THE LABYRINTH

Her name was Elfea, and she was the first woman the gods ever set aside for me. I came to know of her through my dreams while worshipping in the temple by the ziggurat, the temple of Bel, where dreams are bestowed upon those who ask. We met shortly after—seemingly by accident—near the fabric trader in the Plaza of Sellers amid the buzz of a thousand merchants from a hundred lands, and the first mutual touch of our eyes confirmed something both of us had known previously only in dreams. Tonight I was setting out to meet her again, at the edge of the maze of alleys that surrounds the market, to elope away from the City and the laws that separated us.

I left the back room where I slept with my brother, behind my father’s shop, as stealthily as I was able. The night man had just called for the second time. It was the Hour of the Ibis, the hour before midnight, and my lover and I were to meet at the third night man’s call, in the first alcove north of the Plaza. Now, standing just within the door of the shop, I realized this was probably the last time I would step across this threshold.

The hour was still new; if I left now I would arrive early. Close about me I held my cloak, trying to keep out the dry, chill air. I wished I could look in on my parents, but I could not. The girl I loved, you see, was an Untouchable, and for my people to marry such a one is unheard of. My lover and I had talked about where we should again begin our lives. Beyond the wastes there must be some good land, we both thought, some small habitation where the earth was rich and people lacked the complexities and judgements of the City. We would go there, we agreed, and so gave substance to our naiveté.

Tonight we would flee through the wastes. We would not think of the lions or the wolves, or the hyenas that lick the bones of the dead there. We would think only of our freedom in some far village whose name we did not know and where no one would find us.

I stepped into the street. The stars hung in the heavens like tiny shards of ice. The air smelled of salt. I breathed the night and it felt hard and resistant inside my lungs. The street, lined with the mud dwellings of shopkeepers, was empty. The shops were hidden in shadows and only dark lines divided them from the night. I set off.

The roads in the City are narrow. Often only two or three men abreast can pass through one. They turn and twist like a snake in its death throes. The feet often stumble at night, for one cannot clearly see the ruts of carts. But I knew exactly how to tread. I knew where to turn to the left or to the right, and where to walk straight. The market plaza was not far.

The plaza itself is a wide square. Only the palace of the king occupies more land in the city. It is a wide face of earth upturned to the heavens, but all about it a labyrinth of passageways and threadlike alleys lies like a stone cobweb, and this labyrinth is fully known only to the oldest vendors of the market. However, on the side from which I was approaching, the east, I knew my way. The alleys were those I ran as a boy, barefoot then. Now my sandals picked up the dust there as I trod to this meeting with a woman I was forbidden by ancient law.

At last after many reversals north and south through the alleys of mud and stone I came into the plaza. It was empty now except a few vacant stands. By the sixth call of the night man it would begin to fill again and my lover and I would be far away. Only the sky would accompany us, and whatever memories from our pasts that we bore in our heads.

I rubbed my hands together. The desert chill was strong now, and trying hard to get in to me. My pockets provided them only the most meager of shelters.

I listened. The City was still, like a great animal asleep. There was only a gentle breeze. In a flight of fancy I thought I could hear all the lovers of the City breathing their soft sighs—sighs of happiness in consummation, sighs of longing for meetings planned but unfulfilled. But I would not be numbered among those latter unfortunates.

Briskly I strode across the plaza, turning to the right, to the north. The first alcove was where the gourd merchants kept their wares, though at this hour the gourds would be stacked neatly in clay chambers. From its opening upon the plaza, an alley narrowed into the alcove. Only one man abreast could walk there. I stopped and waited.

So dark was it in that small corner that I was unable to see even my hand upraised before my face. But nothing could pass by without my knowing. In a short while she would find me here.

Slowly, steadily, as minutes and minutes fled by, the cold ate into me. I had not anticipated it being so oppressive. My toes were crying for blood, and going one by one numb for the lack of it. I stamped them and heard the echoes that I made. The alley, I reflected, was like a throat, the plaza like the lungs, and the great gates of the city the mouth. The wastes outside, and the sky above, peopled only by the sharp blue stars, were the atmosphere this leviathan breathed.

And the world? A god. We live in its belly, I thought. I am inside the belly of a god. Is it aware of me? I wondered. Is a god aware of the worlds and multiplicities within it? I found this line of speculation intoxicating, and for a time it seemed to carry me beyond my bodily suffering.

Then a footfall, without any discernible place of origin, startled me. I felt as though snapped from a slumber. My body was trembling from the cold.

Elfea! I called. The labyrinth swallowed my words. I did not hear another sound. Yet I had not imagined the footfall, of that I was certain. I concluded I had not been asleep, only very still and relaxed, aloof from the night within the womb of my reverie.

I began walking north, or what I thought must be north. Even with the stars overhead it was not easy to be sure. I called my lover’s name again. But only the salty breeze on my face, borne from the distant shoreline, whistled to me through the dark. I trod back again, weaving through the narrow lanes, where the doors and windows of shops were like dark open mouths and eyes. The plaza was not far. I sensed its emptiness like a yawning maw; she could not be there.

Then I heard the third night man’s call, from somewhere to my left. It was now midnight, and the Hour of the Hare was beginning, the hour when magic and darkness are uppermost, and the gods least self-aware.

I returned to the alcove. She could be late, I thought. She must be late. That was it. It was natural for a woman to be late, I believed. Their lives and thoughts are so much more complicated than a man’s, but what did I know of women except the faces of those I passed in the streets? What did I know of them, except desire?

The footfall. I heard it again. Someone was coming toward me. But in the alley it was difficult to say whether they were approaching me, or passing somewhere beside me in some parallel alley.

