CHAPTER XXV

XXV

Calpurnia… a blow, almost a whistle down below, tinged with my name, a female echo… Cornelia?....Maybe … Who was Cornelia? This name probably had no sense for me up here…The only thing that seemed to count was that ethereal flow which I knew it wasn’t me.… I knew … Perhaps I imagined… guessed….Hovering in that uncertain air, not even aroused by some breeze or that hot wind that sometimes flogs Southern summers. No, it was something you couldn’t touch, flowing onwards… Mother… I cannot hear you as I used to…Why can’t I feel you? Perhaps this lifeless being is no longer able to be shaken by your force. … No, I cannot face it myself all alone, lost within this….How would I call it? Maybe now that hope of fertility has definitely run away from me her presence has no sense anymore…Yes… it might like what Gallic priests say, that the immaterial body, after getting rid of the corresponding physical being, wanders around until another one absorbs it, as some Greeks thought?... Maybe… yes, yes… You, my lord, could even be there, waiting for me, hovering somewhere….You? ...Will I be able to recognize that flow of force that you are… could be now? And then…? If we are not bound to incarnate in another … person…or animal…might we be destined to remain here merged inside this immense invisible intangible stream…? Didn’t our priests or sibyls want to tell us about this , such as ghastly thing, to keep hanging on something, such an airy thing, who knows… till when….? What about if our … fluxes… would never meet? Why did I take that for granted? Why don’t fear or anxiety take hold of me, as I would have expected…? Yes, it must be like that, this not-being… despite all...Sibyl…Mother…. If only I could bid him farewell… or maybe it was you, my husband, who somehow had felt me throughout this…space...in which I…was floating.... or maybe flowing? Suddenly something seemed to vibrate within that flow which was my trembling being… I knew I was not able to see but I thought I might perceive something almost visually…something that was approaching though this waving flow… Could it be Charon’s boat? It certainly reminded me of a vessel… But it did not give off that subtly ethereal, uncanny scary force that would have been expected of it. It started to appear among my perceptions as some kind of…solid (?) reality. Majestic-like…. Even dazzling. Its sails could be like huge purple-and-gold tapestries… Its poles, ivory and chryselephantine… Who knows if, after all, my disembodied being had finally decided to leave that … undefined place, so as to return to that inert body of mine which would then be suffering ill people’ usual restless dream.. However that bizarre vision in gold, ivory and purple was absurdly tinged with this uneasiness that infected my heartbeat, as I had grown aware it was no simple dream, this what was happening right there…That quiver, fleshy, panting and wet, had got hold of my ability to feel, which I kept intact… No, no incarnated fertile Mother Goddess was presiding that exulting brightness of fruitful blood... but some kind of out-of-measure ruthless cunning, proper of a serpent, like a big sacred cobra or Apophis, the magical Egyptian snake….feeding on the sacred seed from the other side of the world, that which comes from another face of the Goddess, that of Fruitful Beauty and Sensuousness, now incarnated in her favourite son, the future Roman king that is wedding the Keeper of Divine Fertile Force, the queen of the big river, which makes her realm fruitful. All of it was growing more and more evident, like those dark nipples, caressed by those hands whose lines, veins, long fingers were as mine as my own body, like that frantic shaking , aroused by that same wet warmth filling each void of your being that so many times had made me lose control… No, I cannot lose it now… Some merciless dry breath got through my disembodied being, some kind of serene wrath that I knew I had to use right then. Had I been prepared just to face this? Yes, perhaps this was the second step to follow… No, I could not invoke the Sibyl to beg protection and resilience… I could only look within my bodiless being for enlightening…. Kornel… no…no… I suddenly thought I had to concentrate my thoughts where that fertile motherly sprout remained hidden, though misty and barren, perhaps petrified within that abyss that I was then… That last remainder of fruitfulness and physical deliverance that I had experienced so many months before rose up before me, as solid as your firm hands ascending on my thighs and the acrid smell of body juices…and that long conversation we both had till dawn… Kornel…… standing before the atrium of that temple on those sea wave-washed stairs…. waiting for you… maybe through myself? But it was not that bearded mask with red golden braids but those noble chiselled features, so similar to those you find in any bust of marble or porphyry stone, But so alive now that I could almost touch the blood beating under the carved cheekbones and the vigorous arms that could be perceived through that tunic which had been dyed in all the colours of the forests. I suddenly thought to be regaining my fleshiness. That ardent stream coming from my womb, where your heir should have sprung, making me speedily flow towards that eerie blue-and-silver look which was scrutinizing my belly, as if trying to possess it in the only way available at that moment? Wasn´t it really solid, that vigorous virility running through my body? Wasn’t it that, your blue-grey look, ecstatic, almost puzzled to find me there? No, those tiny dark breasts weren’t mine. Nor that voice, either low howling or childish laughter, almost calculatingly musical, exhausted by that desire….which was really mine… and that I felt concentrated in the bottom of my being and then waving upwards, now menacingly intense, dark…. A serpent which, dart-like, went through that womb, piercing that virility which was filling it up and that newly-begotten life sprout within that cave which had momentarily been consecrated to the goddess of sensuousness and plenty… No, mother, no, no… Don’t let this that they are making come to life… Mother, goddess, lady…Do not allow the goddess to incarnate within her… It would be a sacrilege… Do not consent that none of the three succeed in what is being engendered! No… Cut it down right now…

Your eyes looked frightened. Had they recognized another living force in that look which was facing yours? Maybe the face of the Divine Mother, which Romans don’t worship, the Crone, the Bringer of Death and Lady of the Underworld? Were you facing Her in myself, just discovered, or was it that small fleshy thing whose occult nature you were beginning to unveil? It was then when some intangible shiver started running through my being while I was beginning to realize what I had unchained. I could appreciate that icy sparkling which veiled your eyes.. Gods, was this what I had been destined to….? Some heavy dark fog seemed to swallow me at the same pace I felt myself more and more reduced.. No, no…I couldn’t let myself be taken away this way…Mother, mother, mother….

–Calpurnia… my child!!! Thank you, Bona Dea, thank you, My Lady, for taking her back to us…

Cornelia’s salty tears were mixing with the sweat which damped my unravelled hair on the pillow. Or were they my father’s, whose face, unexpectedly ashen, I felt so near?