Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Aphrodite by Pierre Louÿs (hot novels to read .txt) 📖
- Author: Pierre Louÿs
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Then Chrysis began to smile, and said to the Hindu, “Sing to me.”
She sat with arched back in her marble armchair. Her pins were like golden rays behind her face. Her hands, resting upon her breast, spaced between the shoulders the red necklace of her painted nails, and her small white feet were reunited upon the stone.
Djala crouched near the wall and recalled love songs of old India:
“Chrysis…”
She sang in monotone:
“Chrysis, thy hair is like a bee-swarm, at rest upon a tree. The warm south wind blows through it with the dew of love and the moist perfume of the night flowers.”
The young girl, with her slower and softer voice, took up the song:
“My hair is like an infinite river in the plain where the flaming evening flows away.”
And they sang, one after the other:
“Thine eyes are like blue water-lilies, stemless and still on the pools.”
“Mine eyes in the shadow of my lashes are like deep lakes under dark branches.”
“Thy lips are two delicate dowers where the blood of the deer has fallen.”
“My lips are the burning edges of a wound.”
“Thy tongue is the bloody dagger which has made the wound of thy mouth.”
“My tongue is encrusted with precious stones. It is red from mirroring my lips.”
“Thine arms are rounded like two bars of ivory and thine armpits are two mouths.”
“My arms reach out like two lily stems whereon my fingers cling like five petals.”
“Thy limbs are the trunks of two white elephants which carry thy feet like two rosy flowers.”
“My feet are two water-lily petals upon a pool; my limbs are two swollen water-lily buds.”
“Thy bosom is a shield of silver.”
“It is the moon—and the moon’s gleam on the water.”
A deep silence fell. The slave raised her hands and bowed forward. Chrysis went on:
“I am a crimson blossom, full of sweet scents and honey…. I am like the sea-hydra, soft, living dower of the night…. I am a well, in an ever-warm shelter.”
The prostrate one murmured very low:
“Thou art awesome as the face of Medusa.”
Chrysis placed her foot upon the slave’s neck and said, trembling, “Djala…”
Little by little the night had come, but the moon was so luminous that the room was filled with blue radiance.
Chrysis, naked, gazed at the still gleaming of her skin, and on her body where the deep shadows fell upon it.
She rose abruptly. “Djala, of what are we thinking? It is night and I have not yet gone out. Only sleeping sailors will be on the Heptastadion. Tell me, Djala, am I beautiful?
“Tell me, Djala, am I more beautiful this night than ever? I am the most beautiful woman in Alexandria; dost thou know it? Will he not follow me like a dog, he who will presently pass into the oblique regard of mine eyes? Will I not make of him what pleases me—a slave if it is my caprice; and can I not expect from the first who comes the most abject obedience? Dress me, Djala.”
Around her arms two silver serpents twined, upon her feet were fixed sandals attached to her brown ankles by crossed leather thongs. She herself buckled around her waist a young girl’s girdle. In her ears she placed great circular hoops, on her fingers rings and seals, on her neck three necklaces of golden images, chiseled at Paphos by the hierodules.
She studied herself for some time, wearing only her jewels; then drawing from a coffer where she had folded it a vast garment of sheer yellow linen, she wrapped it around her, draping herself from head to foot. Its diagonal folds furrowed that little of her figure which could be seen through the light tissue; one of her elbows thrust out under the close tunic, and the other arm, which she had left bare, carried a long train so that it would not drag in the dust.
She took in her hand her fan of plumes and went out nonchalantly.
Standing on the steps of the threshold, her hand resting against the white wall, Djala alone watched her mistress depart.
She walked slowly along the houses in the deserted street where the moonlight fell. A little dancing shadow frisked behind her steps.
ON the jetty of Alexandria, a girl stood singing. Beside her, seated on the white parapet, were two flute-players.
“Deep to the woods the satyrs drove
The oreads;
And helpless to the mountains fled
The water nymphs.
Hot forms, wet-eyed, with flying hair,
Were seized and bent
Grasswards, their bodies half-divine
Quivering, spent.
Eros finds always on the lips of women,
Painful and sweet desire.”
The flute-players repeated: “Eros! Eros!…” and sighed into their doubled reeds.
“Cybele, seeking Attys, sped
Across the plains.
Eros had pierced her heart with love
Which he disdained,
For Eros ever matches scorn
Against desire.
She drew the icy gentle breath
Of welcome death.
Eros finds always on the lips of women,
Painful and sweet desire.”
“Eros! Eros!… ” Shrill cries leaped from the flutes.
“Syrinx ran weeping to the shore—
And then beyond…
Cheating the Goat-Foot’s lusty will.
Her trembling shade
Whispered in reeds beside the stream.
So breaking these,
Pan bound the dead soul in the pipes
and crying flute.
Eros finds always on the lips of women,
Painful and sweet desire.”
While the flutes continued the slow refrain of the last stanza, the singer held out her hand to the passers-by who stood in a circle around her and received four oboli which she slid into her footgear.
