with this last stretch of limbo, against the time of my own possible need not ever to be remembered anywhere.”

    “—And for my part, I came of my own choice and in self-protection,” Gerald continued, with his chin well up. “For I must tell you, Horvendile, that I have had little peace since our last meeting.”

    Then Gerald (putting out of mind those attendant, very hungry looking pigs) related the epic of his journeying, without reserving anything out of false modesty, now that he talked with a confrere. He told of how he had descended into the underwater palace of the Princess Evasherah and of the orgies which he had shared in. He spoke, a bit contritely, of the amorous excesses he had been led into by the wives and the three hundred and fifty-odd concubines of Glaum during their master’s absence. With unconcealed embarrassment he told of how the people of Lytreia had endeavored to detain him in their temple, to reign there as their tribal god, because they found his nose to be so much more majestic than the idol they hitherto had worshipped. He confessed to his dalliance with the enamored Fox-Spirit. He frankly admitted that he had not behaved well in seducing Evarvan and then deserting her after her marvelous beauty had become to him an old story. He told of how Queen Freydis had come repeatedly to him with the most generous proffers of her realm and person; and he spoke of this matter with visible compunction, because he could not deny that after three or four bouts he had repulsed the infatuated poor lady rather rudely.

    In fine, said Gerald, since every man ought honestly to acknowledge his own weaknesses, he could get no real peace in the Marches of Antan. So at the last he had stolen away, into this quiet, gray untroubled place, of his own accord, just to be rid of so many persons who took unfair advantage of his over-amiable and fiery nature....

    And Horvendile, at the end of Gerald’s repentant narrative, observed: “I comprehend. You have been, in brief, the devil of a fellow and a sad rip among the ladies.”

    “Oh, but you wrong me! Such a suspicion is very horrifying and quite unjust! No, it is merely that not even Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, and the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, is immune to over-constant temptation.”