Elfea! I called.

The sound of footsteps ceased. I heard a voice, small and far away as from a well where the waters are deep. Or was it but my echo?

Elfea!

I turned to the north, what had to be north. Elfea!

Then I heard my name. Shamas!

Yes, I am here, I called, north of the alcove!

I did not wait for an answer, but cold and desperate, fled along the serpentine passageways. Straight. Right. Straight. Zigzag. South now—or so I thought; certainty of my relationship to this chaos of ways was fast vanishing.

I called out again. My voice sounded dull and quiet in the maze of mud; even sound, it seemed, was swallowed up here.

Where was Elfea?

I heard the patter of feet, but ahead of me, behind me, or somewhere else—I could not tell. Then my name came to me on the wind, sweet even in its saltiness. My name from my lover’s lips.

In my heart I gave praise to the goddess of the moon, who is the guardian of lovers, for her face was now rising in the heavens.

The Street of Potters, I thought—the voice sounded as if it came from there. It is a thoroughfare that traverses the labyrinth. Then I wondered if I should call to Elfea, telling her to return to the alcove. I stood, my breath heavy, my thoughts flitting madly, waiting for some answer to my questions, but none came.

I made for the Street of Potters.

The Street was filled with pots—old pots, cracked pots, pots not for sale. Not a soul presented itself to me, though I spied a beggar asleep or dead in a corner, and thought I saw one cat, or the bright shadow of a cat, hugging the wall and disappearing behind the great pots of clay.

Down the Street of Potters I walked. I called Elfea. Sometimes I thought I heard her answer, sometimes I thought it must be the wind. I wondered what magic was keeping us apart. I wandered to the end of the Street, past the hulks of pots standing cold and unattended like lonely children.

I heard a voice—or the echo of a voice, I could not be sure of anything—somewhere to my left. Shamas! it seemed to say. Shamas, my name, now metamorphosed into a riddle.

The next street I entered upon was less a street than an alley. Still, the citizens designate these footways Streets in honor of the professions that inhabit them. This was the Street of Brands, where slaves are marked for their owners. It is a cruel place, a place I had not gone in years. Here, arrayed before me were the racks that bound the slaves, the pokers that lay in the hot coals, the brands that left their crisp, charred faces on the flesh of captive men and women. And I realized I too was a captive this night, of the labyrinth.

Tears now sprang to my eyes. I was tired, my body stiff and ragged with cold, my hands unfeeling. I had heard a voice, a sweet voice, but of Elfea or of some succubus haunting the night there was no way to tell. I had followed it here, to the end of this wicked lane, and there was no one to greet me. Why did I leave the alcove, that place that now seemed so many worlds away? Lamenting my mistake, I slumped to the cold dusty earth, my back against a wall. My companion was a harness, a slave harness made of goat’s hide, dangling from a rack. How cruel we are to one another I thought, but I had no one to blame for my present state. I had done this to myself. Like a lamb into a lion’s den, I had walked into the labyrinth and it had swallowed me.

At last I stood, not knowing what else to do. I had to find the way back to the alcove where the gourds are kept. But I would not go the way I had come. From the Street of Brands I knew, passageways led out, north and west, to where they struck the Street of Mirrors. That long road, as straight as any in the maze, came at last to a tangle of lanes that met north of the alcove. This is what I thought. This is what I was thinking when I heard what had to be Elfea’s voice, yet again.

Yes! I cried out. Elfea, I am here. And I heard her voice, so very clearly, like a whisper in my ear, coming, yes, from the Street of Mirrors.

I went at a full run, not thinking of the danger, the play and trick of light and shadow until at last my foot caught some object upon the path and I fell headlong. I was stunned, but not seriously injured, though my hands and knees were undoubtedly scratched. I stood, wobbly from fatigue and what I now recognized as a piercing thirst.

Elfea, I said, as if she were standing beside me, and when a voice returned to me, seeming so close, so at ease in its expression, I held out my hands to find her in the pale dark but found instead my own face reflected in a sheet of polished bronze.

I had come to the Street of Mirrors.

Elfea?

No answer, or none I could be certain of.

I looked at the pale ivory orb that floated now full above me, imploring the goddess. Let me find my one true love this night! But the face on the moon, which unbelievers say is no face at all, to my eyes appeared ambivalent.

So I wandered, my body trembling, down the street. The mirrors, like the empty faces of half-wits, mocked me, as one by one their splendorous moonlit reflections gave way to my reflection, and then at last reflections of my reflection. And as I wandered through this corridor of images upon images, a sensation of giddiness gathered steadily within me, fueled by the conviction that these faces were more than just my own self reflected. No, I thought, they are separate souls gathered here to torment me. For every eye that I saw was an eye of ridicule, and every face a face of pity—pity I did not want and had always thought I needed not. And then it seemed to me a surety that the gods are indeed self aware, and that they, the immortals, demand only this one necessary power for their office, which is that they be able to mock men and their fates, so that we in our self-importance can know we are less than we believe.

Forgive me, but these and others were my thoughts in that place, induced by a terror and cold and a thirst that had no precedent. I realized in my misery that the ancient Laws of Untouchability were not merely the laws of men, but of fates and unseen powers, powers I would not and could not defeat.

But the last inexplicable thing I saw that night, before the dawn, before I awoke from the phantasms of shadows and silver moonlight, was the face, in a mirror, of Elfea. The face of Elfea, reflected keenly, brightly, which when I turned to see the source of its reflection, I found mirrored in the faces of a dozen or a hundred other mirrors. And all her eyes, so liquid and dark in the moonlight, were staring into mine, accusing me with the anguish of their desire.