The Devil's Concubine Read online

  The woman took the Bible from the hands of her confessor and leafed through the pages until she found what she wanted.

  “Listen to how the Bible refers to them. ‘And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But the men (meaning the angels) put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door. And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place: For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.’ Can it be explained any clearer?”

  “Well, I admit it makes sense to a believer, but...”

  “But these things never happen to anyone we know and much less to ourselves.”

  “Yes, that also,” the priest agreed and then remained silent. A shy expression shown on his face, as if he didn’t have the courage to ask an uncomfortable question.

  “The fact that he... was a... fallen angel, it..., I mean... Did it make him different in any way? Did it make him... less of an angel?”

  “Absolutely not. I know you want to compare him to the traditional devil with whom you are so comfortably familiar. But you’ll have to get those ideas out of your mind. Start from zero, just like we’re doing.”

  “So you’re not lying to me? Should I believe everything you tell me, listen to it all as your confessor?”

  “Well now! At least I’ve sown a seed of doubt. Do I look like a woman who feels the need to laugh, to joke around? Do you think I want to waste my time making up stories?”

  The priest watched the woman’s face attentively.

  “No,” he admitted. “It doesn’t seem like it.”

  “It’s good to stay cautious. But you’ll probably be carrying this doubt for the rest of your life and you’ll never be able to share it with anyone else. Is that clear? Do you understand that this isn’t a joke, that it’s a confession?”

  “Of course,” assured Father DiCaprio. “Everything you tell me will be kept secret.”

  They looked at each other thoughtfully, in mutual silence.

  “I am absolutely parched. I need water or I won’t be able to say another word. Are you so kind as to ask them to bring us some water? They’ll do it for you.”

  “Of course, certainly.” The priest stood quickly, banged on the boor, and made his request to the guard.

  “They’ll bring it right away,” he assured her and sat back down anxiously, as though he hoped, in spite of her thirst, she would continue her story without waiting for the water to arrive.

  But she didn’t and he seemed uncomfortable sitting there in silence, eager for her to continue.

  “Would you like to keep going, please?” he asked, unable to contain himself.

  “Yes, sure. Of course. Let’s see. Where were we? We were in the temple, right? Our first week together we slept underneath the temple on the islet. I say slept because we spent the majority of the daytime visiting pyramids thieves had not pillaged so he could show me their hidden treasures. He taught me the secrets of the ancient Egyptian religion, how to decipher the hieroglyphs on their walls and sarcophaguses, and when they were interesting, he’d tell me the stories of the those who were mummified inside them.

  “We had built a comfortable, although rudimentary, bed out of rugs. Shallem didn’t need to sleep but he always lay down beside me. I held him close and, filled with happiness, would drift away into a sweet dream. If I awoke during the night, he would make me think he was in a deep sleep, however, he really wasn’t asleep. Although he seemed unconscious, he left a part of his soul behind to take care of and comfort me. In the mornings a sumptuous breakfast of dried fruits, pastries, sweets, and typical foods from regions that weren’t anywhere near Egypt, awaited me. He was tender and lovingly took care of me. He didn’t need to eat, of course, but he didn’t mind doing so just to please me and keep me company. He seemed to enjoy following certain human behaviors, however, as I found out later, what he was really trying to do was make us seem more similar, less different.

  “Of course, as you can imagine, I bombarded him with all kinds of questions but I soon learned trying to get any information from him was more than difficult, it was impossible. He refused to speak about anything which didn’t pertain to my world. God, his brothers, what he saw in my past lives, what would happen to me after I died, his powers, everything was taboo. He told me it was for my own good that I knew nothing and said he would never tell me anything. After these futile conversations I felt frustrated and upset, not only for the same reasons you yourself would feel upset, but rather because I wanted to know everything about my lover. I would hopelessly melt when he looked into my eyes with such an earnest expression of compassion. This was always his drastic and most effective way of silencing my questions.

  “Every night I had the pleasure of watching him swim, watching his divine, nude body beneath the silver light of a pearl white moon floating over the calm waters of the Nile. From the banks of the river, I would watch him enthralled, his name always on my lips. I would quickly join him. Among the waters, during a cascade of kisses, he would whisper words of love in my ear , which filled my mind like an intoxicating aroma. He would then carry me out of the water and we would fall into each other’s arms onto the islet’s warm, sandy shores.”

  Father DiCaprio cleared his throat and repeatedly changed the position of his arms that rested on the table. The woman smiled at him warmly.

  “A week passed and Shallem decided that we should find a place where I could rest more comfortably and which was more in tune to my human frailty. He rented a small house close to the port in Alexandria and promised we would set sail for Europe in the first boat that admitted passengers. As I’ve already told you, I didn’t care where we were as long as we were together. However, if it were my chose, we would have left that dry, inhospitable land which was so full of horrible memories.”

  “Excuse me,” Father DiCaprio interrupted.

  “Yes?”

