Winged Pharaoh by Joan Grant

Author:Joan Grant [GRANT, JOAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC014000
ISBN: 9781468307993
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2012-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

The Speakers of Evil

Then I went to that place where those whose tongues had been a poisoned weapon suffer the pain that their venom gave to others. Among them are not those whose speech was foolish or without thought, but only those who maliciously echoed the cruelty in their hearts.

First I saw a man who lay upon his face, and upon the soles of his feet fell the cutting blows of a thin rod, faster than the hooves of a running ibex. He had stolen a flawless pearl, and to conceal what he had done he had accused his servant of the theft. And the servant had been beaten until he died.

Then I saw a woman who had been one of the lesser wives of the king of an eastern people. The royal wife had been as pure in heart as she was in body; but for jealousy of her this concubine had filled the king’s heart with hatred, telling him that when he was away from the palace, the royal wife pleasured herself with any whom she found desirable, even if they were of low caste. The queen was too proud to defend herself, and because her husband believed this of her, she wished for nothing except that he should put her to death. The king was blinded by his jealousy, and he drove her forth from her body, not with a dagger or with poison, but by rape. And to the concubine he gave fifty sacks of gold pieces.

Now the concubine lies stretched upon the ground, her widespread hands and ankles tied to wooden posts. Beside her there is a jar, and one by one the gold pieces that once she delighted to run through her fingers fall into it; and each time she hears the chink of gold, again she suffers this unending rape: an Asiatic of the lowest caste; a filthy leper rotting with his sores; a slave, his limbs deep-eaten by his chains.

Then I saw a woman whose presence in a house had always disturbed the quiet of them who shared it with her, until it was as though their rest was tormented with stinging insects. Now she is beset with hornets. They have stung her hands until they are like the webbed feet of a duck; her eyes are narrow slits in the swollen flesh of her lids, her tongue is thick between her cracked lips, and she is bearded with flies.

Then I saw a man who, when he had met people who were in trouble, instead of speaking to them with words that would have been a healing ointment to their wounds, in his self-righteousness had told them that they were unworthy of his sympathy, for their sufferings were of their own making. Now he who would not comfort others is in a desert with no shade, and the sun beats down upon him until his skin is cracked like river mud before the inundation. Before him he sees palm trees, which surround a well of cool water, and in the shade there sits a man with two jars.

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