“What was her name?”

“She had many names, as she wandered through the ages. Many have called her Lilith and Ashtoreth, but the name she loved best was: Sa-lo-me.”

“Sa-lo-me!”

“Have you also heard the voice of Sa-lo-me from afar, Cartaphilus?”

“Perhaps.”

“Like a will-o’-the-wisp she flits, in fevered nights through the dreams of youth.”

Salome? Could it be she indeed… Salome…she who scorned me? Salome… Nemesis…the passionate and cruel…the exquisite, the magnificent Daughter of Night! She who beheaded those whom she loved and tortured with her disdain those who loved her? If she lived, who but I was her destined lover? Whom should she love, if not Cartaphilus!

The cup fell out of my hand, and broke.

To Fo smiled. “Her very name makes our hands tremble, Cartaphilus.” After a while he resumed: “The cup always slips…and it always breaks.”

“Kotikokura, we have been long enough in Cathay. Our friends are aging rapidly; Flower-of-the-Evening has noticed a gray hair in her head; the people have forgotten Attila and the events that invested me with a red ruby and the rank of a Mandarin of the First Order. A guest should leave before the host begins to yawn.”

Kotikokura scratched his head, pulled at his mustache, and grumbled something.

“I understand, Kotikokura, you have made friends here, and feel comfortable. Comfort, however, is our greatest enemy, Kotikokura. When the goose is most comfortable in her warm grease, the time for her slaughter is near. Besides, my friend, Salome is probably in the West. You do not know Salome? She is the… Daughter of Night! She is cruel and beautiful, and disdainful! Like the Queen bee, she destroys those whom she loves!”

Kotikokura grinned.

“She is Lilith, perhaps—mother of demons, or Ashtoreth, goddess of love! We must seek her, Kotikokura.”

Kotikokura placed his hands into his wide sleeves, and bowed.

To Fo accompanied us for several miles. The sun was about to set. He gave me a letter sealed with the Grand Seal of the Dragon from the Son of Heaven, exhorting his fellow sovereigns, as well as his subjects, to respect my wishes.

“Cartaphilus, best of friends, now and then when you will see the sun disappear, drink a cup of wine to To Fo.”

MY eyes sought the faces of all the women I met. Is this Salome? Or this one? Kotikokura imitated me. He squinted his eyes and sighed.

“Are you, too, seeking Salome, Kotikokura?”

He looked at me, his upper lip studded with his sparse hair, trembling.

“Are we running after our own shadows, Kotikokura? Are we in search of that which never was, and never car; be?”

Kotikokura did not hear. An enormous fly persisted in tormenting the tip of his nose.

“If Apollonius were but here, he would console and instruct us. Perhaps his ashes are mixing even now with the dust of the road!”

We stopped at every village, and every town. The Emperor’s letter brought to my feet mayors, governors and generals. Of all I asked: “Have you seen Salome?” Not knowing whom I meant, and guilty perhaps of some secret misdeeds, they would stammer: “No, no, my Lord, we have not heard of Salome.” But when I explained who Salome was, their lips would stretch slowly into a long smile. “Perhaps our poets or our philosophers can inform our Lord. We are so ignorant.”

Some of the poets had heard vaguely of a beautiful woman, wandering about the great Celestial Empire, who once in a century upon a certain day, and a certain hour shared the couch of the Son of Heaven. The philosophers, however, smiled at their simplicity. Salome, they claimed, was another name for the moon, revealing the fullness of her beauty to the Emperor, once a month in his garden.

The philologists ridiculed the philosophers, considering their explanation as childish as that of the poets. Salome, they argued, was a tortoise. The tortoise lived for hundreds of years, and moved about so slowly that it needed a century to return to the spot whence it started. Among the ancients, they said, the sight of a tortoise was considered a happy omen. Salome was merely a corruption of an obsolete word for tortoise. The two words were derived from the same root in one of the two hundred forgotten dialects of the Celestial Realm.

We reached the town which had seen our arrival years previously. Nothing seemed to have changed; the same small wooden houses, the same narrow alleys, darkened by wet clothing and fishermen’s nets, which hung on poles nailed to opposite roofs; swarms of naked children and shopkeepers smoking on the thresholds. An unpleasant stench rose now as then.

I approached a group of men. They bowed to the ground.

“Where is Mung Ling, the great philosopher?”

One of them answered: “Mung Ling is at the Lake, excellent Lord, but he is not a great philosopher. He is a poor, and not over-intelligent fisherman.” The others smiled.

“Is he the son of the philosopher?”

“His father has been dead for many years, great Lord,” an old man added. “It may be that he was a philosopher. There are so many things to remember, and the memory of man is like a sieve…”

“Is Sing Po, the poet, alive?”

They shook their heads.

“Have you heard of Li Tung, the sculptor?”

“No, my Lord.”

“Kotikokura, things are stronger than men. Men pass; things remain. Often, however, man believes he is stationary, while things disappear about him. Even thus the swift-footed river wonders why the shores fly past it forever.”

The gates of Cathay opened and closed behind us, the watchmen hiding their faces in the dust.

“Kotikokura, it is no longer necessary to hide our lips with hair, We must not belong too conspicuously to any country.”

A CROWD gathered about the two players, who, sitting on small carpets, their legs underneath them, were twisting their long beards, meditating. Some of the spectators whispered to one another, pointing with their fingers to a board. Chess had recently been invented by one of the prisoners of the Shah, and Ispahan, the capital, had forgotten about her story-tellers and jugglers and mummers in her enthusiasm for the new game. The narrow roads were blocked by players and watchers, and mule and elephant drivers complained in vain to the city authorities for relief. The authorities promised to attend to the matter but, being themselves enamored of the game, were too sympathetic with the violators of the traffic, to interfere with their pleasure.

“Make way! Make way!” a dark-skinned driver shouted. No one paid heed to him. A few grumbled, “Take another road.”

“Make way for my mistress!” the man insisted. I looked up. Upon a tall elephant, royally caparisoned, reclined a woman. Her eyes were half-closed, as if in meditation or in voluptuous revery. Her forehead was encircled by a gold band studded with jewels, and her cheeks were partially hidden by heavy tresses of red hair. I could not tell her age. I remembered To Fo’s remark: ‘As old as the Black Mountain and as young as the first ray of dawn.’

“Make way!”

“Take another road, fool!” several exclaimed.

I approached the driver and placed a coin into his half-closed palm. “Who is your mistress?”

“Princess Salome.”

“Make way!”

I slipped another coin into his hand. “Where does she live?”

“Yonder. This side of the palm trees.”

“Make way!”

I dropped a third coin. “Who is her lord?”

“Princess Salome has no lord.”

“Checkmate!” one of the players called out. The crowd dispersed, and Princess Salome, still dreaming or thinking, rode slowly past me, rocking lightly on her giant animal.