The Changing Room 6

 

Behind hanging tapestries were cymbals, drums, reeds for blowing, gourds for rattling. In the safety of the darkness of the changing room, I made crashes, hisses, roars, continuing the entire session, while Philip held the dove. After about a year I took away the dove and Philip joined the noises, howling like a wild beast, a sound more terrifying than if the beast had been real. After that he began to doze, and the noises changed to gently running water and breeze-blown leaves. Then I left the lamps burning and gave him all the articles he had brought -- colored stones and bits of metal from his father's shop.

He took the pieces and when he returned for his final session he wore a fine jeweled dagger at his waist. He had never quit the rose scent. I watched the moths that entered the changing room. First I would see a tiny white tuft in some corner and I knew that a beautiful flyer would one day enter the great world beyond my room. I listened to the spiders. Lit by an amber lamp there came a web upon which I would fix my gaze. The spell the web wove upon me was like the spells I wove on the men. There was a serpent who stayed throughout one hot season, I think for the coolness of the room. It took in the lessons, and although I was not sure of this, as the years passed and I became less sure of many things, a serpent learning, as the men did, seemed not strange at all.

Jubal was a shepherd who sold wool and mutton in the marketplace.

When his work with me was nearly finished, I saw a moth emerge from its cocoon. I went to collect Jubal's artifact and found a jeweled bracelet. He usually brought a strand of dyed wool.