  “But, he couldn’t... you know... he couldn’t fly?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. But I already told you he didn’t want us to seem so different. He had already done things that no other mortal could ever do. Well, for example, he had to use his powers for us to enter the pyramids. He made us dematerialize and reappear on the inside. Many times the pyramids were hidden under tons of sand. I wouldn’t see anything but sand and he would point to a spot on the ground where the top of the pyramid would be. So I wouldn’t get scared, I would bury my head in his chest and wouldn’t open my eyes until we were already inside the dark, noxious interior. At times, I felt so asphyxiated we would have to leave quickly before the fumes could really affect me. Because of this, we stopped visiting the intact but hidden pyramids and went to the ones that were more well known and frequented. It was a lot less interesting but less harmful to my health. Of course, visiting them from Alexandria was difficult because they were so far away. The Valley of the Kings was close to Cairo, some two hundred kilometers south from where we were. Because it was so far away, we went only one more time since we had moved to Alexandria. One last damned time.

  “The boat was to leave that afternoon and I wanted to say good-bye to Egypt by making love just one more time inside one of its pyramids. Making love inside a pyramid was so exciting, mysterious, and scary that I pressed myself even more urgently against Shallem, which made the experience that much more satisfying.

  “At first, he refused my request because he didn’t want to use his powers. However, with caresses and kisses, I managed to convince him. If he could take me forward in time sixty-seven years, why couldn’t he carry me few kilometers away? I wasn’t going to get scared, not at all. After all, he had already done it the day he took me away from the Arab’s palace and when
he took me to Eonar... How it bothered him when I reminded him of that! What a heartrending expression of shame crossed his beautiful face!

  “Finally, he reluctantly decided to go. He closed my eyes with a kiss and we were there, at the foot of a pyramid. Crawling inside the pyramid through the narrow ducts, which had been opened by thieves, was fun and exciting. However, before we could do that, Shallem had to find the entrance that was hidden under kilos of sand. He found it easily and we anxiously dug and removed the sand that covered it. We crawled through the tunnel on our hands and knees. For a second an image came to mind, I saw myself crawling through a dark passage, terrified and blinded by tears. It seemed so long ago but at the same time such a short time ago. The tunnel was completely dark and I was dragging myself along behind my angel, playfully pinching his legs and bottom as we both laughed.

  “My knees were hurting when we finally reached the burial chamber. Traditionally torches were left inside a burial chamber to light the way for the deceased’s eternal life. We were lucky in that the torches in this chamber had not been used. Inside, there was little left besides a wooden sarcophagus and the mummy’s personal belongings. Things of little value: combs, mirrors, colored palettes of dry make-up, fossilized food, jars which had held wine, and some wooden statues that were to unrefined and large to be carried away by thieves..., those types of things. What interested me the most were the paintings that depicted amazing Egyptian stories; their peculiar ideas about death and life after death. I was able to translate hieroglyphs five hundred years before Champollion was born. They were so fascinating..., so complicated and so simple at the same time. While I grabbed onto his hand, Shallem gave me an elusive and playful look out of the corner of his eye. Seduced, I drew closer to him and lifted the long and ugly tunic he wore. He didn’t have anything on underneath. How exciting and enticing. I slid my hands over his taught muscles and provocative waist. I took off his tunic, melting at the thought of what was about to happen.

  “Suddenly, he grabbed my hands and told me to be quiet. From his expression, I could tell he had heard a strange noise. What could have made that noise? We would have immediately realized if someone else was there, especially him, of course. However, he seemed unusually alarmed. He could feel something that I couldn’t. I nervously asked him several times what was happening but he didn’t even seem to hear me.

  “All of the sudden something hit him and he fell to the ground. Something I couldn’t see until the torches were suddenly extinguished. Dozens, hundreds of pale bright lights penetrated the chamber. I screamed as never before in my life as those monsters of intangible energy attacked Shallem. Like hundreds of minuscule sons, they made the temperature rise in the chamber. Their light was so bright and blinding I had to cover my eyes with my hands while I tried to reach Shallem. I screamed his name desperately while those powerful apparitions held him down on the floor. One by one, as Shallem fought them off, they began to vanish, leaving a soft blue wake as the only sign of their existence. Suddenly, the pyramid began to shake as if it were at the epicenter of an earthquake.

  “ ‘Get out of here Juliette!’ Shallem screamed frantically. ‘Go look for the boat. I’ll find you. Go! Now!’

  “Hysterical, I couldn’t stop struggling to reach him. Small pieces of rock fell on my head and I tried to protect it with my hands. I could barely open my eyes. My heart refused to leave him but my mind told me I couldn’t help him, that nothing bad could happen to him, that he was immortal, and that I wasn’t. The pyramid’s collapse was imminent and the terror I felt helped me react.

  “I felt my way to the exit and, quickly as possible, entered it on my hands and knees. My eyes were just as full of tears and my heart just as full of pain and sorrow as that night in the dark passage inside the Saint-Ange castle. My muscles were stiff, frozen with fright. Behind me, I heard the chamber Shallem was in collapse. The dust from old rocks fell on my head and I closed my eyes, little did it help me to keep them open in that darkness. I suffered horrible visions of seeing myself entombed inside the pyramid forever, along with the pyramid’s real proprietor, the mummy.

