…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… fox-headed amazement, when the shadow « He is the » said « one who seeth » quest everlasting of him ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… sang and inside …………………………………………………………………………... but nevertheless ……………………………………………… abrupt sparkling of deadly quiz …………………………………………………………… as though the horse had been killing itself …………………………………………………………………………………………………… a river-bread of shining pale of all these day-ladies ……………………………. to break ………………………………………………… for effective breathing …….. a town in the bush of April ………………………………… autumn was snowing in his head. He had lost the purity of his unknown birth and the many roads crossing their hands ahead of him were showing daily urge and the need for an uncovered space, a bareland for grey flowers and dizzy clouds, singing in the ocean the poems of decay. He had, in the night of nights forlorne, decided to launch into an unarmed quest for birth, his birth. Just as the houses were white and the sky azure and the greenery green he had to find his birth to be born out of something, a human need for body-making or a godly joke at the frail cup of a womanly universe.

(No pictures, only rhythm, remember !)

So he had gone his way, starting on a misty morning when the delicacy of slow-motioned time was patting his legs with a pleasurable urge. The son had risen once for all : behind his back, all he could guess was the lonely cloth of mist

gliding like an unending slope into the river he’d liked talking to

and scratching against the gentle beckoning reeds that were dancing a motionless green dance of talkative fingers.

On his way forward, he approached an urban area whereof the white walls were flickering from afar in the dry sands of lonely progress, then he entered the settlement itself wherein the sun’s heat was stifling at the doors of white, glaring houses, so he was in this town wherein he could drink himself cool and utter a few words to the few people he met, and ask where he was, and in the neighbourhood wherein he was a slave-auction was up. While walking towards main street and the centre, he could notice the auction was being porepared : he met slave-drivers, slaves tumbling down from the blows and strokes and cracks they were undergoing, lusty stares at women-slaves’ bodies — sometimes to please the crowd one of those « was whipped and lashed without mercy » or another was dragged along over the dust and sand, or another was drugged so that she be unsellable — in short, kept for oneself.

I thought I could not stand this, ‘I want to leave’, I said to myself.

Absent-minded, thoughtful, he was walking across that crowd. The fox-headed lovelace in the amazement of his shadow felt appealed towards a desert part of the town, but did not find the least souls there, ere he reached a desert lane at the end of which he haeard someone shrieking. As he came closer, he saw a woman of such beauty as he had never encountered.

Men maintained her against a wall, he understood she too had just been tormented ; there was such fright in her eyes that one could guess she had rather be sold.

‘No’, I said, ‘O want out’, ‘let me go !’, I said to myself.

One man among the group seemed of venomous strength, a cold hard-hearted power to the magic appeal any woman lets out in such circumstances. ‘Now you’ll be a good girl’, he said while the woman was shaking her head and mastering her sobs, ‘and you’ll let us bring you little slut to the circus, have you undressed and sold, won’t you ?’ She, glancing yes, he, smiling with pleasure, ‘you must be attired’ he added, and they brought her into a cave that had been made up for attiring slaves.

‘It’s unbearable’, said I, ‘I will out !’

There the fox-headed lovelace in the amazement of his shadow felt appealed and entered, as an ugly old crone was busy dressing the captive’s hair, spraying her with perfume, changing the pretty clothes for cotton-drawers, a bodice and two veils : one was meant for the face, the other for the whole body. He noticed they were welcoming the auctioneer ; marvelled at the slave’s beauty, he cheered the seller, though he wondered why he was not interested in keeping her for himself. He did not wait for an answer and began his usual examination : ‘the hair is wonderful, the eyes unparagoned, the teeth most healthy, the skin is of an exquisite whiteness and the bosoms will make the ugliest owner famous. Make her walk !’ He then assessed the motion of the legs, the swing of the hips, so connatural to female beauty, the curve of the loins and rump, her walking style. He left the room, casting an eye to the seller.

Once she was dressed, her wrists were fettered and she was brought out. She could attend the auction preceding hers : more than five thousand people were sitting on circular tiers around that ring, who saw a seventeen-year-old girl, black and nude, that was offered to their looks and laughs. The price rose gradually, till she was delivered to a horse-owner. Onto the tiers the fox-headed lovelace in the amazement of his shadow was appealed and joined the crowd so that he himself could see the woman appear whose beauty had secretely drawn him into that circus. The auctioneer spoke the audience quiet, ‘Here is the greatest beauty we’ve had for years, the most attractive, the wealthiest, the most valuable.’ The future slave appeared on the ring, the crowd hushed instantly ; her wrists had been made free, but two wardens, unmoved, were about her, ‘Here she is, my friends, I let you admire this face’, he said, taking her top-veil off, and he started undressing her hair which fell down over her shoulders.

‘Lo !, this is even more … charming, look !’, and he made the body-veil fall down, the crowd stood up. He took off the bodice but with instinctive bashfulness and extreme swiftness, she put her hands upon her breast. The snakes in the tiers and the shaky crowd hissed and the auctioneer ordered her arms to be kept backwards. Her frail skin then received some of the tearsshe shed. She met the seller’s triumphant stare, ‘Never will you see such a body again !’, tearing the cotton-drawers.

The fox-headed lovelace could but get lost in a maze from the rabble’s leering eyes to the slave’s tears. He knew he was doomed to live out this drama, to be unable to do anything, he endeavoured to forget he may have known her well, even shared some of her days, as she was being shamed for her faith, and defeated by her rising price. Now she was ordered to walk out on four ledgs as though the horse had been killing itself.

As for him, fox-headed, he had just become aware of what had been beckoned to him right from the beginning : that naked, crying woman, now a slave but endowed with a terrible light on that felonious ring, that indeed was to mean something : what did all this mean ? Poor fellow men, who think I am speaking of virgins, it was each time the souls I was speaking of.

                                                                                                              [To be continued - January 2023]

Jerome Smith-Collier

jer_smith-collier.auteur@laposte.net

Title Photo :        (mine). Central photo : « Bore Track of Strzelecki Desert, Sth Australia » by      Kdliss (Wikipedia)