Jurgen - James Branch Cabell (reading a book TXT) 📗

day is warmer than you would think, sitting here under this canopy. And besides, what call have you and I to be bothering over the pranks of common mariners, so long as they do their proper duty?”

“I was thinking, O woman with unusual eyes, that these are hardly common mariners.”

“And I was thinking, Duke Jurgen, that I would tell you a tale of the Old Gods, to make the time speed more pleasantly as we sit here untroubled as a god and a goddess.”

Now they had passed Camwy: and Anaïtis began to narrate the history of Anistar and Calmoora and of the unusual concessions they granted each other, and of how Calmoora contented her five lovers: and Jurgen found the tale perturbing.

While Anaïtis talked the sky grew dark, as though the sun were ashamed and veiled his shame with clouds: and they went forward in a gray twilight which deepened steadily over a tranquil sea. So they passed the lights of Sargyll, most remote of the Red Islands, while Anaïtis talked of Procris and King Minos and Pasiphaë. As color went out of the air new colors entered into the sea, which now assumed the varied gleams of water that has long been stagnant. And a silence brooded over the sea, so that there was no noise anywhere except the sound of the voice of Anaïtis, saying, “All men that live have but a little while to live, and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body; and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.”

They came thus to a low-lying naked beach, where there was no sign of habitation. Anaïtis said this was the land they were seeking, and they went ashore.

“Even now,” says Jurgen, “I have seen none of the crew who brought us hither.”

And the beautiful dark woman shrugged, and marveled why he need perpetually be bothering over the doings of common sailors.

They went forward across the beach, through sand hills, to a moor, seeing no one, and walking in a gray fog. They passed many gray fat sluggish worms and some curious gray reptiles such as Jurgen had never imagined to exist, but Anaïtis said these need not trouble them.

“So there is no call to be fingering your charmed sword as we walk here, Duke Jurgen, for these great worms do not ever harm the living.”

“For whom, then, do they lie here in wait, in this gray fog, wherethrough the green lights flutter, and wherethrough I hear at times a thin and far-off wailing?”

“What is that to you, Duke Jurgen, since you and I are still in the warm flesh? Surely there was never a man who asked more idle questions.”

“Yet this is an uncomfortable twilight.”

“To the contrary, you should rejoice that it is a fog too heavy to be penetrated by the Moon.”

“But what have I to do with the Moon?”

“Nothing, as yet. And that is as well for you, Duke Jurgen, since it is authentically reported you have derided the day which is sacred to the Moon. Now the Moon does not love derision, as I well know, for in part I serve the Moon.”

“Eh?” says Jurgen: and he began to reflect.

So they came to a wall that was high and gray, and to the door which was in the wall.

“You must knock two or three times,” says Anaïtis, “to get into Cocaigne.”

Jurgen observed the bronze knocker upon the door, and he grinned in order to hide his embarrassment.

“It is a quaint fancy,” said he, “and the two constituents of it appear to have been modeled from life.”

“They were copied very exactly from Adam and Eve,” says Anaïtis, “who were the first persons to open this gateway.”

“Why, then,” says Jurgen, “there is no earthly doubt that men degenerate, since here under my hand is the proof of it.”

With that he knocked, and the door opened, and the two of them entered.

XXII As to a Veil They Broke

So it was that Jurgen came into Cocaigne, wherein is the bedchamber of Time. And Time, they report, came in with Jurgen, since Jurgen was mortal: and Time, they say, rejoiced in this respite from the slow toil of dilapidating cities stone by stone, and with his eyes tired by the finicky work of etching in wrinkles, went happily into his bedchamber, and fell asleep just after sunset on this fine evening in late June: so that the weather remained fair and changeless, with no glaring sun rays anywhere, and with one large star shining alone in clear daylight. This was the star of Venus Mechanitis, and Jurgen later derived considerable amusement from noting how this star was trundled about the dome of heaven by a largish beetle, named Khepre. And the trees everywhere kept their first fresh foliage, and the birds were about their indolent evening songs, all during Jurgen’s stay in Cocaigne, for Time had gone to sleep at the pleasantest hour of the year’s most pleasant season. So tells the tale.

And Jurgen’s shadow also went in with Jurgen, but in Cocaigne as in Glathion, nobody save Jurgen seemed to notice this curious shadow which now followed Jurgen everywhere.

In Cocaigne Queen Anaïtis had a palace, where domes and pinnacles beyond numbering glimmered with a soft whiteness above the top of an old twilit forest, wherein the vegetation was unlike that which is nourished by ordinary earth. There was to be seen in these woods, for instance, a sort of moss which made Jurgen shudder. So Anaïtis and Jurgen came through narrow paths, like murmuring green caverns, into a courtyard walled and paved with yellow marble, wherein was nothing save the dimly colored statue of a god with ten heads and thirty-four arms: he was represented as very much engrossed by a woman, and with his unoccupied hands was holding yet other women.

“It is Jigsbyed,” said Anaïtis.

Said Jurgen: “I do not criticize. Nevertheless, I think this