  “It seemed like the pyramid was sinking. Panicked, I kept crawling frantically through that long, immense and endless tunnel. The same tunnel in which I had had so much fun entering when I had kissed and teased Shallem’s warm supernatural flesh. Now alone, I cried and screamed, delirious as I felt the pyramid sink deeper into the sand and crumble around my head.

  “Despite the lack of light, I suddenly realized I had reached the end of the passage, the exit. Sand and sand and sand, millions of grains of sand obstructed the exit.

  “I stuck my hands into the monstrous mass that had penetrated the passageway and I clawed at it like a desperate cat. The sand was very loose, not heavy. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and launched myself into the sand headfirst. My God, if I made a wrong move, or if I didn’t go the right way... I should go up, go up. Filled with terror, I swam in an infinite sea of sand while I imagined my horrible death by suffocation. The pyramid seemed to be collapsing, pulling and dragging me down into its dry vortex. I couldn’t hear anything, I couldn’t see anything, I was deprived of all sensations. The sand shifted around my body with every move I made and kept me moving forward.

  “I continued and continued to fight the sand, but it felt like I wasn’t going anywhere, it seemed like I hadn’t moved a millimeter. I lifted my heavy arms and legs and climbed; the sand rose and fell as I lifted them. The same sand in the same place. I was enveloped, buried alive under golden grains of sand that entered my nose, my mouth, that searched for any gap between my eyelashes to enter my eyes. When I exhaled, my breath had nowhere to go and tried to reenter my mouth. The thirsty sand invaded my mouth, searching for the scarce moisture on my tongue, in my entire mouth. I thought I had lost my way and didn’t doubt that my body was already in a horizontal position, ready to receive death.

  “The terror petrified me, I couldn’t move. I was being smothered and when I opened my mouth, the sand, with ravenous rage, seemed to penetrate me until it filled my stomach. I was truly half-dead. Why should I keep struggling? Why not succumb to death and stop suffering? I don’t know why, but I continued to struggle although I hardly had any strength left.

  “Suddenly, my hand reached the surface. The caress of air and the sun’s rays made my heart leap. Air! With renewed strength, I continued fighting, pedaling madly. It seemed like I wasn’t going to make it but I knew I was almost there, that I could do it if the lack of oxygen didn’t kill me first. I was on the verge but I couldn’t reach it. Finally, my head surfaced and I felt air and the abrasive rays of the desert’s sun. I breathed and breathed and quickly left my confinement, scared the sands would open and swallow me again.

  “I was crushed to a pulp. My body was completely exhausted, my lungs congested, my eyes irritated, and my head, above all my head, was about to lose all notion of reality. What were those intangible, deadly beings? Where did they come from and why had they attacked Shallem? I would die without him! What did he say to me? That I should get on the boat? But we were more than two hundred kilometers away! In that vicious desert, four kilometers would seem like four hundred.

  “While tormenting myself with those thoughts, I began walking as quickly as I could, scared those beings would leave the pyramid and inflict me with unimaginable tortures. I thought, perhaps, this was divine justice, God was punishing me.

  “Exhausted, I fell down not even having walked three hundred meters. I had an irrational and obsessive fear of the vast emptiness of the desert. Nowadays this is called agoraphobia. I was close, very close to the Nile. I crawled toward it and washed my face in its warm waters. I rinsed out my sandy mouth and had no strength to do anything else. I told myself I would follow its course. At least I wouldn’t die of thirst. When I felt better, I would start my journey. I would never arrive before the boat set sail, I knew that, but I had to try. Who knows, maybe a miracle would happen.

  “I thought I was
about to faint, the desert’s heat never felt so atrocious when I was with Shallem. Then the miracle occurred. I thought I was hallucinating but I wasn’t. I saw a sailboat or something similar to a sailboat. I screamed for help and, since the desert was so quiet, it wasn’t long before I was heard. I saw the boat turn toward me and could see two masculine figures on board. Once again, I was going to fall into the hands of men. ‘This time they’ll rape me, rob me, and kill me.’ I thought, such was my faith in mankind. But this time I was lucky. A boy around ten years-old and his harmless, obliging grandfather were on the boat. Of course, they didn’t understand any one of the languages I spoke but my gestures and appearance told them all they needed to know. I took out a small pouch, which contained a considerable amount of money Shallem had given me to buy anything I fancied. I did my best to make them understand the word “Alexandria”, but it didn’t mean anything to them. I tried to pantomime to make them understand that I needed to catch a big boat to Europe, but I couldn’t do this very well and they had never heard the word “Europe”. It was then that I remembered the big, beautiful cemetery Shallem and I had visited a few days before. I pronounced, ‘Kom El Shokafa’ while I showed them the money and pointed in the direction. I was very lucky to have remembered that name. Finally, they understood. I boarded the strange boat, which was partially covered with a canopy and took a deep breath, almost relieved. Would I get there in time? I tried to guess how far away we were but that was asking too much.