Little by little, the crowd dispersed, curious to watch the passing of its numberless self. The noise of steps and of voices covered even the sound of the sea. Sailors drew, with bent shoulders, merchandise upon the quay. Girls who sold fruit passed by, their full baskets in their arms. Beggars besought with a trembling hand. Asses laden with full leathern bottles trotted before the sticks of their drivers. But it was the hour of sunset, and an idle throng, more numerous than the active crowd, covered the jetty. Here and there groups formed, between which women wandered. One heard well known silhouettes called by name. The young looked at the philosophers who contemplated the women.
These were of every order and of every condition: from the most celebrated, dressed in light silks and shod with gilded leather, to the most miserable who walked barefoot. The poor ones were not less beautiful than the others but less fortunate only, and the attention of the sages dwelt by preference on those whose grace was not altered by the artifice of girdles and the encumberment of jewels. As it was the eve of the festival of Aphrodite, these women had full license to choose the garment which became them best and some of the youngest had even risked wearing none at all. But they shocked no one, for they would not have thus exposed themselves to the sun if any one of them had been marked by the least defect which could lead to mockery.
“Tryphera! Tryphera!”
And a young woman of joyous aspect elbowed some passers-by to rejoin a friend she had seen among the crowd.
“Tryphera! Art thou invited?”
“Where, Seso?”
“To Bacchis’s.”
“Not yet. She gives a dinner?”
“A dinner? A banquet, my dear. She is freeing her handsomest slave, Aphrodisia, on the second day of the festival.”
“At last! She has perceived that they come to her no longer except for her slave.”
“I think she has seen nothing. It is a fancy of old Cheres, the ship captain of the quay. He wanted to buy the girl for ten minae; Bacchis refused. Twenty minae; she still refused.”
“She is mad.”
“What wouldst thou have her do? It was her ambition to have a freed slave. Besides, she was right to bargain. Cheres will give thirty-five minae and for that price the girl will be free.”
“Thirty-five minae? Three thousand, five hundred drachmae? Three thousand, five hundred drachmae for a negress?”
“She is the daughter of a white.”
“Yes, but her mother is black.”
“Bacchis declared she would not give her for less and old Cheres is so much in love that he has consented.”
“Is he invited, he at least?”
“No! Aphrodisia will dance at the banquet as the last course after the fruit and it is only the next day they must deliver her to Cheres, but I am afraid she will be fatigued…”
“Don’t pity her! With him she will have time to recover. I know him, Seso. I have watched him sleep.”
They laughed together at Cheres. Then they complimented each other.
“Thou hast a pretty dress,” said Seso. “Didst thou have it embroidered at home?”
Tryphera’s robe was of a thin glaucous stuff entirely worked with large iris flowers. A carbuncle mounted in gold gathered it in folds on the left shoulder; the robe fell like a scarf as far as the metal girdle; a narrow slit which opened and closed at each step alone revealed the whiteness of the skin.
“Seso!” said another voice. “Seso and Tryphera, come, if you don’t know what to do. I am going to the Ceramic Wall to look for my name written there.”
“Mousarion! Whence comest thou, little one?”
“From the Pharos. There is no one down there.”
“What meanest thou? One needs but to throw in a line, it is so full.”
“No turbots for me. So I am going to the wall. Come.”
On the way, Seso recounted again the banquet project at the house of Bacchis.
“Ah! At Bacchis’s!” cried Mousarion. “Thou rememberest the last dinner, Tryphera: all the things they said about Chrysis?”
“Thou must not repeat it. Seso is her friend.”
Mousarion bit her lip, but already Seso was uneasy.
“What? What did they say?”
“Oh!… Slanders.”
“People can talk,” declared Seso. “She is worth more than all three of us. On the day she will be willing to leave her quarter and show herself at Bruchion, I know some of our lovers who will return to us no more.”
“Oh! Oh!”
“Certainly. I would commit follies for that woman. There is no one more beautiful here, believe me.”
The three young girls had arrived before the Ceramic Wall. From one end to the other of the immense white rampart inscriptions written in black succeeded each other. When a lover desired to present himself to a young woman it was sufficient for him to write their two names with the gift which he proposed; if the man and the gift were approved, the woman remained standing under the writing until the author returned.
“Look, Seso,” said Tryphera, laughing. “What nasty joker has written that?”
And they read, in big letters:
BACCHIS
THERSITES
TWO OBOLI
“To mock women so should not be permitted. As for me, were I the one named I would already have made an inquiry.” But farther on Seso paused before a more serious inscription.
SESO OF KNIDOS
TIMON SON OF LYSIAS
ONE MINA
She paled slightly.
“I remain,” she said.
And she backed against the wall under the envious looks of the passing women.
Some steps farther, Mousarion found a demand which was acceptable if not so generous. Tryphera returned alone to the jetty.
As the hour was advanced the crowd was less compact. However, the three musicians continued to sing and to play the flute.
Becoming aware of an unknown whose stoutness and garments were a little ridiculous, Tryphera tapped him on the shoulder.
“Well!
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