Septima was a slave under the African sun in the city of Hadrumetum. Her mother, Amoena, was a slave, and the mother of her mother—all had been slaves, beautiful and unknown, to whom the dark gods had revealed the spells of love and of death.
Hadrumetum was a city of white houses, though the one where Septima lived was built of pink stones, the trembling tint of roses, while the garden paths were set with shells from Egypt, washed away by the tepid sea, where the seven deltas of the Nile spread out forming seven vases of different colors.
The silvery voice of the Mediterranean could be heard from Septima’s house by the sea. At her feet a fan of shimmering blue swept out to the horizon. The golden palms of her little hands were rouged, her fingertips tinged with fard, her lips touched with myrrh and the anointed lids of her eyes drooped softly. Thus she appeared as she walked through the fringe of the city, carrying a basket of bread for the servants’ table.
Septima fell in love with a young freeman named Sextilius, a son of Dionysia, but love was denied her, for she belonged to those who knew the mysteries of the lower world and served love’s adversary whose name is Anteros. As swiftly as Eros aims the glances of eyes or whets the darts of his arrows, Anteros turns those glances aside and dulls the flying shafts. He is a kindly god, laboring among the dead, not cruel as the other is. Anteros possesses the nepenthe of forgetfulness. He holds love to be the worst of human afflictions; he pursues love to cure love. Powerless, however, to enter a heart once caught by Eros, he seizes that heart’s affinity.
This is the method of the strife between Eros and Anteros, and the reason why Septima could not love Sextilius, for when Eros touched her with his flame, Anteros took the man she loved. Septima saw the power of Anteros in the lowered lids of Sextilius. When purple trembled through the evening air she walked down the road to the sea. It was a quiet road, a road where lovers sipped wine-ofdates, leaning together against the polished walls of ancient tombs. An eastern wind blew its perfumes across the Necropolis. Veiled as yet, the young moon came timidly abroad. Sleeping in their sepulchers, many dead were enthroned on the hills around Hadrumetum, and here, under these stones, slept Phoinissa, sister of Septima, a slave girl dead at sixteen, before a man had ever breathed the sweetness of her. Phoinissa’s tomb was straight and slim as her body had been. The stone contours following the outline of her breasts were crossed by bands like the strands of a strophe. On her low forehead hung a pendent stone, long and drooping between her eyes. From her blackened lips came still an aromatic vapor of embalmng spices, and a green gold ring set with two pale, clouded rubies gleamed on her finger where she lay, dreaming eternally of things she had never known.
Under the virgin whiteness of the new moon Septima crouched by her sister’s tomb, cooling her face against the sculptured garlands of white marble, her lips close to the aperture for receiving the funereal libations, and she poured out all her passions:
“O my sister,” she began, “turn in your sleep and hear me! The little lamp of death’s first hours is lighted. We gave you an ampula of colored glass, but you have let it slip through your fingers. Your neck¬ lace is broken and the golden beads are scattered around you. Nothing of ours is any longer yours, and he has you now, the hawk¬ headed one. O listen, my sister, you have power to carry my words. Fly to that heaven you know so well. Plead for me with Anteros. Implore the goddess Hathor. Beseech him, whose body once drifted safely on the seas to IJabytefi. Sister, pity a sorrow you never learned! By the seven stars of the magicians of Chaldea I entreat you. By those dark powers Carthage knows, by Iao, Abriao, Salbaal and Bathbaal hear my invocation. Make him love me! Sextilius, son of Dionysia, make him burn with love of me, Septima, daughter of our mother, Amcena ... so that he shall burn in the night, so that he shall come to me by thy tomb, Phoinissa! “Or if that cannot be, let us both be plunged into the shadows. Let Anteros chill the breath of us—if he must quench this fire Eros has kindled! Perfumed death, drink the libation of my voice. Achrammachalala!” Then the mummy of the virgin descended into the earth, teeth bared and gleaming. And Septima walked shamefully between the tombs of the dead until the second watch of the night. Her eyes followed the flight of the moon across the sky. Her throat felt the biting brine of the sea wind. When the first golden rays of dawn touched her she returned to Hadrumetum, her long blue veils floating behind her.
Phoinissa put her lips to the boy’s mouth and the life went out of him like a bursted bubble. In her sister’s cell she took Septima by the hand. And the kiss of Phoinissa and the clasp of Phoinissa killed them both, Septima and Sextilius, in the same hour. Such was the dark issue of the struggle between Eros and Anteros, wherefrom the infernal powers received a slave and a free man.
Sextilius rests in the Necropolis at Hadrumetum between Septima, the enchant¬ ress, and her sister Phoinissa. The words of Septima’s enchantment are inscribed upon a leaden plack which the enchantress lowered into Phoinissa’s tomb through the little hole intended for libations.
Marcel Schwob
Imaginary Lives
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